ok some basic background
hs: first 3 years maybe 25 mpw. senior year averaged probably 45mpw. ran 947 3200m not great not bad.
college: ran about 55-60mpw my frosh year, 2740 8k xc, 1550 5k, 907 3k. got in a BAD car wreck the summer between frosh and soph year and spent a few months in pt/rehab. ran pretty sparingly my soph year, pretty much no racing, and i was hurt all the time. i don't think i had a healthy stretch longer than 6 weeks during that entire year. i got frustrated and quit and ran maybe 20 times tops from february 2004 through july 2006. i never really got all that unfit. i rode my bike pretty much everywhere on campus and lifted weights about 4 times a week. i think i gained maybe 5 pounds max. my senior year of college i partied pretty hard as well, probably 3-4 times per week but just one year.
then i just started running again. july and august of 2006 i didn't keep a log so i'm not real sure how much i was running, though i would guess it to be somewhere around 30mpw. no workouts, just running how i felt on the given day. september , october, and november of 2006 was a steady progression from about 40mpw up to 60mpw. i did 1 workout a week starting in october, usually a tempo or intervals at threshold. almost every single other run i would start at 7min/mile pace and get faster. i tried to run my last mile at 6min pace or faster on every single run. i think the progression runs are really what helped more than anything else. in early october i ran 1649 in road 5k off of just base miles, no workouts. then in late november i got a stress fracture and didn't run until mid january 2007. i ran maybe 4 weeks before taking another month off because i thought i had re-fractured my foot. i started training consistently again in late march and progressed from 35mpw to about 65mpw now. i did maybe 5 workouts from march to september before doing 2 per week. in august i pr'd in the mile (at altitude) off of base mileage. 2 weeks later i ran 1630 road 5k (at altitude). 2 weeks after that i ran 2749 8k xc on a difficult course (at altitude). so i really wasn't doing anything special, just putting in some quality miles (for me 630ish pace) but not a ton by any means. i am fairly confident if i went to sea level in a month i could beat all my pr's.