Wanted to send something out about the racing stuff here in Korea for 2 reasons: 1) some may get stationed here someday and 2) its pretty entertaining.

A couple forewords about riding in Korea. Traffic laws are more like recommendations, red lights mean think twice before going, green lights mean you've got the best chance of making it. And people are pretty good about leaving you just enough space since they're used to having bikes and mopeds around. However, they associate bikes with speeds less than 15 mph, so if you're going much faster be ready to have close calls. They've also go farm roads here that are like big sidewalks that you can go for miles on without seeing any vehicles, but occasionally a large truck will come by and that gets dicey as sometimes these roads are lined by 5-6 foot dropoffs into drainage ditches.

Onto the racing. In late November they had a hill climb to the top of Bukkak mountain in Seoul(approx. 6km of climb), it was about 30 degrees Farenheit out starting t 0800. I had spent friday night in a dive motel but decided to upgrade to the billeting at Camp Yongsan on Saturday night before the race for a litany of reasons(great story, but wayyyyy off topic here). I actually didn't know where the race start was, so I was wandering around downtown Seoul for about 45 minutes looking for this place before I made a phone call and hopped on the subway and happened across the start line. There were 200+ people racing, and someone said 300+. There was a group doing calisthenics as a group, a couple trainers, but a lot of people just standing around. I took a spot on the line and found out the race starts with a 10km parade through the city. The police made an attempt to hold the intersections, but it was inevitably an every man for himself situation. We finish the 10km parade and they stop us for about 15min then start the race(remember, still 30 degrees the whole time). I was barely in the mood for a hard effort with as chilled as I was, so I let the pack envelope me a little figuring I'd make it up as I warmed up. A couple really small dudes went from the gun and I kept plodding away. I think I timed it just right as I got up to about 4th across the line, feeling pretty good about myself(it was a hillclimb after all) only to find out they were going by "net timing" so I was actually 2nd overall. So, I took home some goodies for that, but they give everyone a little door prize and bag of food just for showing up, so some tasty little panda treats to top off the day. The awards ceremony had me looking all jabba the hut next to 5 Koreans that weighed less than 65kg.

My next race was an indoor spin bike race. 30 minutes going for maximum distance on a resistance setting of 2.5 turns on the adjustment wheel(yes, I'm dead serious about this). So it was really a race to see who had the highest average cadence. This was all done in a spin bike studio, lights out, no fans, and some Korean music videos playing on a big screen....kinda looked like their equivalent of a Katy Perry or something. So warm up was done in a separate studio, where I noticed some not so typical looking Koreans(i.e.-dudes with super massive thighs...). So I asked  the guide about it and he said they were Korean national Keirin team riders. So, yeah, a paltry 100-110 rpm wasn't gonna do it here. I was able to turn what I figured to be about 115-120 for the 30 minutes and took 6th overall while the top-3 were in excess of 130 rpm averages. 

Overall, the riding here is decent with a good number of options for routes, though not many hills to speak of.

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