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I successfully walked about 14-15 miles, my first long walk since October. It's amazing how your cardio fluctuates on almost a daily basis in reaction to exercising or not exercising, but your legs can remember things you did last year.

Verdicts:

Knee held up! Knee held up! There was one spot where I was going downhill pretty steeply, and it started to protest, but I managed to shift my weight to take the strain in my hamstrings and glutes--like you're supposed to--and my knee went, "Finally!!"

My feet did an okay job. I forgot my massage ball at home in another bag, but I discovered if I just find a hard and solid surface with a ninety degree angle, like a curb or a bench, not sharp enough to cut the skin, obviously, but sharp enough to really dig into the muscle, I can rub the arch and heel of my foot back and forth over it, and I'll get pain relief for at least a mile, sometimes more.

Was still in a substantial amount of foot pain, especially after 8 miles, as I cannot be bothered to stop walking, take off both my shoes, massage each foot in turn, tie my shoelaces again, walk a few steps, discover that I have tied them too tightly or loosely, take them off again, and retie them, every mile. Would rather push through pain. But the important thing is I managed some pain relief when I needed it! Also psychologically, that just helps, knowing you can if you need to.

Glutes still super tight and painful starting at 10 miles. I learned last year how to fix this, but since the answer was "Fuck up your previously rock solid knees for months," I didn't dare. My currently incredibly fragile knees might never recover. So I just decided the pain was tolerable, as I did before I discovered the joys and painful side effects of glute stretching, and kept walking.

All in all, I think I could have done 20 miles easily. Pushing through pain, but after 10 miles that's normal for me, so it counts.

The number one problem I had was with my back. Mid to lower, mostly. Which is not a spot that has historically bothered me, but I think the decluttering has not been good for it. I think I must have lain down 3 times and sat down at least 3 times on this 14 mile walk, just to get back pain relief.

Walking conditions were the Platonic ideal: 16-23 C, partly sunny and partly cloudy, breezy, no rain despite the 80% chance of showers forecast when I set out, Friday so I had the forests to myself! <3 It was very peaceful and lovely.

Oh, yeah, the point of the walk: I went to a farther away forest than my usual next-door forest (though I also passed through that one), one that has a steep hill with steps carved in it. I've never managed to run all the way up it in my life (I've done half of it a couple times), and I didn't today, but I treated it as training: I walked up and down it 3 times. I got super out of breath on each uphill, and my legs started to burn, so it was a fantastic workout! This was the downhill that set off my knee the first time, but then I figured out a stride on the second hill rep, which allowed me to cut 15 seconds off my time, and the third time I cut another 15 seconds off, bringing me from 2:30 down to 2 minutes. My uphill time remained 2:05 on all three reps.

I'm relieved that despite the lack of training and all the injuries, my hiking fitness remains approximately as good as ever (modulo the back). I was starting to worry about all my hiking plans for the September road trip!

I'm going to try to do a 20 mile walk next week, remember to bring my massage ball, and see if I can push closer to 30 like I was doing last year.

Oh, yeah, no blisters and no chafing, because I have awesome shoes (love you, New Balance) and also have learned some things in my years of suffering! Petroleum jelly ftw.

Oh, and when I say "Damn, I needed that," 80% of my time lately has been spent on tedious and annoying work tasks, tedious and annoying Peter Keith tasks (and quite frankly I am sick of this bio right now), tedious and annoying decluttering.

I am so burned out on writing up my historical research findings that when it's like "You could post to rheinsberg!" or "You could tell salon about this cool thing you found," or "You could make a blog post about raccoons like you kept promising for a while," my brain is like, "No! You can't make me! I'm doing all this writing up of my findings already, and then I'm supposed to do more writing up of findings??? How igneous of you!" So here we are. Hopefully my brain cooperates better soon.*

In the meantime, I finally gave into its pleadings to do something that isn't a tedious and annoying task for one of my major projects, and it is pleased and wants to do this again. It's actually pretty happy to push through the pain of tight muscles if doing so means not having to write up another finding, write more unit tests, or work on finding a new home for any more junk.

Pain is good! Pain is fun! Pain is at least interesting. :P

* Those of you in salon may notice that it made an exception for the one super dramatic finding, but that I keep hinting at other findings, and then I can't make myself.