Living in the Scoot Utopia

Now that I've had a day to recuperate, I finally feel up to getting online and writing about the walk I took this past Sunday (July 1).

First, the stats...

Time started: 6:12AM
Time ended: 9:47PM
Actual Walking Time: 12 hours, 27 minutes
Distance: 34.5 miles
Steps taken: 66,314
Calories burned: 4,395

Some notes from the walk:

• The dog at Cleveland & Mersington that barked like hell at me on a previous walk has since learned to jump... very high. A few more inches and it would have cleared its fence.
• Lots of mud in the areas that don't have sidewalks but I was able to avoid most of it.
• The most joggers/walkers I saw were on Liberty Drive in Liberty & Glenaire, and on Tomahawk Road in prairie Village.
• One of the most obnoxious products that exist are oversized strollers that take up the entire sidewalk and are pushed by mothers who refuse to yield.
• After more than a year since I last walked through it, the crosswalk signals at 95th & Nieman still light both the "walk" and "don't walk" symbols simultaneously.
• Evidently a runaway slave has been found in Overland Park.

This was supposed to be my attempt at a 40-mile walk, but high humidity, the fact that I was carrying a backpack (I've never done that before), and the fact that I had just gotten over a strep infection all combined to wear me out far earlier than I normally get worn out. My speed reached a painstakingly slow 2mph by the late afternoon, and by the end my left foot (which typically bears the brunt of the trauma due to a defect in my left hip) was in agony.

When I got home and removed my shoes I found that my left foot had started bleeding at some point, the blood/lymph mixture soaking through two pairs of socks. My right foot now has a small blister under the big toe and a small bruise on the side, my left foot has two large blisters and a palm-sized red swelling on the top left side that is not painful to the touch.

Officially, I am probably done now with trying to outdo myself with single-day walks. I'll still do long ones, it's something I feel a need to do, but more in the 20-30 mile range. One thing I want to start training myself for is to be able to do 15-20 mile walks multiple days in a row, so that for my 40th birthday I can treat myself by taking a couple of weeks off and walking across Missouri.

Finally, I want to say a BIG THANK YOU to those of you who followed along on LiveWalking.com, for giving me all those words of encouragement the first time (near Prairie Village Shops) I was in trouble (that REALLY helped a lot!) and also for encouraging me to stop when the pain became too much the second time I got in trouble (near Oak Park Mall). That really meant a lot.

And also another BIG THANK YOU for those of you who made donations to the charity I was supporting. (I'm going to keep my donation page up for several weeks and dedicate all of my upcoming walks to the cause, so it's not too late to help out.)

You can see the overview route, and read the commentary at LiveWalking.com, and you can also see the pictures I took along the way. I'll post the detailed map at LiveWalking.com in the next day or two.