Lifting Heavy Things
51:00 – 5 miles
Had lunch with a friend last week that I haven’t seen in 4 months. First thing he says to me: You’re arms are looking thick!
Well thank you.
His next comment was the interesting one … he asked if I was no longer focusing on running. Well that’s a weird comment. However, his reasoning made sense: if you have more muscle and weight in your upper body, that’s more to carry when you run. Yes, muscle can add some weight, but it can also allow you to hold your body up longer.
Now, if we’re talking about sprinting or distances under a mile, I can see the reason for keeping yourself light. For long distance and endurance runs, you need to have core strength. Old school runners will say they would rather have that time to log more miles. I know that because I have followed the same school of thought for the past 3 years.
Today I created a basic circuit of 5 exercises: bicep curl, tricep lift, situps, dumbell press, & sidebends. Just go from one to the next 5 times. Keeps the heart rate up which maximizes the burn and efficiently works the muscle. I don’t plan ahead what exercises I’m going to include in these circuits. My reason behind that is I don’t want to give my brain time to come up with excuses. Yes I play mind games on myself.
So the point is, it’s important to get plenty of miles in for long distance races, but to also make sure your upper body can hold itself up while the legs are going.
