help - i am stuck for 5 years @ 16:20 / 16:50 5k range

Get in the gym and lift. You don't want to be skinnyfat anyway. Come down to at least the 800m you'll feel better.

Really big deck wrote:

Get in the gym and lift. You don't want to be skinnyfat anyway. Come down to at least the 800m you'll feel better.

Agree at least in part. Pick a 6-month block to focus on 400/800/1500. Learn these events and it will carry over into your 5K.

Then a 4-6 month high-mileage block for a marathon with at least 12 weeks above 65 miles/week. Preferably up to 70 average.

Play the yin against the yang and become a complete runner. Track, roads, XC.

You should try taking EPO. It's a small performance enhancer. It's also completely legal around the world. It worked wonders for me, probably could for you as well.

I was like you, running 16:2X like clockwork in almost every 5k road race that I'd enter. I'd do an occasional track workout and a tempo run every few weeks, but I'd basically just run for 40-60 minutes 5-6 days a week. No structured plan. I got my PRs to something around 16:10, 33:33, and 2:44. This was from age 22-28.

Then, at age 29, I decided on a whim to try running every single day over the next year. The consistent increase in weekly miles worked wonders. In the past, I would typically run 50 miles per week on a good week. I was now running 60-70 miles on a normal week and kept that for several months. My PRs dropped to 15:24, 25:25 (5 mile), and 2:37 (bonking) within 1 year.

I kept the streak going for a total of about 1.5 years before I got a nagging injury that forced time off. I'm now shooting for sub 2:30 this spring.

You reached the ceiling. Elites get stuck at 13 for 5000 too.

Stop racing your workouts.

Try soccer. Or foosball.

raise the mileage and have the three workouts per week and the times will drop, but you also want to make sure you are doing the workouts with better people, so that you can get good quality.

how fast did you run those extra 10-20 miles?

for one side there are those advising me to stop running junk miles and focusing on speed workouts; for the other side there are those recommending to just add these 20 miles a week for months and the magic will happen. i am really lost.

I can understand why you would be confused. And I think that is mostly because it is totally possible that either method could work. We don't know you or your specific physiology.

Is there a method that sounds most interesting to you? More speed work at the mile and building that up to 5k stuff? Or more overall mileage and pushing things at the aerobic level? I would personally go with the one that sounds most appealing to me. If you put in more work, either method will help, but you have to do it seriously. And for most of us, we are more likely to adhere to a program we are super excited about.