ukathleticscoach, you're absolutely right that he has gone backwards and not shown anything like the progress to sub 13 that many of us thought we'd have seen by now.
A few guys asked about the injury prevention exercises and you mentioned how the treatment of the pros is better than ours--absolutely right. But back in the 1990s, when I was in the midst of a fifteen year hiatus due to knee tendonitis, I thought there was no treatment because nothing the trainers did for me in college helped at all and more importantly, Michael Jordan had to sit out practices and sometimes games with tendonitis. If they couldn't cure him, it couldn't be cured, I thought. But, as most of us non-medical doctors know now, many running injuries can be ameliorated by simply finding an exercise in which you feel the area that is hurting. You focus on that area, while doing some general exercises to avoid imbalances. That is the principle and it has worked for me on many injuries and tweaks over the past fifteen years. Most of these can be found in a search on this website.
Some examples:
1) Knee tendonitis: quad strengthening exercises with ankle weights (gradually building up and alternating legs with the other bent). For instance, you lie on your back with one foot drawn up (knee up) and bring the other knee back to your chest and forward to the floor x20/then other knee. Then with the same position, you lift one leg straight-legged above the height of the other knee and down, slowly, x20. On the left side, you bend one knee and lift the other up and down, switch legs, then switch to the right side. Sitting up, you push down with both legs into the ground and hold 3-5 seconds, x20. On your stomach, bend one leg and lift straight up and down, x20, alternate. Then the one exercise you can do with a weight machine (called a calf extension or something like that). You sit on a chair with your leg able to swing freely and you lift it up to horizontal and back down, x20 (the machine allows you to do this with more weight when you're ready). Also, you stand and pull your foot back to your rear, 40 seconds. Then do it while simultaneously trying to push your foot forward and hold 20-30 seconds. Then you also do body weight squats, gently push the patella up/down/left/right, and finally do "thrumming," once or twice a week for a minute or so where you push with your thumbs back and forth just above the bone below your knee. Those were given to me by a physical therapist and allowed me to get back to running and periodically done get me better after a few years.
2) eccentric calf drops (slow) for achilles problems. They always work where rest does not. Work up to 3 times a day of 3 sets of 10 per leg. Some exercise programs say that you can try eversion or pointing the point in different directions while doing them and others say add weights to hold while you do them.
3) shin splints: lifting foot up and down with the heel on a step, many times. like playing a bass drum or hi-hat pedal on a drum set. Icing and rest didn't work after I got shin splints from exercise #2 above, but these work great.
4) piriformis syndrome: arches with weight supported on shoulders and feet, especially effective in using just one foot on the afflicted side, plus single leg body weight squats on a high step where you can sweep your other leg back behind you like you're Eric Heiden speedskating--very effective. I had zero coordination in one leg and couldn't run at all for weeks until I started these--still missed my marathon that year but I was running normal by the time the marathon came and I have been able to overcome any of these issues since. You can also do some backwards jogging.
5) lower back out: lift foot up and over the edge of a bathtup and back up and over to the outside while standing facing it or away from it. Works great every time I get lower back problems. Always try other exercises that work the glutes.
6) calf injuries: Very deep body weight squats with your rear almost touching the ground. Use a wide stance with feet as wide apart or more as your shoulders. Do maybe ten of these or work up to those, but probably add some quad strengthening exercises as well. I had five years of numerous recurring calf injuries and couldn't figure out anything to help them much except easy running until I tried these. I've felt the calf several times since then but the exercises have so far always solved the problem. Yesterday, I added about twenty lunges to help strengthen the quads and hamstrings to further solve this problem.
7) hip problems: step-ups where you stand on a middle step and step up one or two steps and down one, x20. For groin issues, add an inside swing when you do the up part (that is, step up, swing leg to the center, and then continue). These are done every few days and are always very effective.
No doubt these pros get many of these and more and do a lot more weights than I usually have accessible (that is, none for about eight or nine months a year) and I am middle-aged and still miss quite a few workouts because I'm trying to avoid injuries (today for instance, I ran 14.5 at about 7:20 avg with a slow start but didn't run the intervals planned because my calf was dicey the past few days--I did the exercises and the calf felt fine today.
Nevertheless, these exercises (and there are more) for me have solved a lot of very common problems that runners face and which used to keep me from running for more than a couple weeks at a time when I was in hs and college.