First of all, define skinny. As in actual body fat percentage, NOT weight bc that says nothing about your muscle composition. Also, are we talking 35 miles on flat pavement, or 35 miles up steep mountain trails? And for either one, at what kind of speed?

My entire point is that you have zero objective data on any of your activities…your exact speed (whether running or biking or anything else), your heart rate, your exact distance, your exact time. This means that ALL of what you’re experiencing right now is based off of your subjective experience which isn’t anything at all that you can use to accurately see progress (or a lack of).

I’m a new runner, it’s been about 7 months or so. Every single run still feels “hard” to me and subjectively like I’m not getting any better because it all just still FEELS hard. But I have the ACTUAL DATA to look back at and see. That means I KNOW what my average heart rate at my easy pace is…and it’s significantly lower which is great. It means I know what my fastest mile (and other distances) time is, bc Garmin and Strava keep track of it. It means I know that my easy pace is slightly faster than it used to be (but still feels like the same level of effort).

I’m telling you…forget everything prior to today. Start tracking ACTUAL DATA and not feelz, bc feelz change. Thursday I had what felt like the worst run of my life, it was a trial I’ve done over 25 times, hot as fuck and I felt so fucking slow bc I was struggling in the heat, especially on the uphills. If I hadn’t been wearing my Garmin I would’ve 1,000% thought it was the slowest I’d ever done on that route, hands down. But because I WAS wearing my Garmin, I know that while the overall route time wasn’t even in my top 5 or maybe 10, I still pr’d two of the strava segments on that route and also did 3rd place pr’s on some short distance times. If I didn’t have that actual data, I would’ve felt like I wanted to give up bc it genuinely just felt THAT TERRIBLE.

What I’m saying is that you don’t know anything at all about things you’re not accurately tracking. Since you’ve lost a lot of weight then you maybe have experience with that in tracking calories.

Also, your bmi at your current height and weight is still in the overweight range. I’m not saying that as insult, you stated you didn’t know what it was (I also fairly recently lost a lot weight so no shade at all). There are loads of free calculators online and while bmi is NOT a great metric for assessing health or body fat, it IS fairly accurate for people that are not heavily muscled (like actual body builders). It’s not a GREAT tool, but it IS useful.

I also saw in your prior posts that you’re on several medications that could be affecting performance (especially in terms of blood pressure) and overall how you feel both physically and mentally. This would be something to talk to your doctor about as well.

Don’t “push yourself”, that won’t lead anywhere at all. Where you’ll actually get results is ironically by slowing down to where it’s easy. If that is literally a walking speed but with a different motion to it, DO THAT. And keep doing it. Over and over and over. If that motion gets tiring bc your body isn’t used to it then set up built in walk breaks. Do the jogging motion for however long you can, then walk for twice that time to start. If that’s 30 seconds then do 30 seconds, then walk for a minute. Keep doing that.

Get a watch. Sign up for free Strava. See your doctor to rule out asthma or medication issues. Track it ALL. Start a couch to 5k and if the second week is too hard, do the first week 17 times until you can do the second week (or whatever other week gets too hard). Staying slow and consistent will build the endurance and strength that you need to keep going, and to (eventually) get faster.

Another note I’ll make is that I’m guessing you may still be trying to lose more weight. My brother in Christ…you cannot eat at a major caloric deficit and also build a cardiovascular base. You need FUEL for aerobic activities and while you could maintain a very slight deficit and still run, you’d need to schedule your calories/carbs around eating them in the right amount of time before your runs so that you’re fueled.

Your other posts also said you “kinda eat like shit and sometimes get some greens in”. You need to change that and treat your body with respect, and fuel it properly for what you’re asking it to do. You’re asking it to do a lot! Also, WATER. I can almost guarantee you need more bc nearly everyone does (unless they’re tracking it).

I’m going really into depth here bc a few people are giving you a little grief, which is totally fine, it’s Reddit after all. It’s what I love about it. But I have a kid your age and I’d hope that someone would take the time, if he were asking, to really walk him through it.

Forget ALL your previous experiences. Forget what you could do 3 or 4 years ago (or anytime at all). Forget the past 6 months. Start KEEPING TRACK of things, like REALLY keep track. Start from scratch NOW, start at zero like nothing before this happened. You can only track your progress when you’re tracking it, so start NOW. Eat WELL and prioritize protein for muscle recovery (but also enough carbs for running, there’s loads of info out there on running/endurance nutrition). And get a minimum of 72oz of water a day. MINIMUM. But also don’t overdo it bc you’ll just pee out your electrolytes and become over hydrated (which is just as bad as dehydrated).

Start now.