Does anyone else get irritated when you are beaten by someone running very low mileage?

Another runner can beat you on the day for several reasons. The most productive way forward if you are stagnant is to take a step back and look at what you have been doing and why for the last 6 months and has it been working? Talk to a coach.

You need to get some more talent.

No, I have other more substantive things to care about in life than my hobbyjogging speed.

Maybe you aren’t trying hard enough

Have you tried running faster?

At 15:13 for 5K it becomes increasingly difficult to improve...

No, this wouldn't bother me at all. We all should be training at volumes/intensities that are right for us. If you think low mileage/high intensity is the way to go, then try it out and see what happens.

It sounds like you haven't tried.

I got beat by Doug Padilla all the time back in college. Never lost any sleep over it. He was just a lot better despite running very low miles every week.

Find something else to be good at if you're that salty OP. And if you can't give up running, then do better and stop projecting a toxic jealousy towards others.

I ran sub 14 in college. Work takes up a lot of my time so I am only running 4 days per week for a total of about 25 miles. I ran 14:50 in a 5k a few weeks ago.

I can understand your sentiment. However it is not productive.

I might be wrong guessing you as a 'local competitive hobbyjogger' as you haven't explicitly stated that, however if your livelihood depended on winning races you would probably have a coach and would not be thinking of tearing up your training yourself. And the times you mentioned, even if not yours, have strong 'local competitive' vibe.

So, the guys you race with, they're your rivals, yes, but not your enemies. Being bitter and maybe envious about someone beating you in a race doesn't feel good, does it? It's more fun to share each other successes and learn from each other mistakes. You can go grab a beer with your rivals or meditate on loving kindness or whatever, that would not make you faster but could make the competition more fun.

Second, why are you running at all? If that's a hobby, yes your main reason might be rubbing your ego by winning races or seeing improvement year-to-year. Yet you wouldn't probably be doing this if you didn't like to run would you? So why do less of what you like to do. And if you start running a lot less, you'd have to eat a lot less too, otherwise you'd be gaining weight. Doesn't that suck?

It was no worse than being beat by someone with significantly more talent that also trained hard and that’s the type of runner I had to compete against once I reached a certain level.

Why don't you stop trolling LRC, however...

Nope.

People focus waaaaayyy too much on mileage, not enough on intensity. It's those workouts where you're running on the brink of insanity that you make the most gains, not all the junk miles you run the rest of the week. I think workout weeks should be focused on hitting 1 or 2 workouts close to failure, not hitting arbitrary mileage numbers. You're body doesn't know how many miles you've run, just how hard you've pushed yourself.

That may work when you're younger, but once you get to a certain age that type of training is not sustainable if you want to keep running for years to come

When I was in junior high, high school, and beyond, the other people in the races I entered were unknown to me. I had no access to them outside of races. Ergo, I did not know how the runners finishing in front of me trained.

No one successful trains like this.