i'm coming into this track season (high school senior - 17yrs old; PRs of 15:45 for 5k, 9:24 for 3200m, and 4:29 for 1600m last june) off of a bad hamstring injury that kept me out of running for 15 weeks. usually i train an average of 60mpw for base training, but this year all i could do was cross train. i cross trained for a total of 8 hours a week, 6 days a week, doing mainly biking and elliptical (heart rate was usually 145-155 during those exercises, which took up about 75% of those 8 hours). i also did some xc skiing (but i sucked and could only get my hr up to 120-130), swimming laps (about 130 hr - pool access was rare so i couldn't pool run), and some stair climbers (150 hr). lets just say for conveniance sake that i did 6-6:30 hours a week at 150 hr level. i've slowly built back up to about 30mpw now, still building at about 4 miles/week and also still doing about 2:30 hours of cross training a week.
so with that background, how far from my peak do u think i will be by mid-may (i'll hopefully be at about 55mpw by then)? can u really have a base that is 99% cross training? i have not done any time trials yet, but when i do easy/tempo runs, i've been about 20-30 seconds slower per mile than before the injury in november. has anyone else ever competed successfully(near their peak) throughout a season with only a cross training base of mainly biking/elliptical?