16.46K steps

Tonight's walk was 16,464 steps. According to my pedometer, the walk—which was actually several walks spread throughout the day—took me 168 minutes, which puts me at a step rate of 98 steps per minute. That's reassuring because this result means I'm starting to creep back up to my old rate of 101 or 102 steps per minute.

The path I'm walking goes alongside the nearby Yangjae-cheon, a wide creek that feeds into the Han River, which describes a serpentine path through the middle of Seoul, dividing the city into its famous Gangbuk (north of the river) and Gangnam (south of the river) halves. The creek itself is straight, so the walking path is correspondingly flat and straight—for miles, apparently. The creek is flanked by steep sides that have been landscaped in such a way as to have narrow paths running parallel to the creekside path. One path sits halfway up the slope; the other path is at the top of the slope, at street level (the creek is well below street level), so there are three parallel paths on both sides of the creek—six paths total.

Every couple hundred meters, there are stairs that allow a walker at creek level to walk all the way up to street level if he wants. As long as I'm walking on fairly unchallenging flat ground, those stairs are my ticket to creating a more intense workout. Maybe starting next week, I hope to force myself to walk up and down every single set of stairs I encounter. This will significantly lengthen my walk, but short of trying to climb up Daemosan again, this is my best hope for halfway decent cardio. (As you may have guessed, I gave up on the staircase in my building, mainly because it left me gasping, and at that point, I hadn't resumed walking in earnest, which means I always felt this close to a heart attack every time I dared the stairs. That said, I might try the staircase again at some point.)


_