[Chief Rum]

My guess is that there are professional trainers/runners on board, Neuqua, who can give you specific advice better than I, but I'll offer what I can.

My main exercise is cardio, mostly on treadmills in the gym, but some running outside. I average about 10 miles per workout/run. I recently did a rough guess on the total mileage I have run in the past year and came up with somewhere between 1500-2000 miles.

Now, I have been doing cardio as my main workout for years, and my endurance is pretty good. But I remember when it wasn't all that great. It took some time to build up.

Now, given what you have put out, that a jog of about a mile (1.6 km) got you pooped, I have to tell you that's not a lot of endurance (I know, revelation, huh?). It takes time to build up endurance. I'm not sure if you can properly train yourself to get to the level of endurance you will need for an 8K in two months.

Now, if you set the 8K as a goal and accept you're probably not going to jog it all, but walk some, I still think it's a good idea. It will give you something to work for, a goal to use to motivate yourself to build your endurance.

As for strength training at the same time, it's certainly a good idea but keep in mind, a higher weight works against your endurance. You're going to want to maintain. You will burn a lot of calories if you start running a lot, more than you do strength training, but if you stop the strength training altogether, especially with your body type, my guess is you're going to get pretty "stringy". So definitely keep the strength training up, and up your calorie intake as well, working to maintain your current weight (which sounds like your ideal weight, from your description of your weight loss-gain efforts). Protein shakes might be the way to go with adding calories without significantly adjusting your diet.

Anyway, that's how I would approach it.

I have been giving thoughts myself to running a marathon, but I haven't trained up for that length of race yet.