I walked (while outdoors) 11,400 steps yesterday. I've always considered that number of steps to represent about 4.5 miles, but my phone assures me it was a mere 3.7 miles.
The walk began under cloudy skies, which continued until I reached my midpoint -- Starbucks in Madison Park, where I stopped for further fortification. As I left Starbucks, the rain began. Not sheets of rain, but a more Seattle-type rain -- not drenching, but unremitting. It gradually increased as I returned home, but not so badly as to keep me from walking a few extra blocks through the Arboretum.
I was wet enough on my return that I had to hang my parka and my hat in the bathroom, where the dripping would cause less damage. But I was pleased. It had been my longest walk of the week, although there had certainly been longer walks before Christmas. I may be limited by arthritis in one knee, but I'm not inhibited by a little rain.
I'm a Washingtonian, born and bred. We don't dissolve in the rain, like the Wicked Witch of the Wet.
Both my knee and my mileage are of special concern, because I'm signed up to join some friends for a five-day walk in June. The walk is in southern Wales, around the coastline of the Gower Peninsula, a bulbous protrusion from the mainland into the Bristol Sea near Swansea.
The trek is 45 miles long, a uniform nine miles per day. A mere nothing compared with the treks of my younger years, but a serious objective now. Nine miles is 2½ times 3.7 miles. I wasn't exhausted yesterday, but I was glad to collapse into a chair when I got home. But exhaustion isn't the problem -- I can train to overcome that. The problem is the effect on my knee.
My knee felt pretty good at the end of my walk -- considerably better than it had when I started out. It always takes ten minutes or so of walking to get the lubricating fluids circulating my knee. (That's a layman's description of what goes on, not a physician's.) I've resisted taking any pain medications, but yesterday I did take a single Tylenol pill before starting out.
Tylenol's effect isn't immediate and magic, like a shot of morphine. Its pain-relieving effect on my knee and leg may be medical, or it may be closer to the feather that Dumbo held in his trunk. But it seems to help, and I have Tylenol pills in stronger doses I can use if I need to.
My friends chose this particular hike with me in mind, because of its being largely flat and coastal, and because it never gets far from a paved road. I've satisfied myself that -- should worse come to worst -- Uber is fully available on the peninsula. On the Cornwall coastal trail that I hiked with the same group of friends in 2019, two of our group, on separate days, had to rely on taxis half way through the day because of blisters, so I won't be embarrassed if it comes to that.
Not embarrassed, maybe, but defeated.
I'm hoping to avoid relying on Uber's assistance by preparation of mind and body. I'll see an orthopedist in three weeks; my primary care physician says that an orthopedist may suggest a proper knee support that will limit any pain I experience. Also, it's possible that exercising certain leg muscles -- in addition to gradually increasing walking distances before the hike, aiming for 28,000 steps* -- may limit the unhealthy directions of movement in my knee that contribute to pain.
I'm excited about the hike and, as the length of this note suggests, a bit worried. I'd rather be thirty years old, but even back then there were worries about both exhaustion and aches and pains. It just took longer treks back then to provoke them.
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*In September, I walked 23,000 steps my last day in Italy. I felt fine afterward.
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