Friday, April 19, 2024

the painfully slow walk

Some walk stats for my Thursday-night stroll:

Starting in Daechi, finishing at Daecheong Station.

I wish the chart showed average speed, not pace.

This was a two-hour creekside walk (no stairs) at about a 3.94-kph speed. Not even 4 kilometers per hour: pretty slow. But this is only my first week back from my second trip to the hospital, so I'll cut myself a little slack. 

As with the Wednesday-night walk, my heart and breathing were both fine. The activity burned almost an extra 800 calories, and my pedometer says I burned 1100 calories for the entire day (over and above my 1800 calories for basal metabolic rate). 2900-ish calories burned can't be bad. And—I forgot to factor in the food I ingested. On the Newcastle diet, that comes to about 800 calories, so really, it's a 2100-calorie deficit per day. That's 14,700 calories per week, or 4.2 pounds of fat (1.9 kg) lost per week. I actually doubt I'll lose that much, mainly because I'm likely to ingest more than 800 calories per day. But I'll lose at least a pound or so a week. We'll see how I am when I do a weigh-in a few days.

And hey—my shoulders didn't feel quite so flabby during tonight's walk, either. The walking helps. It reminds my body what I can do, smooths out the kinks.

I forgot to write, yesterday, about all the frogs ribbiting along the trail. Must be mating season. The frogs were ribbiting lustily tonight as well. My Thursday-night route took me out toward the Han River; I stopped and turned around once I reached the confluence of the Tan Creek and the Han. There's more construction going on along the last kilometer of the Tan before the confluence; construction workers waved us bikers and walkers and joggers along a prescribed path with their stubby, lightsaber-like flashlights. 

This is the perfect moment to be out and walking at night: the air is pleasantly cool without the bite of winter, but it's not as warm as it's going to get once it's late spring. As I mentioned before, I might restart my stairs work this weekend; we'll see. But it's nice to know that life is realigning itself into something approaching normalcy again.



4 comments:

John Mac said...

Good job! Nothing to be ashamed of with those stats--a healthy and leisurely stroll. Keep it up!

Daniel said...

Glad to hear the heart and breathing were both normal. Sounds like you're ready for the 이화령 hike this (or is it next?) weekend. Will you be bussing it to 수안보 (연풍?)? Should be a glorious weekend. I have some stairclimbing planned on Sunday. Doing the LOTTE Tower vertical marathon for the second year in a row. 123 floors in about 40 minutes. Not looking to break any records, but god does it feel good when you reach the top. Upwards and onwards!

Kevin Kim said...

The Lotte World Tower Sky Run is no more than a distant dream for me. Good luck and enjoy your 40-ish minutes of pain and sweaty effort.

I need a few more walking sessions and some staircase sessions before I'm truly ready for 이화령, but I'm not meeting the couple until May 4, so I have two more weeks to go.

Today, my BP was super-low again, and I was feeling faint enough that I delayed going to work by two hours. I'm feeling better right now, but when I see the docs at Samsung on Friday the 26th (April, I mean), I'll ask about reducing some dosages.

Daniel said...

The Sky Run is not as intimidating as it sounds. There are water/fan/snack/rest (they actually have mats where you can lie down on the floor) stations every 20 floors or so and the stairwell is incredibly well ventilated. Lots of fun events taking place in the plaza in front of the building that are open to all, regardless of race participation. Might be a good goal to set for next year, if you heart/lungs prove agreeable.

I remember that photo of the scarily low BP you had in the hospital. Definitely sounds like you need a dose reduction to avoid a potentially dangerous fainting episode. What were the docs thinking? Medical malpractice from the sounds of it.