Kilocircle, plus

I'm striped with radiation. In fact, I think I have the worst sunburn of my adult life, and circle walking is the method by which I put myself into this state. I went out to turn today at 1:30, taking advantage of the full sun, which I like to try to get 15-20 minutes of per day if I can. That's how long I intended to turn on my circle, but sometimes, things go well and the turning lasts a bit longer. To deal with that, I chose 1:30 pm not just because of the high sun but also because after a few minutes, before 2, actually, most of the circle is in the shade of a large maple in our yard. That means if things were to be going well, I could easily have an additional half hour or hour in partial shade, only dipping into the direct rays for a fraction of the time. Like I said, though, some days go well. Some days surprise us.

I started off going 300 revolutions in one direction, netting 30 minutes without changing the posture. That's usually very hard. In the other direction, my shoulders held out for 150 more, which put me at the 45-minute mark, roughly, and poised nicely to catch my "hour a day." Something happened when I switched again, though.

The plan was to try to execute 108 revolutions on my second go-around "to the left," and to follow it, if I could, with 72 to the right, which would put my time in Lion posture at just over an hour. Rock. When I got to about seventy, though, something weird happened that caused me to remember more words of He Jinbao: "I would just circle until the pain didn't matter any more." That's not exactly what happened, but it wasn't far off. I think it was a bit like runner's high, but stronger. I stopped hurting. The suffering ended, and I turned as comfortably as if I were walking down the street despite my low stance, sore legs, and ridiculously challenging posture (involving one hand arched above my head and the other extended outward and upward directly into the middle of the circle, with a twist that keeps the tendons in the shoulders building and aching). Like this, in fact, but probably considerably sloppier because I, unlike the photographed He Jinbao, am not He Jinbao and need to practice a lot more:

So, I rode out the wave of pain-free development all the way until I reached somewhere around 300 revolutions, which I pushed up to 330 for posterity's sake. At that point, I realized fully that what I was by then calling a "kilocircle" was possible: turning one thousand revolutions on my circle without putting my hands down from the Lion posture. I decided to do it. When I got close, I suddenly realized that I still wasn't feeling awful and could endure more, so I asked about the time and found that I'd been at it for 88 minutes. That meant that I was much, much closer to a full two hours than I would be the next time I tried for a marathon turning session, and so I should probably shoot for it. All in all, I ended up with 1320 revolutions for a total time in the Lion posture of 2:06 (126 minutes) - without putting my hands down. That's a new record, big time, for me; my previous best being about 80 minutes. Since my circle is six feet in diameter, it is 18.85 (roughly) feet in circumference, which means I covered 24,880 feet on it today, give or take a few, i.e. 4.71 miles. That means I turned, on average, at 2.24 miles per hour, which is completely irrelevant.

By then, my legs and ankles were ruined, and I could feel the sun doing terrible things to my pearly white skin, which meant far more damage than I wanted to have done had already occurred. When I put my arms down, they felt as if they belonged to someone else, a feeling that persisted for fifteen or twenty minutes. My hands felt like they were still squeezing the ox-tongue palm position even though I was deliberately spreading and stretching them. The only negative sensation I experienced the entire time, in fact, other than fairly severe discomfort and fatigue at various times was my right hand going half-numb for about thirty-five or forty minutes near the middle (but nearer the beginning). It was a bit weird but totally awesome and, I think, worth the sunburn. When He Jinbao said to get good, one would need to endure a lot of suffering, I think the turning is more in line with what he meant than the sunburn, though.