help setting a reasonable goal

L

letsmotor

0
Hi everyone. I'm a 22 year old male and I've been lifting since June. I've managed to go from 138 to 146, just about all muscle (unfortunately, I really wasn't eating enough until about a month ago, so I could've put on more, but that's besides the point). Now, I plan on running a half marathon on March 20th, which means I'll start training early in December. I'm aware that while I'm training and running about 20 miles a week, I won't be able to keep gaining mass, so I plan on treating this as a period where I can burn fat and simply maintain muscle. What I'm asking for your help with is setting a goal for what weight I want to reach before I start training. In your opinion, how much weight can I expect to gain before December?

Thanks for your responses!
 
It all depends on what kind of weight you want to put on. There are several resistance training adaptions that can put on weight. If you are just focusing on mass/form and not relative strength gains then you could probably put on 10 or so more pounds. But why do you want to put on more weight if you are going to be training for a half marathon? To perform your best you don't want to big and bulky. You should start to train on max strength and strength endurance instead of hypertrophy. Putting on the muscle you want is just going to hinder your running performance. Besides when you start to run you are more than likely going to lean out and lose all the work you put into gaining that mass/muscle. So in my opinion it is just a waste of time to gain all that muscle just to lose it all again.
 
Thanks for the response, Shifty. If I gained 10 pounds I'd be at 156, so I wouldn't really be worried about being "big and bulky."

And would I definitely start losing muscle as I started to train? I would still be lifting three days a week--wouldn't that allow me to maintain what I've gained?
 
No, you won't defintiely lose muscle as you train for the marathon. If you keep lifting appropriately 3 days a weeks as you've just proposed, you will maintain the muscle mass assuming you're getting enough protein and lifting heavy enough.
 
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