Marathon training keeps eating the gym. The order of the week is usually why.

If marathon prep keeps eating your gym days, or the gym keeps leaving your key runs flat, the instinct is to decide one of them has to go. Most of the time that is the wrong fight. The real fight is two heavy sessions landing on the same legs inside the same forty-eight hours.

A hard run and a heavy lower-body lift pull from the same recovery. Put them back to back and the second one is always the compromised one. That is usually a badly ordered week, not a too-full one. The total load might be fine. The sequence is what is costing you.

So I sequence the week deliberately. The long run and the key workout get protected first. Heavy lower-body work does not go the day before either one, and it does not sit the day after the long run while you are still paying that back. Upper body and lighter lifting can float into the gaps. You are not cutting the gym. You are giving it the days that do not cost you the race.

The test for whether you got it right is simple. Your key run should not show up on dead legs. If your Thursday workout is flat week after week and you lifted heavy on Wednesday, that is a calendar problem, not a fitness one. You fix the order, not the training.

Most weeks that feel like lifting and mileage cannot coexist are mis-sequenced, not overtrained. Get the order right and you usually keep both, without the war.