Day 4: final pics and thoughts

Well! An achy finish to a hard-but-fulfilling day. Here are some pedometer stats for you:

I found it uncanny that I had walked 444 minutes on Day 2 of this walk (i.e., this past Saturday the 5th) and 444 minutes again today. More stats:

Below, a pic of my worsening pinky-toe blister:

The blister looks worse than it feels. For the most part, it barely bothered me during my walk. Here's a pic of my miraculously un-blistered right foot:

Finally, here's a pic of my bruised toes. You'll recall that I actually lost a toenail off my right foot during my walk to Busan last year (gross pics here). I hope my two toenails are fine, but there's bruising beneath them, and the toe next to my big toe complained rather loudly during most of today's walk. That was obnoxious, but not intolerable.

I had resolved, this morning, to take it slow today. The walk, which was about 30 km in length, took 7.4 hours, including rest and bathroom breaks, plus one pause to eat a candy bar and swig a soda along the way. Once I got back to my place at 1:57PM, I was curious to see how much weight I had lost over the weekend. To my joy, I had lost a whole 3 kg, taking me from 126 kg to 123, or 3 kilos in 4 days, i.e., 0.75 kg a day—which is insane, and arguably a faster weight-loss rate than during my Busan walk. This is doubtless because I didn't pig out this time around: I ate modest lunches in town, then rested the rest of each day without snacking on anything. My only indulgences were fruit drinks and soda, but even those were in limited quantities. All that walking turned my body, at least temporarily, into a metabolic dynamo. And now, sadly, I return to my office routine.

I'm very happy not to have experienced the sort of severe blistering that occurred both during my March 2017 walk with my friend Brian and my April-May 2017 solo walk to Busan. The current blister on the pinky toe isn't bothering me much at all; it'll fade away eventually. Because I didn't wear my hat today, I think I ended up with a bit of a sunburn on my neck, which I suppose makes me the world's first half-Korean redneck. Yee-haw!

This will be my last long walk until summer is over, and the weather is once again walk-friendly. I'm glad I had the chance to walk the Seoul-Incheon part of the Gukto Jongju one more time; there's always something new to see along the route, which is especially beautiful once you leave the Han River and follow the Ara Canal straight west to the end of the bike route. Bon périple à vous tous!—a good trek to you all.