not today, but next week: a walk to Yangpyeong

It's time to try the 35K walk.

So next week, I'm going to attempt the 35K walk from Hanam City to Yangpyeong. The walk will be 8 or 9 hours long, and to avoid as much daylight as possible, I'll be starting around 3 p.m., which means leaving my place about 2 p.m. and training out to Hanam City Hall Station (Line 5, for those in the know). From there, it's a 35.2-km walk to Yangpyeong Station. By starting at 3, I'll be beginning my trek during the last part of the worst part of the day, but by 5 p.m., things ought to get better as the sun gets lower in the sky. By 6 p.m., the air will be a lot cooler (or at least much less hot), and I'll be walking into the nighttime, arriving in Yangpyeong around midnight, at which point I'll shack up in a motel and not eat until Sunday morning or early afternoon, whenever I get back to Seoul.

With the heat the way it's been, and with August traditionally being as hot as July, I expect the first part of the walk to be fairly brutal. I'll have my hat and my toshi (sleevelets) with me, plus plenty of water (and I can get more water along the way if needed). It'll be tempting to go off-program and eat sweets and other carbs while doing such a long walk, but I shall remain pure. I expect the walk to help me shed yet more pounds, including the water weight from all the water I'll be drinking. Water weight or not, weighing myself the following Sunday morning (or whenever I get home) will be revelatory.

The beginning part of the Yangpyeong walk features a series of tunnels that keep you out of the shade for a few hundred meters per tunnel. The insides of those tunnels are also very cool, which is nice. So even though I'll be starting the hike in horrible conditions (assuming sun and not rain), the tunnels will provide some measure of coolness and protection.

So that's the plan—Yangpyeong walk next week, rain or shine. If I was able to do 26K in the wind and rain a couple weeks ago, I can walk 35K to Yangpyeong, I think. I won't be inviting JW because I'll be arriving in Yangpyeong around midnight, which means JW would have to shack up in a motel as well (the subways and trains won't be running), and I don't think he can do that. He occasionally has to spend his weekends on Geoje Island because of work, anyway, so there's no guarantee he could even do this walk.