Hit a plateau with race times - add more miles or intensity

I pushed myself to try and get better times. Ended up just getting hurt. Just stay HEALTHY and be consistent, times will come. If you hurt yourself in the process, you're going to hurt your times way more than just taking a consistency approach.

Pick a much shorter distance, such as 800 meters, or even 400 and get a lifetime (or at least recent years) PR in that. Speed can be fun and encouraging. It's also a smart way to train out some inefficiencies in your stride and to get some competitive fight back into your races. Shorter distance PR effort bring out the fight within you, without draining you overall like repeated 10K PR efforts do. Pure speed for a minute or two is also life functional, other sport useful, and gratifying. Work to get some good results at a shorter distance, then do the same for the mile, two mile, etc. The 10K will take care of itself after that. Also agree with making the one long run longer. Also agree with reducing your weekly mileage for a while to save some energy for the faster workouts and also perhaps to take your own boot off of your own neck for a while. Plateauing might be a sign that you are approaching your own limits, or also that you need some permission to rest and rejuvenate. Good luck.

Great year?

Also, you are fast. You are not just in the top one percent of guys your age overall, but in the top one percent of guys your age who wore out multiple pairs of running shoes by running. I would suspect that there are any number of other aspects of your daily life that are far from being in the top one percent of people who do them reguarly. Plateauing comes after lots of focus in one area, but life is very varied. Maybe you are in the bottom 50% of something in life that could have the opposite time spent/ additional benefit received payback. Perhaps your car would benefit greatly from one bumper to bumper testing and servicing. Perhaps you would benefit greatly from a computer class or dance lessons, or a new weekly social group. The path to success may not just be in the time from the start line to the finish line of a 10K, but in the overall care of the life of the guy who toes the start line. Sometimes it's good for a runner (or an athlete in any sport) to have some wins in other aspects of life and then return to the start line with some recent wins. The urge to maximize and achieve is a great one. As a metaphor for success, think of a container, which has three dimensions, length, width and depth. Focusing on the third dimension, rather than just two, is the best way to increase volume. You might find that sucesss in another aspect of life transfers more to transcending a plateau in one aspect of life (10K fitness) than solely focusing on that activitiy itself.

January to July is still an awfully long time to be racing. You might want to target two specific periods in the year to race like fall/spring or summer/spring, maybe two months each. In between, take a couple weeks off then build up again toward the next racing period. Uninterrupted racing/training is unsustainable.

Is it? A lot of runners in my club tend to race all year round. XC in autumn/winter, road/track in spring summer. Despite the plateau I’m not convinced I’m over racing at 5k/10k.

i think I’m more inclined to agree with the above comments stating more thought around the training block leading up to each race is what needs changing. And the comment about still being able to stand at the end of the race is a good point as I’ve finished the last 2 feeling slightly ‘fresh’ so I don’t think I went into that final gear. Maybe cos my head wasn’t in it or maybe because I feel like there’s plenty of opportunities to try again with a calendar full of racing.

anyway, I have 2 main races left now in October and December. So am going to rest and reset before putting the training in for those.

We can't help you until you start to use run / ran correctly.

Neither. Hit the gym for some strength training. Not to get buff mind you. Just to increase your strength. Once you do this you will run like the wind.

I'm nowhere near as good a runner as many on this site but, since my weight, training, and times were pretty similar to yours when I was your age (I never ran in school, so started late), I'll throw in my 2 cents. I do think suggestions many have written already, including taking a break, are good. Based on my experience (though it only brought me from ~16:15 to 15:51 in 5k), these things helped: 1) gradually increasing mileage to ~75 (some 70, up to 80), with some of it pretty easy intensity-wise; 2) some quite hard speed workouts (e.g. 4x mile in ~4:58 w/ 400 jog, 4th mile couldn't quite hit that time - these were pretty tough for me); 3) focus for a bit on improving at shorter races - I found that bringing my mile time down (from 4:43 to 4:38), and even improving my 800 time, translated to improvements in 5ks, 10ks, and even marathons. In my case, my strength was good so, though I did some strength work and plyometrics, they may not have helped - but, for many people, a little more strength could make a difference as well. My friend who was a much better runner, and did extraordinarily well at age 40, would take a 4 week break each year with *no* running, then 10 weeks of 70-miles-per-week base training, then reduce mileage and do *killer* hard speedwork - he ran a 4:08 mile, though he'd only been in the 4:30s in college, and great 10ks. So he was somewhat of a role model, with taking a break, building mileage, hard speedwork, and some focus on shorter races.

What kind of hard speedwork did he do?

It's a long time ago, and I don't remember all the details. But as I remember it, the workouts often seems relatively low volume but super-fast .... like 1x 1200 1x800 1x600, or 1200/1000/800/400 ... I'm remembering decreasing distance w faster and faster pace (not Jack Daniels-style where pace is constant). I failed to mention that he had a period at the end of the 10 weeks where he introduced very hard hill workouts to transition to these speed workouts.