@ossobuco,
Almost 30 miles is tiring. But these days, it's getting to be typical. So far this year, my months' totals have panned out as follows:
Jan 75.53
Feb 70.58
Mar 113.20
Apr 112.69
TOTAL 372.00, or just around 20.67/week for some 18 weeks.
For the first two months, I got in plenty of cardio, but it was more in the form of snow shoveling or gym time, then the #s went up by a good 50% when the storms calmed down and the snow started to clear out.
And this is why I was told to up my caloric intake. According to Spark, I was routinely going into starvation mode, not giving my body enough calories to do its thing, so it was hanging onto every calorie it was getting. Plus I tend to hold onto weight during the winter months anyway (hello Russian heritage), so I was really doing it to myself. My tracker was routinely yelling at me by Friday or Saturday morning that I had gone far over my caloric burn allotment and needed to increase my intake. I kept on ignoring that, until I finally, truly, got tired of not losing.
But right now I am not losing, either. It's a pain in the patoot.
Clothes are fitting okay but I tend to go more by measurements and they are slightly up. Measurements do fluctuate.
If there is any positive I am seeing -- and the jury is still out -- it is that I seem to be a tad firmer, particularly my calves. I am also better with some endurance. On the treadmill, I am up to 9 minutes running, 11 minutes walking, whereas I would just walk for 30 minutes over the winter. I am trying to work my way up with running, even if it's slow running (read: jogging). I'm not doing an official Couch to 5k program, but it's kinda similar, in that I'm just upping my running times and slowly decreasing my walking times. I am hoping to get it to 30 minutes of continuous jogging, and then will begin to concentrate on increasing belt speed (currently belt speed is 3.8, and I can walk fast or jog with that).
Thanks for asking, sorry this is complicated, but the whole dang thing is.
