Hybrid Training
Getting back to running
I ran cross country in middle school and in the last 3 years of high school. It was a lot of fun, but the vast majority of the fun that came from it was because of the people on the team. Everyone rooted for each other throughout the whole summer and fall, and waking up early and spending half your Saturday at a random cross country course in northeast Ohio left me with some great memories.
I mostly joined cross country because I was never that great at sports in general but was pretty skinny throughout my entire childhood, so I was told cross country might be something I'd be good at. It turns out that I wasn't very good, but I still really enjoyed running and I'm glad to have had such a positive first experience with running.
My high school PR for the 5k was 19:30, which isn't terrible for a teenager with several years of running experience, but it was frustrating that I set that PR my junior year and was never able to break it my senior year. Whether this is because I didn't take training as seriously or because my diet was Reese's Puffs, chocolate milk, and pizza is its own conversation
Weightlifting
Running cross country and being (at least) 10 pounds underweight for all of high school made me interested in gaining weight, and I found out through one way or another that lifting weights is pretty common for people who want to gain weight. So my junior and senior year of high school, I decided to start going to the gym. I ended up really liking the habit of going to the gym, and while I made lots of mistakes with my training for the first several years, I was encouraged to learn more about weightlifting. I continued to lift through college and still want to improve my numbers in the main powerlifting movements, which include the bench press, squat, and deadlift, even though I don't plan to ever compete or anything.
I think that a huge piece of myself these last few years was turned off from running because I had done it so much throughout high school, and because my training was never individually structured for me and often included very steep ramp ups of mileage. But a large piece was that I associated running in my own life with being weak and skinny. I think I had an irrational fear that returning to running would begin to diminish my results in the gym, if not actually reverse progress I had made gaining weight & strength. Spend any time learning about the gym or powerlifting online and you'll find countless examples of lifters falsely stating that cardio "kills your gains".
Returning to running
I've been more active playing Basketball, Tennis, or other sports with my friends this year, and it made me realize that I'm not in as good of cardiovascular shape as I used to be. I also noticed myself getting increasingly more tired after taking just 2 flights of stairs to get to my desk at work, which did not make me feel great. My girlfriend and I both decided to start running again at the same time just to get in a bit better shape. I grabbed my old running shoes and hit the road.
I ran 2 or 3 miles at most somewhere between 1 and 3 times a week for a few weeks. Shortly after establishing a somewhat normal routine of running, some of my friends decided to run a 5k in Columbus, so I signed up as well. I finished with a time of 23:15, which is way better than I expected from myself, but also way slower than I averaged in high school.
Since that race, I've decided that I want to hit a sub-20 5k time once again. If I could eventually beat my 19:30 PR, that would be even better. But I've made a commitment to training to get my 5k time down while continuing to try and improve my lifts.
Right now, I'm following a "powerbuilding" program 4x a week, and running 4x a week through an app called Runna that syncs to my Garmin watch to tell me how fast / slow to run during different workouts. Eight workouts a week has been tough to manage from a time perspective, but also from a recovery perspective. Managing my fatigue has been more challenging, and I've been trying to make a better effort of getting enough sleep, which has a ridiculously strong impact on my workouts.
This combination of training for strength and endurance running is referred to in some spaces online as "hybrid training" or training to be a "hybrid athlete". My favorite example I've found is a guy on Youtube named Fergus Crawley, who has a video where he deadlifts 500 pounds and runs a 5k within 20 minutes. I don't think I'll ever be someone who can squat 3 times their bodyweight or run a 3 hour marathon, but having this balanced approach to training which seems to be good for general well-being and longevity seems really interesting. Like I mentioned before, I kind of just smashed a lifting program and a running program togehter and am hoping for the best.... there don't seem to be a ton of great resources on structured programs for people who want to get stronger and faster at the same time.
For the time being, I'm training for another 5k on Thanksgiving. My hope is to get under 21 minutes! It's been really nice to have a date to look forward on the calendar. As much as I love lifting weights, there's not really any pressure for me to ever strive to lift some weight by a certain day since there's never a "deadline". I guess that's what powerlifting meets are for, but I'm not sure that's my jam.