pushing myself

On Saturday, I did the walk from Bundang's Jeongja Station back to my place. It was 6:42 p.m. when I started, and 11:15 when I reached my building's front door. I took about a ten-minute sit break when I was less than an hour from my place, and I started the walk at a point that was about 500 meters away from where I usually start/end that walk. So that's 18 kilometers in 263 minutes, or 4.11 kph. That's probably why so many grannies were hobbling past me: I was going fairly slowly. Pre-stroke, the walk would have taken me less than four hours, although you could argue 4.11 kph isn't a slouchy pace.

My post-walk weight was 118 kg, which was disappointing but not unexpected. I keep thinking I should have lost a lot more weight by now, but I'll just keep at my diet, and we'll see what happens. The Saturday walk was partly to force the issue, to engage my metabolism, burn some fat, and churn out whatever's still stuck in my intestines. Maybe we'll see better results in the morning. Meanwhile, I just checked my blood sugar and blood pressure, and both were disappointingly high. Guess we'll check that again in the morning as well. Maybe some effects of walking are delayed. Maybe I just need more time to pass as the exercise does its work.

I wasn't sure whether I'd be able to make the walk. The previous weekend, I could barely manage five kilometers, so progressing to a full 18 km is quite a jump (to be sure, I did do plenty of walking during the week, so this isn't as miraculous as all that). I take this to mean the "walking muscles" are all coming back into form, which is a good thing. Bit by bit, slowly but surely, I'm improving. I still hesitate a bit before descending a stairway, and walking upstairs is also a shaky business, but meanwhile, I'm now walking longer and longer distances, so before long, I'll be back up to 30 km, far sooner than scheduled.

I can't trust my pedometer anymore: the damn thing keeps doubling the minutes figure for my walks. It put the Bundang walk at 28,788 steps for 18 km plus (I did an errand after the walk), which sounds about right; my normal figure is somewhere around 25,000 for the Bundang walk. But it says I walked 546 minutes, which is double what I actually walked. I don't know why the pedometer keeps doing this, but the doubling has made it untrustworthy when it comes to time, so I have to go old-school and just look at the actual time at the start and at the end of any long walk. Then again, if the pedometer is reliably doubling my walk time, all I have to do is halve the time to get the exact figure.

My phone also won't stay turned off in my pocket. I think this is because I'm a sweaty guy, sweating through my clothes, and the haptic screen thinks I'm touching it while I'm walking. In fact, as I was walking on Saturday, I ended up accidentally dialing emergency services, and they apparently tried to contact me (my phone requires a password for me to see the home screen, but an emergency call can be made without accessing that screen, which I find kind of dangerous). I sent EMS a text message responding to the text they sent me, saying I had accidentally pocket-dialed them, and that I was sorry. The last thing I want to do is send a crew on a wild goose chase while also wasting EMS's time when there are real emergencies out there—not to mention a false call is probably illegal. I may have to buy some sort of shield to prevent my sweaty self from pocket-dialing people in the future.

So Saturday's walk was a time of discovery. I know I'm now capable of walking long distances, albeit slightly more slowly than before. A long walk might have a temporary effect on my weight, but the jury is out on whether it might affect blood sugar and blood pressure—for now. Better results might appear later; we'll see. I'll probably make a habit of doing walks like this over the ensuing weekends, and here's hoping that these walks, plus the exercise I'm doing during the week, will start to improve all my numbers—weight, BP, and blood sugar.