Running and weight lifting-a balancing act

bex1086

I have a half marathon coming up in 5 weeks so my training has really picked up. I did an 18km run yesterday and despite my plans to go do some weights today my legs are just not in the mood to carry me there.

I only really started running last year so I'm still pretty new to the game, I'm planning to continue but I want to continue the gym too, will my legs get used to long distances so that I will have more success weight training after a long run?

After the half my running will tail off a bit, distances will decrease a bit and I'll probably drop a day but keep enough to maintain current fitness levels until closer to my next half in April. Gives me a bit more time to focus on the gym too.

nossmf

This far out I imagine your training plan has you running almost, if not every, day of the week. Personally, I would put a halt to all weight training when you're this close to race day. If you do insist on hitting the iron, do it after the run, and keep the weights/reps very light, a fraction of what you can do the rest of the year. Your focus at this point in the weight room should be maintaining full range of motion and practicing technique, NOT trying to increase the weight used or set a new PR.

After the race, you can increase the weights used again.

AnnPT77

I'm not a runner who weight trains, but I do a short-endurance cardiovascular (CV) sport that also relies on muscular strength, rowing (on water and machine). Athletes who want to excel at rowing need to weight train, but they also do pretty major CV volume. Just as you're finding, that all needs to balance out for proper recovery. It's not realistic to maximize both dimensions at once.

A common strategy among high performers in rowing is just what Nossmf said: Treat the strength exercise as just one component in their overall periodized training plan. (It sounds like you have some type of periodized plan for running development in preparation for your particular race schedule, so I'm assuming you know that concept.)

During the times of year when those rowers have very long or very intense CV load, lifting very much takes a back seat, maybe even dropping off to nothing at all at times. During racing off season, strength training picks up again, peak strength training often coinciding with the phase that focuses on cardiovascular base, i.e., pretty high volume but relatively lower intensity so relatively less recovery demand.

That's a simplification of the picture, and I'm not saying your training would be phased in exactly that way. Rowing and running aren't the same in physical demands, and I think they relate in different ways to strength training, among other things.

Still, I think the same principle would likely apply: Heavy CV training phase means light or even no strength training; less demanding CV training phase lets strength training intensity pick up again.

(P.S. Truth in advertising: I don't personally train hard enough to excel at rowing myself, don't even compete anymore. If I strength train - which I don't enjoy so I don't do enough - I do it during indoor rowing season, during the period when I drop volume of even machine rowing. Same concept, much more lackadaisical execution. )