A faster way to be familiar with your living environment is jogging. Once you know where you are, it will become easier to know how to get to your destination.

Why jogging

As usual, I continued to jog when I first arrived here in this forest campus of Khon Kaen University. I had several purposes in mind regarding my morning jogging. First I had to adapt this new place in this foreign country as soon as possible. Second I am sure that jogging will help strengthen my digestive system in my body. In other words, through jogging I will develop my immunity from diseases which may result from my daily meals and water intake. Third it’s a good moment to think things ahead when you are jogging alone; there’s nothing you can do but think. Of course, there’re many other benefits with this physical exercise, depending on how you see it. With jogging, I have explored a lot of places and taken many interesting photos in this forest university. I think this is the most exciting part in my daily jogging. I kind of became a photo-runner or mobile photographer.

Jogging history

I started to jog since August 2012. According to my past records, my jogging mileage was around 2700 km, as of December 27, 2013; it’s almost like jogging around Taiwan Island three times. Counting jogging days only in Khon Kaen University, it’s about 480 km. How does jogging change my body shape? I become much thinner than before, as was observed by all my colleagues, students, church members, and my friends.

Jogging in the forest university

Safety issue

In exploring this forest university, I have tried to run quite a few of different routes. The most concern of mine is safety on the road, in view of heavy traffic in the peak hour and those street barking dogs.

I had to run right opposite to the incoming traffic in order to see the front road condition clearly, without worrying the traffic in my back. After I was getting more and more familiar with traffic condition on different roads, I came up with my most favourite route which I would recommend to the runners in Khin Kaen University to follow through.

Another annoying issue was the village and street dogs. It’s kind of in dilemma. To avoid heavy traffic, I’d better choose the trails within the residential village, but then I would be threatened more in there because villagers usually raise home dogs. On the contrary, there will be fewer dogs on the main roads, but I have to be careful with all kinds of tiger-roaring traffic conditions. In general, the street dogs are less offensive. So, there’re pros and cons to choose either one. Just watch out when you hit the road.

Outside the boundary

As you see the map here, the campus of Khon Kaen University in light brown colour is walled off from the outside area. There’s one time, I tried to run outside the campus, thinking to enlarge my jogging area as far as I can. After studying the google map carefully, I decided to explore the area west to the campus. I thought I would be able to cut into the inside campus at a certain point if there’s connecting trail heading toward the east. However, it turned out to be that I had no way to get into campus because the white wall-fence goes all the way along the outside trail. So I had to run further toward the west to find a major traffic road, instead of small trails. But this put me in an awkward situation. Shall I run back to my starting point or keep going to see if I can find somewhere to cut into campus again? I was lost and didn’t know when I could reach to the major Maliwan road. More important, I almost lost my energy.

After I located where I was from the map of Runkeeper App, I continued my hard journey toward Maliwan Road. Finally I had to stop at some point, which marks the end of my jogging with a distance around 10.8 km. Then I walked back to the starting point near my living place, and it took me quite a while to walk back, especially when exhausted. The lesson is this: You never know what will happen until you are put in the field.
The best jogging route

After several trial-and-error, here are the 2 routes I would recommend if you want to jog in this forest university campus. There’re 3 major roads in this campus, including North Boulevard (East-West direction; Mileage #2-#3), West Avenue (North-South Direction; Mileage #3-#6), and Central Avenue (North-South direction; Mileage #8-#10).

On November 14, I ran counterclockwise by following North Boulevard, West Avenue and Central Avenue. Yet, I felt really under pressure because of heavy traffic in North Boulevard. In addition, when running on the West Avenue, the running space is quite limited and is too close to the incoming traffic because I kept at the right hand side of the road for the sake of safety concern. As for the section along Central Avenue, the trail is quite comfortable to run on there.

Later on, as is in the map of December 11, I decided to run clockwise, starting first from Central Avenue, passing 2 big lakes near the university entrance, turning northward onto West Avenue, making a right turn onto a path below and parallel to the North Boulevard, and then entering into the third lake area. With this route, I avoid running on the heavy traffic of North Boulevard and take advantage of running on the bike route on the West Avenue. So, this route became my favourite one.




The longest jogging record

Since I have signed up for the international marathon game to be held in Khon Kaen on January 26, 2014, I thought I had to make it a try to see if I can finish my target one - half marathon, which is around 20 km. So I finished 20.46 km on December 5 by following the clockwise route, as mentioned above. I made 2 laps of the bigger contour, and 2 laps of the smaller contour in the upper part, and finally completed the 20.46 km in the lake area, where each lake circle is around 0.84 km.


Scenic views on the roads

It’s most enjoyable to jog in the campus of Khon Kaen University because most of the roads are under the cool shades offered by the tree forest. In the hot weather of the month of November like Khon Kaen city, the heat of bright sunshine is hard to penetrate through this natural cut-off. All your eye touch is green forest. In addition, the jogging route covers all three lakes in this university campus, where special landscape is formed and has become scenic points you would love to spend some time there. Browse some photos below in each area.

Area A

Area B

Area C

Area D

Area E

Area F

Area G