My first half Marathon and I don't want to lose muscle....

branflakes1980 wrote: »

I'm a lifter, through and through... I have been talked into doing a half marathon in October, in memory of my father in law that we just lost January 6 of this year to pancreatic cancer. I have to do this, and I want to do this, for him and for me. I am NOT a runner, hence the opening sentence of this post. The furthest I have run is a 5k so training is going to be in order.. That said, I have pulled up some sample training schedules for half marathons and holy hell I am going to be running... ALOT. Any tips from anyone as to how I can do this without losing a significant amount of muscle in the process? Anyone have any training schedules that include lifting in with the half mararthon training? I haven't been able to find anything. Obviously, I am not going to be able to keep up my current lifting schedule and run that much without completely killing myself physically and mentally. Any advice is welcome, thank you all in advance. HAPPY FRIDAY!

The members of my training group (4 guys, 5 women) all do some amount of strength training while building endurance for marathon and/or triathlon events. As an example, 2 women in our group (both in their early 50's) are currently in the build phase for a full marathon in late April. Both of them are doing 2 strength days in the gym and a pilates or yoga day weekly. This is while carrying a run volume of roughly 45 miles per week. They will typically drop back to one strength day during their highest volume run weeks in March. You will be doing far less mileage during your run training, so I don't think you need to worry too much.

With that as a reference point, I think you've received some good suggestions above regarding a mix of lifting twice (or maybe 3 times) a week and running 4 times per week. That should be very doable at the half marathon distance. I also echo the suggestions from others that you will need to consume adequate fuel during this training block, since running burns a lot of calories. Finally, as someone who is new to this distance, the more training miles you are able to get in, the less uncomfortable the half will be on race day. Best of luck.