Running is lifting, just not enough

“Let’s cut the BS, I’m not going to the gym. So what would you have me do?” I attempted to be honest in opening a conversation with my friend Scott who specializes in strength training.

We were coworkers and friends, and he’d been nagging me to get more serious. It was 2013 and I’d come to a few of his group training sessions but hadn’t committed to a plan. I’d enjoyed them sure, but sort of saw it as an aside.

I’d attended each class with a runner’s arrogance. I’d enjoyed some squats, pushups, and overhead presses, but chuckled during skipping and agility drills. Cause, after all, I was a runner. I aimed to excel in a single direction. What my ego overlooked was that the root of my ongoing running frustration lay in the weighted movements I was mocking.

He suggested that just running wasn’t enough. That to be an “athlete” required strength in multiple “planes.”

“What does he know?” I arrogantly doubted. Questioning whether he truly understood what high-performance running required. After all, I’d never heard of the runners I most admired doing much weight training. And yet his questions pulled at my injury-prone insecurity.

I knew I wasn’t durable. A frustrated runner, often sore and stretching, pushing and pulling at my muscles helplessly, there was much I didn’t know about my…