Laurie's question

Laurie posted this yesterday:
"Hey I know I'm not your client, but wondering if you could help me out a little bit. I'm trying to figure out how to lift and work on my running. I just can't figure out what I should be doing on what day of the week. My main goal is to run a 10K but I don't want to lose any of my muscle that I've built up. I workout on MWFSS (and I like my long run on either S or S) and only have an hour but I'm at a loss trying to figure out what days to do legs. Any help would be HUGELY appreciated. "

Laurie,

I'm happy to help you move towards your goal and I'm glad you asked the question.

Given your schedule and time constraints, as well as your goals, here's how I think I'd structure the week:

Monday: weights + speed interval running
Wednesday: weights (legs) + running
Friday: weights + elliptical (non-running cardio)
Saturday: long run
Sunday: weights

A few notes:

Speed interval running means that after warming up you choose an interval (maybe 30 seconds) and you go as close to all out as you can. Then you recover for a minute, then repeat.

Doing leg weights and then running will help with your endurance, but you'll probably go slower on this day.

You know I don't do bodypart training so any day that says weights is going to include lots of full body and compound lifts. If this was my training schedule, I'd do it like this:

Monday: pushing muscles + speed interval running
Wednesday: lower body blast + running (steady state)
Friday: pulling muscles + elliptical
Saturday: long run
Sunday: whole body weights

Laurie, I hope this helps. As always, there are lots of opinions out there, and if you asked someone else, you'd get a different (possibly better!) answer. If anyone else wants to comment, please do so -- the more brains, the merrier! And do let us know how it goes, ok?