The Skinny on Strength Training

I’ve always been known as the skinny one.

From an early age, I’ve been blessed with more height than width.

People have remarked to me on numerous occasions that I must be so skinny because of all that running.

Little do they know, I’ve always been 6-foot-2 and 155 pounds, regardless of how many miles I log. It doesn’t matter if I run 100 miles in a week or take an entire month off after a marathon. My metabolism makes sure I stay right around the same weight no matter what I do.

Some people -- a lot of them women -- tell me they would kill to have a metabolism like that. It must be great to eat whatever you want and sit on the couch and never worry about getting fat, they say.

And to a point, I’m not complaining.

It’s been different this year though.

This year, I set a goal for myself to run a faster marathon than I ever have before. Fast enough to give myself a shot at qualifying for the Boston Marathon.

I’ve documented in two why this goal is going to have to wait for another year. But at least back in January, the goal was to get to Beantown.

That’s when the trouble started.

While it’s true my body has a hard time retaining fat and this is seen by a lot of people as a very good problem to have, I’ve discovered over the last few months that I seem to have an equally difficult time retaining muscle.

I decided when setting my New Year’s resolution that if I was going to drop the amount of time needed to BQ, I would have to alter the way I normally train for a marathon.

I’ve run six of these things now, and I felt like my usual training regimen is not going to cause a dramatic drop in my time at this point. In other words, the faster you become as a runner, the more difficult it is to go even faster. Once you are in top shape, at some point, your usual marathon program is going to reach diminishing returns.

So in order to reach my goal time, I decided I’d have to introduce something into my workouts that I’ve never tried before: strength training.

To be clear, I had no intentions of becoming a bodybuilder. I simply wanted to spark my body into reaching a new level of fitness.

So instead of 20 miles and into the shower, the goal was maybe 15 miles and then 50 push-ups and sit-ups.

I even went out and bought one of those cheesy strength conditioning kits that you see on late-night TV where you use rubber tubes to try and do various forms of resistance training.

Granted, I have not been able to keep up the workout schedule I had for myself due to illness, work and numerous other obstacles thrown my way, but I honestly was hoping for better results. I’m still 6’2” and 155 pounds. Not one pound of muscle to show for all of that extra training.

But that’s okay.

While it would be nice to look in the mirror and see some visual results for all the hard work, I resigned myself long ago to the fact that my body is very stubborn. It likes being a certain weight and it intends to stay there.

That doesn’t mean I’m about to stop the strength work however. While I may not look any stronger, I do have to say that I at least feel stronger, and I have noticed my work paying off on the tail end of some of my longer runs.

Do your arms start swinging side to side instead of up and down when you get tired? Strengthening your arms and chest will allow you to maintain proper posture late in the race, saving you precious seconds, or even minutes, over the course of a long run.

If you have trouble kicking it into a sprint at the end of a race, strengthening your abdomen will give your legs the extra power it needs to take off when you need to.

And while you may think your legs don’t need any strength work because they do the bulk of your workout when you hit the road, taking the time to add some muscle to the lower half of your body can help out when powering up a hill or through a patch of rough terrain.

I may end up being known as the skinny one for the rest of my life no matter how much strength work I do. But as long as it’s skinny and fast, that’s just fine with me.