Today’s ride was different, I had another cyclist, Itsu-Kim, alongside me and he made life so much easier. Parts of the path had mountain bike trails, which meant there would be some steep climbs, but he knew the detours to bypass three of them.

As we snaked along the river, we had bursts of tailwind to get us above 25km/hr,  but there were two major climbs where he helped me push my bike. Like a lot of other cyclists, he had a speaker playing Korean music, with the odd 80s American pop song, to keep us entertained for the day.

I was getting the hang of climbing the smaller hills, just dropping to the lowest gears and slowly pedalling at a steady pace. We stopped at rest points and he shared his snacks and homemade sushi.  There was only one checkpoint today although my face was really cold, hence the mask.

Once we made it to the destination, we checked out the canola fields, which bloom during the annual Nakdonggang Yuchae Festival in Namji. We had some burgers for lunch/dinner and Itsu-Kim headed back home. I felt exhausted, but he was going to cycle twice as much as I did, pretty hard core. He showed me his finishing stickers for at least six of the courses, so that explains how he knew about the detours.

Heading into town was quite nice, there was virtually no traffic, which was great after I struggled with the stops in Andong and Gumi. For both of those cities it took over half an hour to ride 5km to get from my accommodation to the start point for the day.

The motel was quite nice and had a bath tub for me to relax and unwind. I’ve got 100km left to cover in two days and it will be nice to cruise to the finish line.