first 18K walk of 2023

I walked down to Bundang, stopping at Exit 6 of Jeongja Station. The walk took me 3 hours and 55 minutes (and 27,451 steps), which means my pace was 4.6 km/h. That's a lot better than my crippled pace of 3-point-something km/h during the Jeju/Andong walk, so even with an ulcerated toe, my speed had improved somewhat. While there were slight twinges in my left heel, the faded remnants of my plantar fasciitis, my left foot was fine for the whole walk. My right foot was fine for about 90 minutes, after which my right big toe started to ache. The pain wasn't incapacitating, but my big toe moaned loudly enough to keep me conscious of it for most of the walk. Things got to a point where I thought that doing these long walks might be a bad idea. As I trekked, I became very curious as to how much I was bleeding out of my wound.

Since this had been my first walk down to Bundang since last year, I noted some new, major changes along the creekside path, especially as I got closer to Bundang. One major change was that the new biking and walking paths on the Tan Creek's west side had been completed. There's still a small stretch where we walkers are forced to move along the bike path, but that part goes on for only a few hundred yards. Beyond that, there is now a totally separate path just for walkers. Despite this change, some stupid bikers insisted on biking along the walking paths, blowing by us pedestrians with insouciance. Such bikers made me wish I had a gun. Another major change came right at the end: they've pulled out all of the construction equipment in that part of the creek, so the water (which is low this time of year) flows freely again. Closer to my neighborhood, near the beginning of my walk, crews have ripped down many of the trees and almost all of the bushes. I wonder what's going to be developed along the creek's banks—more parkland? Replanted trees? I admit I'm curious.

Sorry for the lack of pictures, but I was trying to make time down to Bundang to see whether I'd lost my touch. Best I can say is that today's speed is a nice increase compared to last year's snail's pace, but 4.6 km/h is still nowhere near my maximum of about 5 km/h. I do, however, have two pics of my bloody foot, which turned out not to be that bloody.

The blood from the walk collected in a nice, big ring.

a thoroughly soaked bandage

The wound itself wasn't that bloody when I peeled the bandage off, but I've noticed that the blood from the wound has a tendency to move away from the wound site and collect in patches and rings far from the wound. So where do we go from here? I now know that an 18K walk produces slightly—but only slightly—more bleeding than my in-office puttering does. At the same time, the pain in my toe, while not serious, was distracting and possibly worth listening to. Maybe I should pay attention to what my body is trying to tell me.

My bike sits just outside my apartment door, in the hallway; I can reinflate its tires and do cardio by riding, with little pressure on my feet and none on my toes. But the bike requires buildup: I remember how my ride in 2017 was a disaster: my ass ached horribly, and I walked around bow-legged like a cowboy for a week. If I start biking now, I need to go for maybe 30 minutes the first few times, then do an hour, then do two hours, then do the route down to Bundang and back. The bike and my ass both need to be broken in gradually.

I might also try taking ibuprofen before a long walk. That could help. I could also incorporate rest breaks, such as what I did today (one ten-minute break roughly halfway through the walk). We'll see; I'm sure I'll come up with some sort of scheme that makes continued cardio plausible. Now that I've started really exercising again, why stop, right?

ADDENDUM: I forgot to mention that, with this being the first walk of any real length this year, I'm wiped out and can barely keep my eyes open. I was hoping to watch "Banshees of Inisherin" tonight, but that's going to have to wait. I can't stay awake to watch the film and write a review. So expect a review sometime later. Don't know when, but later.