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March has been slow thus far. This has been one the busiest weeks I can remember.
My annual totals thus far: Total mileage for January: 50.72 miles over the course of 14 activities Total mileage for February: 58.75 miles walking, 3.2 miles stationary cycling over the course of 14 activities
March 1: I dragged my daughter out of the house and together we walked 3.4 miles.
That's it.
March 2-3: no walks due to craziness at work and various sporting/after school events for the kids.
Hoping I can get out and walk tonight, and definitely plan on walking 8.5 miles tomorrow. If I'm feeling good, I may go for nine miles, but I'll play that by ear.
Thanks for posting your exercise journal. I've been reading through it and it has been one of the things that I use to help motivate myself to start on a regular exercise program of my own. Keep those posts coming!
Ugh. Typed in my post - TWICE! - and City-Data ate it both times! =(
Thanks for the kind words, Colorado Rambler!
March 4: 4.00 mile walk with my daughter. A lovely night and I'm glad the days are getting longer again.
March 5: 9.01 miles! It was a beautiful day for a 3-hour walk, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I opted for a different route than I normally take for my longer walks - this route had more hills and it was on a walking trail so it was nice to pass dozens of people out enjoying the early morning sunshine just like me.
March 6: no walk - my feet hurt from the day before!
The good news is the weather is supposed to be LOVELY this week, so I should be able to get some good walks in.
I'm here! I'm here! Ugh - it has been a long time since my last post. Sorry, for anyone that's following.
March 7-10: no walks - I planned to, but it didn't happen (I had a mild stomach virus at least a couple of those days).
March 11: 2.25 miles - it was a short one since my daughter went with me and was in no mood. *lol*
March 12: 4.52 miles - I did this one on my own.
March 13: no walk
March 14: 3.75 miles - again, was able to talk my daughter into going with me, AND talked her into going almost 4 miles. We had some great conversation.
March 15: 4.02 miles - once again, with my daughter. It was around this time that all I'd have to do is say, "Hey, DD, it's time to put on our shoes," and she wouldn't even protest.
March 16: 5.52 miles - by myself this time. I let her off the hook since I walked to my son's nearby sporting event and she didn't feel like going. So I walked there, spent 30 minutes watching him, and then trekked back home.
And it was at that point I got sicker than I have been in a long, long time. I was sicker than I had been a week or so ago. I was down for the count starting Thursday night and it wasn't until last night (Sunday) that I started to feel human again. It was awful, but I'm hoping tonight to get back to it.
Got out for a walk last night and it felt good. The weather was gorgeous. I did more jogging, this time only going about half a mile in distance, but it was still something.
March 22: 3.61 miles
As much as I say I don't want to become a runner, I may download a C25K app to my phone and do one of the advanced intervals that mix walking and jogging, and see how easy it is now that I've been walking an average of 17 miles a week.
I say that because at some point, if I continue just walking but increase my distance, it means that a 12 mile walk is going to take me 4 hours (since I average 3.0-3.2 mph when I walk). Even jogging that half mile last night increased my overall speed to 3.4 mph for last night's walk. So if I jog for 1.5 miles out of 3, then it will dramatically reduce my overall time, and I can get a 12 mile walk done in much less time.
Definitely something to think about going forward. For now I'll just do the practice C25K for tonight's walk/jog, and then assess from there if I want to begin adding more intervals to work on shortening my overall time before building my distance more than the 9 miles I did a few weeks ago.
Anyone want to chime in on whether or not that is the best route to take going forward?
Okay, so I just downloaded the C25K plan, and it looks like based on what I can do already, I can skip weeks 1-4 and just go straight into Week 5 and have it be manageable. So tonight I'll do Week 5 day 1 and see how it feels. If it's too easy, I may skip to W6D1 the next time I go out.
So I did W5D2 last night. W5D1 seemed too easy when I saw the intervals that were listed. But here's what I've discovered - I need MUCH MORE than 5 minutes to warm up and be ready for a jog. W5D2 is two miles long and includes a brisk 5-minute walk, jog for 8 minutes, walk five minutes, and then another jog for 8 minutes before a brief cooldown walk.
I did my warmup walk to the front of my neighborhood, then started the app. After the five minute brisk walk I began jogging, and within a minute I knew I hadn't walked enough to be truly warmed up. I powered through, and once the jogging was over, I opted to pause the app. My shins and knees were killing me, and I didn't even jog that fast because I definitely did not cover 3/4 mile in 8 minutes.
And so I walked for another 10 minutes or so, and then re-started the app with the middle walking section. Then I began the jog, and my shins and knees felt much better - to the point where on the way back home I was able to do two 8-minute long jogs instead of just the one that remained on W5D1.
March 23: 3.36 miles wallking/jogging
And while my average page was only 17:19 minutes per mile (see, I told you I jogged slowly), I did manage to take 2:20 minutes off my pace from the last time I went that distance. That's something, right? Better than nothing? My max speed during the walk last night was 5.4 mph versus a max speed of 4.6 mph the last time I went that distance.
I'm going to go for a walk tonight, but it'll be for distance versus speed. I'll try and go 4-5 miles, daylight permitting. Then the same tomorrow. For Saturday I'm debating whether I want to go for distance (10 miles) or speed (more intervals up to 4 miles). I guess I'll wait and see how I feel after tonight and tomorrow.
March 24: No walk because I got home from work late and then took my son straight to his sporting event.
March 25: only 3.43 miles, but I did more intervals on this one. Got up to 6.0 mph as my max speed at one point.
March 26: 4.55 miles - this was meant to be my long walk day, but I had a friend volunteer to go with me, and once we got to the walking trails on the other side of town that she recommended, she admitted she could only stay for 90 minutes or so. And since she drove us there, I had no choice but to agree to the lesser time. It was a nice trail though - I may go back there again in the future.
March 27: 4.15 miles - my daughter was with me for part of this one, but then turned for home about halfway through while I kept going.
Weather permitting, I will be doing some much needed yardwork tonight, so I don't know if I'll be able to go for a walk, but tomorrow it is supposed to be lovely, so I will definitely go out tomorrow. Especially since I'm on track to surpass February's total mileage with my next walk!
March 28: yardwork was enough of a workout for me - no walk!
March 29: to make up for it, I went 6.37 miles last night. My pace was slow because I kept having to dodge the invasion of cankerworms that has hit our area. Last night they were ALL hanging out (literally) and I'm sure I looked like an idiot as I continually came to dead stops, or ducked, or jumped because a sudden dangling cankerworm tried to get in my face, or I'd walk through their silks. It was awful.
But the good news is that with last night's walk, I officially surpassed my monthly total for February!
March 30: 3.50 miles - I kept it short because the canker worms, if it's even possible, were even worse than the night before. I was literally having to stop in my tracks, wait for oncoming traffic to have a break, and get out in the street and sprint past the hundreds of dangling worms before getting back on the sidewalk as new traffic approached. I've decided that all future workouts for the next 2-3 weeks will be done at the gym.
I didn't go to the gym last night as my son had a sporting event.
My annual totals thus far: Total mileage for January: 50.72 miles over the course of 14 activities (average walk ~3.6 miles) Total mileage for February: 58.75 miles over the course of 13 activities (average walk ~4.5 miles) Total mileage for March: 65.43 miles over the course of 15 activities (average walk ~4.3 miles) Total mileage for 2016 YTD: 174.9 miles in 42 sessions (average walk ~4.1 miles)
My goals for April are not only to go more than 65 miles for the month, but have my average walk distance stay above 4.5 miles. Doing at the gym will be hard since we're only really allowed to be on the treadmills for an hour, but I'll see if I can go at odd times when it's not so crowded so that I can be on one for 2 hours without feeling guilty.
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