The Running Diva

Sunday, August 3, 2008

Lis’ organized a big group of us to go to WildPlay park for a day of zip-lining and other fun. We congregated at a coffee shop just outside of Mill Bay to get a last shot of espresso . Little did we know that the adrenaline rush we were going to get from this adventure an hour later would be more than enough! What a blast we had!

After getting harnessed up, we were given a quick safety lesson and then a chance to test our understanding of how to hook ourselves safely at all times to the safety lines on a mini version of the two-hour long course. Not long into the test, Shan was sent to remedial version of the beginner course until she could prove she would not end up strung up in a Douglas Fir or worse! She was hilarious making groanings about being sent back to do the training course again. Sorry Shan but I couldn’t resist!! It was a bit unnerving at first. It was hard to believe that two thin wires would hold your weight if you slipped! The course got more challenging as went along. We climbed higher and higher and the zip-lines became longer and the obstacles trickier.

We had a lot of laughs and I think we were all surprised at just how much fun it was. The course took us about two hours to get through and was pretty physically demanding. Al then decided he wanted to bungee jump so he signed up and got in line. We watched him swan dive off the bridge which was nuts enough but he also asked to get dunked to make the trip even more terrifying so in he went, waist deep!

Jen and Trev had to scoot up island but the rest of us drove to Nanaimo and had a late lunch at a pub next to the ocean.

I still had my long run to do and thankfully, I had made plans to meet Sean at 7pm which held me accountable! We got back to town with 30 minutes to spare…believe me, the last thing I wanted to do was run. Juice and I showed up to the place where Sean was house sitting for the week so our run started from there near Mackenzie and Carey St. Juice ran the first 10 minutes with us then did his own route for 90 minutes on the trails while Sean and I did a route that started off tamely, running through Layritz Park and the Centennial trails but then hills sprouted up here and thereas we ran along Viaduct and to Propect Lake Rd and then finally up a monster hill on Petworth Rd. to the top. There, we turned around, went back down but this time took a left on Prospect Lake Rd, a right on Goward to Interurban then followed the trails back, retracing our steps from there. When I hit 90 minutes, I was done! We covered just over 20km at 4:34 average pace. Not bad considering the hilly terrain but man, I was beat when I got home!