I've read through most of the stickies and most of it appears to be focused mostly on looking good and bodybuilding and very little for improving athletic performance, so i was just wondering if there was anyone in here with that type of specific experience.

A bit about myself:

Age:43 (so masters/veteran category?)
H:182cm
W:93kg

yeah so I'm on the wrong end of the BMI scale... My current workout regime involves:

Swimming: Mon, Wed, Fri (currently about 50mins swimming about 1700m)
Weights: Tue, Thu, Sunday (mornings)
Running: Tue, Thu, Saturday (Doing a couch to 5k programme and running 28mins without stopping atm, mostly evening except saturday)-also committed to a 10k run in 2 months)

My main objectives right now are increasing my endurance base and developing a stronger core/muscles that will help with running and swimming. I've been doing this for about 2.5 months now and trying to improve the type of training i do in the gym because mostly i was just doing random exercises without a real aim/purpose. Then about 3 weeks ago someone at the gym asked me to try doing some compound exercises and thats when I stumbled onto the starting strength stuff as in the stickies above.

I think, I should be past the adaptation stage of learning proper form for the noob strength exercises, (A: squats, Bench Press, Deadlift; B: squats, overhead press, rows - all 3x5 except for deadlift 1x5).

So the questions are:

1. Am i trying to do too much? Should i cut down on gym days?
2. How heavy should i be lifting?
3. Should i get a personal trainer if i don't have a training partner, if yes, then what type of trainer? (the stickies are great but they're not very helpful in assessing my form and i really want to avoid getting any serious injuries)

Thanks for the feedback!

Haha, quite reluctant to give up on the swimming as it is pretty awesome burning about 700 kcal per session and helping to build endurance on the running V02max etc. Also, I'm getting quite a bit of novice gains atm and I'm feeling strong enough to try to progress towards doing participating in triathlons in the future. I definitely enjoy the swimming more than the lifting lol.

In terms of adding extra days for weights.. don't you need proper recovery time for growth? In terms of heavyness, still noob and learning proper form so squats are at 70lbs, bench is 50lbs, deadlifts are at 70lbs so i think i still have a long way to go before i reach my current potential. I was reading some random online article that what i should be aiming for is 80% of my max 1 rep weight, but that figure seems difficult to assess..

Thanks. Googled stronglifts and found myself another rabbit hole to get lost in. Spreadsheet is easy for tracking too.