Strength strategy for middle age competitive runner?

wolfgate

Racing is my hobby. As such maximizing running performance is my primary goal. I am rebuilding after having surgery a while back for a non-running injury. During that time I put on weight, which I'm now working to lose. My intuition is that as I'm slowly losing the weight, I'm losing more muscle than I would like and less fat. Reading in here, while I've always done some strength training as cross training, I'm realizing I don't know much at all of what ST is really all about. So I would appreciate help in developing a weight lifting strategy that fits the following:

- I'm 50 years old, dealing with all the issues of that the age (lowering testosterone, longer recovery times, etc)
- Previously I raced best at about 155 pounds. I'm 6' tall, currently 166. I often place or win my age group in local 5k/10k races.
- I'm running about 270 minutes per week now. Volume won't change through December as I'm increasing intensity not miles.
- Current strenght training consists of core work, and with weights bench press, lat pulldowns, Hammer row machine, squats - all low weights and higher repetitions.

So the goal is to, without reducing running volume and intenstity, develop a weight lifting strategy.that will let this 50 year old maximize fat loss and maintain muscle. What kind of volume, weights, exercises shoudl I do?

wolfgate

Bump - because I'm sure all you lifting experts were in the gym banging out deep squats and deadlifts when I posted.