So I guess I've always been in the Clydesdale class of runners:
heavy. Even at 175-lbs., my lightest weight ever in the Army, I was a
heavyweight. Yet I ran a ~6-minute mile back then. And today, at
~230-lbs. with a herniated disc I can still run a ~7-minute mile!
Any weightlifters around here who like to run? Any runners around
here who like to lift? I don't mean lil' thirty-pound dumbbells,
either, and I don't mean lil' ten minute jogs on the treadmill.
Even back in college, it was pulling teeth trying to get my spotters
to run in Central Park after a good lift. Jogging with the Hunter
track team on one of their easy recovery runs, it took most of what I
had just to keep up with them -- at the tail end. Does the two have
to be so contradictory, so seemingly mutually exclusive?? I've always
imagined strength and endurance to be synonyms, and I still can't get
away from that notion.
I'm not training for anything, not looking to compete in anything. I
just want to express my genes and my will, to run and lift and be
strong and fast and last as long as possible, given those genes and
this will. But reading the running magazines and the muscle mags, it
would seem like people do only one or the other seriously. A summer
issue of "Runner's World" claimed some set of calisthenics that
negates the need for weight training -- ! Whereas the muscle
magazines routinely treat running as mere polish, an after-thought.
It'd be nice to see a presentation where the two are integrated, as
they seem to be for me. I wonder if anyone's done some kind of
triathlon which involves short sprinting, long-distance running, and
the traditional weightlifting movements??