Why can't I break 30 (rate my training)?

Don't listen to that BS about lack of talent.

I also ran for a smaller D3 school, I ran high 29-30 range for 8k all 4 years there. I ran about 50-60 a week in the summer and around 50 during the season. When I graduated I figured I'd train for a marathon. I spent a summer really ramping up the mileage (gradually up to 80-100 a week) and during this time I shattered every PR I'd had from 5k up. I ended up burning out and bombing at the Marathon. I took a few weeks off and started hammering the workouts and miles, and now a summer later I'm running low 25's for an 8k. My miles are up, my workouts are now more calculated, and I'm shattering all of my old times. Your mileage and workouts seem similar to what I was doing...

Miles in the winter, stay consistent, and try to make your workouts have more of a purpose.

Your post just made my day, thanks man!!! That gives me a lot of hope, I have a ton of belief in myself but I'm often the only one hahaha

Don't let the talk about talent discourage you. I went from running 4:41 for the 1600 in high school to a 30-minute 10K 4 years later.

Things I learned along the way:

1. Increase the miles. I went from 40 mpw to 60 mpw. 6 weeks later, my 10K time dropped by 2.5 minutes. Increasing it to about 80 eventually helped lead to another 4 minutes coming off. In your case, I don't think it's too late to increase the miles for this year. You just have to be smart about it. You might consider a 10% increase per week for the next couple of weeks and hold that through the conference meet.

1a. Consistent running is better than really big days or weeks followed by low weeks. When I did my best times, I aimed for double-digit days everyday except Friday. I didn't have extensive long runs, but I also didn't have any real short days. I was pretty much 8-12 miles everyday.

2. The repeats are too fast for your current fitness. I agree with those who suggest a higher volume. If you don't want to use something like "Daniels' Running Formula" to determine your paces, you could always run at 10 seconds per mile faster than current race-pace for your repeats. That gets you used to a slightly faster pace without killing yourself.

3. Don't totally neglect speed. You can easily add in a mile's worth of strides at the end of a run. That does two things; it increases the number of miles per week and get your legs used to moving fast when tired.

4. Tempo runs are huge for the 5K-10K race distance. I did 4-mile tempo runs about 20 seconds per mile slower than race pace. They really gave me the strength to hold my pace over the last couple of miles of a race. After several weeks of tempo runs, I ran a hot, hilly 10K. Over the last 4 miles, 3 of the miles were run in exactly the same time and the 4th mile was 1 second slower.

The coach pulling you from your workout was a good thing. I did the same thing this morning to one of the HS runners I coach. I didn't like the way he looked during yesterday's repeat session. He has a tendency to push himself too hard, so I made him run with one of our slower coaches this morning in order to hold him back and let him recover. He didn't like it, but it beats him coming down sick or injured because I ignored the signs.

I didn't read the responses, but what the hell are all the short intervals good for? It may be on the late side now this close to the end of the season, but you should have been doing more 800-2000m type repeats at 8k race pace. That being said, you being that close to breaking 30 on high milage (for you), a simple taper should get you under.

Your lack of success in college had nothing to do with lack of talent and everything to do with lack of hard work.

Your success since you upped the workload proves that.

If you really had no talent you wouldn't have improved that much. Talent is not how good you are from the get-go, it's your capacity to improve over time given good training.