Training secrets after a long plateau

It depends on what level you are at and where you are trying to get to.

It also depends on age, health, weight and injury status.

I do have advice but I've grown so cynical of this forum I no longer like helping people on here!

HOWEVER, if you are trained well you shouldn't have bad races, your times should be consistent.

From what you're saying, I'm guessing you think any gains from doing anything outside the basic schedule are so marginal for amateur runners they're not even worth mentioning?

Long plateaus suck.

when I know I'm in one. and it's been "long enough." I wait until I feel really good for a big event. "i go for it." risk blowing up.

Periodization for me

I think this question is too tough. Runners are constantly tinkering with things so it's hard to know what was the real cause of a breakthrough.

Training works in magical ways when you supplement it with superb recovery.

Be borderline obsessed about getting enough sleep (9+ hours; plus naps, especially if you’re running doubles) and tracking your food (run more, eat more). Focus on getting a lot of iron (w/ vitamin C) and calcium (w/ vitamin D). Consume protein 10-30min before bed. Cronometer is a good app I’ve used for nutrition tracking.
That’s more valuable than any "magical" workout. It goes farther than you’d expect!

Maybe it'd be easier to see if anyone has tried things and DIDN'T have a breakthrough while ...maybe we can see what doesn't work or is a waste of time

Do more endurance training hours per week.

If you're a fast twitch runner, do jog breaks on track days at least 50% of the time. It's too easy for us to rip fast reps with a standing break. Your body has to get used to flushing out lactate while you're running and one tempo session a week isn't enough. Jakob probably has the right idea of 4 thresholds a week but I haven't tried it myself

Base training -> quality aerobic training -> lactate threshold training -> VO2 intervals -> taper, race fast -> REPEAT

It seems like a lot of recreational runners dont really have a lot of periodization in their training. Like you said, people run the same 3 types of workouts week after week, and I do think your body gets a little bit stagnant. I think the solution to this is training in phases, or period. Each period has a goal, and it progresses you towards the next period. This is the classic lydiard pyramid paradigm, first lay down lots of basework before you sharpen that off with speed. If your training is getting a little bit stagnant, watch out, you could be overtraining and you could be close to a crash. This would be a good time to back off in volume and distance. take some time off, regroup, let your body really relax and "detrain". Then take a while to just run easy mileage before you build up to longer aerobic effort-based tempos and fartleks before you finally polish things off with 1-2 months of VO2 max type intervals. Taper, crush our goal race, and then take time off.

Runners these days just bounce from race to race, not following a season plan (macrocycle). Ya gotta pick the goal race, then progress up to it. the first 3rd of your cycle should be easy. The middle 3rd should be "normal", and the last 3rd should be more intense than you could maintain indefinitely.

Another idea is to look for some different training. I know a guy who trains 100mpw+ for the the marathon and he does the same thing every week, all year long. He just keeps throwing down these nasty marathon type long runs and long lactate threshold sessions. The dude has been doing this for years, and as you might expect, he hasnt progressed very much. I thin he would be better off doing a marathon cycle, but then doing something reall different like a 10k cycle. Take some time to work on different skills, run some faster intervals, get more comfortable at a faster pace, and then take those skills back to another marathon cycle. I guess the thing im trying to say is that VARIATION is the name of the game. Ya gotta keep throwing something slightly different at our body, so it continualy perceives your training as novel stimuli that it must super compensate for.

More of the same.

The best way to always improve is to to cut the year into 4 parts and train diffrent events.

Like XC in winter, then half/marathon then track then, 10k ....

Your 2 weekly workouts shall then work towards a goal in these races, hence you rotate and keep improving ...