How I Trained for My First Half Marathon While Still Lifting

The Race I Wasn't Sure I Could Finish

I signed up for my first half marathon on a bit of a whim. A mate was doing it, I'd been running consistently for about four months, and I thought "how hard can it be."

The answer, it turns out, is quite hard. Especially when you're also trying to maintain your strength training and you have no idea how to periodise for a race while keeping your gym numbers up.

I finished it. I finished the second one too, a few months later, with a much better time and a much better understanding of what I was doing. This is what I learned.

The Challenge of Training for a Half Marathon While Lifting

The fundamental challenge of training for a half marathon while maintaining strength training is managing total training load. Half marathon training typically involves 4-5 running sessions per week, with a long run that builds to 18-20km in the weeks before the race. That's a significant volume of endurance work on top of whatever strength training you're doing.

The interference effect — the phenomenon where endurance training blunts strength adaptations — becomes more relevant at higher running volumes. The research suggests that the interference effect is most pronounced when endurance training volume is high and sessions are performed in close temporal proximity to strength training.

Hickson (1980) — The original interference effect study used very high concurrent training volumes. The strength decrements observed were significant, but the volumes used (6 days per week of both strength and endurance training) were extreme.

Wilson et al. (2012) — The meta-analysis found that the interference effect was significantly smaller at lower endurance training volumes and when sessions were separated by at least 6 hours.

Murach & Bagley (2016) — Noted that the interference effect is most problematic when endurance training volume is high enough to compromise recovery from strength training. At moderate volumes, concurrent training is well-tolerated.

The practical implication for half marathon training: you will need to reduce your strength training volume during the peak running weeks, and you'll need to be strategic about which strength sessions you keep and which you drop.

The Programming Approach That Worked

Here's the broad structure I used for my second half marathon, which went significantly better than the first:

Months 1-2: Base building

• 3 strength sessions per week (full body, compound movements, normal volume)
• 3-4 runs per week (mostly Zone 2, one slightly harder session)
• Weekly long run building from 8km to 14km
• No significant changes to strength training

Month 3: Volume increase

• 2-3 strength sessions per week (reduced volume, maintained intensity)
• 4-5 runs per week (2 Zone 2, 1 tempo, 1 interval, 1 long run)
• Weekly long run building from 14km to 18km
• Dropped one strength session to accommodate running volume

Weeks before race: Taper

• 2 strength sessions per week (reduced volume and intensity)
• Running volume reduced by 30-40% (taper week)
• Focus on maintaining fitness rather than building it
• Prioritise sleep and nutrition

Race week:

• 1 light strength session (Monday)
• 2-3 short easy runs (Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday)
• Race Sunday

The key decisions: dropping from 3 to 2 strength sessions during peak running weeks, maintaining strength training intensity while reducing volume, and treating the taper as a genuine rest period rather than an opportunity to catch up on missed training.

What to Eat for Half Marathon Training While Lifting

Nutrition for concurrent training is more complex than for either modality alone. You're burning more calories than a pure strength athlete and you need more carbohydrates than a pure strength athlete, but you also need adequate protein to maintain muscle mass.

Protein: 1.6-2.2g per kg of bodyweight per day (Morton et al., 2018). Non-negotiable. Running doesn't reduce your protein requirements — if anything, it increases them because of the additional muscle damage from running.

Carbohydrates: More important than most gym-focused athletes realise. Carbohydrates are the primary fuel for running at race pace and for high-intensity strength training. During peak training weeks, you need to eat enough carbohydrates to fuel both modalities. Undereating carbohydrates during heavy training weeks is one of the most common mistakes hybrid athletes make.

Fuelling during long runs: Once your long runs exceed 75-90 minutes, you need to fuel during the run. Gels, chews, or real food every 30-45 minutes from the 45-minute mark. Practice this in training — don't try anything new on race day.

Race week nutrition: Increase carbohydrate intake in the 2-3 days before the race (carbohydrate loading). This doesn't mean eating until you're uncomfortable — it means ensuring your glycogen stores are fully topped up. Pasta, rice, potatoes, oats. Nothing exotic.

The Mental Side of Race Training

Training for a race while maintaining strength training is mentally demanding in a specific way. You're managing two sets of goals, two sets of metrics, and two sets of potential frustrations.

There will be weeks when your running is going well and your lifting feels terrible. There will be weeks when you're lifting well and your running feels heavy. This is normal. The body is managing a significant training load and it doesn't always distribute adaptation evenly.

The key mental principle: trust the process and don't panic. A bad training run three weeks before a race doesn't mean you're not ready. A missed strength session during peak running weeks doesn't mean you're going to lose all your muscle. The trend over months is what matters.

The Bottom Line

Training for a half marathon while maintaining strength training is absolutely doable. It requires reducing strength training volume during peak running weeks, managing session sequencing carefully, eating enough (especially carbohydrates), and being patient with the process.

The result is worth it. Crossing the finish line of a half marathon when you've also been consistently lifting is a different kind of achievement than either a pure running goal or a pure strength goal. It's proof that you can do both.

Sign up for the race. Build the plan. Show up.

References: Hickson (1980) Eur J Appl Physiol; Wilson et al. (2012) J Strength Cond Res; Murach & Bagley (2016) Sports Med; Morton et al. (2018) Br J Sports Med