Wrapping up Geumgang

Tired legs, aching butt, summer’s humidity, and most of all, boredom

This story is from last week, where I managed to wrap up Geumgang river’s bicycle path. The total length of my bicycle trip is almost 130 km, starting from Daejeon towards Sejong city, and eventually following the Geumgang river all the way down into Gunsan city.

The whole trip takes approximately 7 to 8 hours with a single 30 minute break halfway there. As usual, kudos to the Korean government for providing such excellent cyling road even in the most remote areas :D.

The geumgang path is considered to be one of the easier route, spanning only 147 km – I finished Daecheongdam earlier so I didn’t go there this time – with pretty much a flat route with minimum hills along the way. The road runs along the river road passing through large bridges and dams. And which is why the road is so boring, because all I can see are nothing but the side of river, with the occasional cliff on the left side and some small towns along the way (hey so Daejeon is not as underdeveloped compared to the real villages in Korea).

For this trip I didn’t bring my camera (because falling over my bike would spell instant disaster with my camera inside my backpack) so pictures taken from my phone would suffice 😀 (and it’s a new phone! ta~dahh).

This one is taken at sejong city, the city right next to Daejeon. Only 20 km away.

This one is at Gongjubo, the outskirt of Gongju city. The promotional material at 4 river’s website shows it as interesting, but when I actually got there.. Meh.

This one is taken at baekjebo. There’s a k-water facility here so we can learn more about Korea’s river if we’re interested I guess. But it’s in Korean so I didn’t feel like entering.

This one is taken at Iksan. Probably the most remote stamp booth compared to the other posts, as this one is located right in the middle of nowhere! It’s like they decided to just plop one somewhere in a rural area so that the distance between posts don’t get too far.

This is the last post located at Gunsan city. For this one there are two certification centers available, but I picked the nearest one of course. At this point I felt like I’m tanned all over, my butt aches, and I yearn for toilet so much.But now the Geumgang river stamps is complete! I got a congratulatory sticker for this one, and of course a complete bragging right LOL – although not long after that an ahjussi came to chat with me and he showed his almost complete stamp collection. Shoot!

We took the bus back home from Gunsan terminal – because retaking the bicycle route back home would be suicidal for a noob like me. So what have we learned from cycling long range? Fatigue is bound to happen, but above all it’s more of a mental battle. The fact that there are road signs showing the distance from the final post sometimes act as an encouragement, sometimes it made me despair on how there are so much distance left, and sometimes it made me lazy knowing that there’s less than 10 kms left. Yes, definitely a mental battle.

 

A century

Actually the term century ride refers to over 100 miles of riding bicycle, but since pretty much the whole word is using the metric unit, screw miles! Oh and I just did my century ride (again, in km) yesterday :D.

It was a round trip from KAIST to Gongju, totalling to 70 km. Seeing that I only have around 30 km left for my 100, I decided to finish it off by going through the gapcheon naru gil once and head straight to KAIST munji campus from expo bridge.

FYI 3000 kcal is worth more than a day’s regular meal for me, and this is actually the first time I saw my weight drop after cycling @_@

 

 

A thousand kilometers

Yeay, finally reached my my bike 1000 km for this year! Crossed the 1000 km mark when cycling to Daecheong dam and back again :D.

When you see it, actually the volume of my cycling exercise tripled from last year and almost eight times higher compared to 2011. Partly due to a suitable bike, and the excellent cycling infrastructure of South Korea. Seeing as it’s not even May yet, think I should try for 2000 km this year? :p

So that’s one of my target for 2013 cleared. Oh and in addition to that, there’s also this

I also managed to clear the goal of reducing my body weight to below 70 kg. So that’s two targets done! Double kill!

And so, what to do now? I’m training for long distance cycling (> 100 km in one run) since I’m planning to clear Geumgang somewhere within the next month, and try to go cycling to Seoul in the summer. And of course, I’m also buffing up for mountain biking (the last time I tried it, it was a total failure due to my crappy physical fitness). Oh and save enough money to buy a real mountain bike.

Wish me luck!

 

 

Halfway There!

Well well, one of my targets for this year is actually halfway done! So which one is it?

Yep, it’s the bike 1000 km target! Apparently all  those pedaling as part of my weight loss routine accumulates to a little over 500 km :D. Let’s hope that I can get to 1000 this year! Bless all the cycling road in Korea!