So... To the premise mobile! --- Junior year of high school I had a break out season, went from running 2:10's and a 2:08 to a 1:56. Super excited, stoked for the senior season ,the whole shabang. I've never really been great at XC, when I ran a 1:56, I was injured with IT band issues. The guys I trained with on my team were both 400 runners and a 300m hurdler (50.0/49.9) speed guys. We would do 600 repeats and 400s in the off season and obviously that worked well for me. Then senior season rolls around and I don't PR. Actually, I place lower than I did the year before and get 7th in state although in my mind, I trained a lot harder than I did the year before. I ran 16:40 in the 5k during senior year, did workouts like crazy (good ones, we had a new coach) and I lifted a lot of upper body but didn't really get any more muscular.... Now I'm in college, it's the indoor season and we're putting in 50-70 mile weeks for the mid-distance guys and not really doing any speed at all. Anyways, I am still running slower times than I was at the same time two years ago when I wasn't really doing anything. Part of me just wants to do speed work and quit all this distance, because that worked wonders.
TLDR --> Ran good junior year in high school, haven't gotten better. WTF