guy with time constraints wrote:
Well that's why I added another 50% for ancillary work and called it 2 hr, 15 min. Does that work or no?
For most people, no. Training at that level requires a ton of recovery time. You may well have a job, but you're either phoning it in at your job some of the time, or you're not training and recovering optimally. Of course, some people do manage to balance both a demanding career and elite distance training -- but I'd say that's a relatively uncommon skill, much like running a sub-4 mile off less than 40 miles a week is possible but not common.
Personally, I ran sub-14 while working in a challenging academic research position. I couldn't manage to sustain more than 80mpw, and I'd say running consumed 70-80% of my energy and focus even though I spent more physical time in the lab "working" than I did running.
As for the OP's question, sub-14 didn't feel fundamentally different from being in other fitness states (e.g. I run ~16min as an old guy now). But there were occasional times, usually on long tempo runs, where I got a feeling of invincibility that I've never gotten at other fitness levels -- like I could keep going at 5:20 pace for pretty much as long as I wanted, and the only thing that would stop me was boredom. That was pretty cool.