So, Wednesday after weights Cliff and I were talking and decided that for the afternoon run we'd go somewhere we had never ran before. After some discussion we decided to head to Goldstream Provincial park. When I worked at the Langford Running Room, I would always hear people talk about how good the running is there so we thought it would be cool to check it out.
After a short NHL '10/guitar hero session we suited up and headed out the door. Once we arrived I went and paid for an hour worth of parking. The strangeness starts with the ticket that the machine printed out. As I said, I paid for one hour, the time I paid was roughly 5:00pm on June 23rd. The ticket that was printed expired around noon on like June 15 or something. I took this as having infinity parking because I could just fight that their machine was crazy. After having a confused laughed at the parking pass we went to look at the map to figure out our run. Once we had looked it over a few times over and memorised where we planned on going, we embarked. We set of down a really nice trail that ran right along a little creek that, despite our mapping, came to an abrupt dead end. "Oh man, are you serious? I thought we had this figured out." We doubled back and went under the highway through a little run-off tunnel. We got on another trail which we believed to be the one we had planned on taking. Again, this one came to an abrupt dead end, but at the foot of a gorgeous waterfall. Cliff and I took a few minutes and hopped around on the rocks around the waterfall and just took in the breath-taking scenery. "This is the textbook definition of awesome." It truly was beautiful, I felt like I should have been plugging the end of my long ponytail in to the plants (Avatar). After we finished playing at the waterfall we once again doubled back and found another map and re-plotted our run. We figured we had to cross the creek, which was luckily dry at the moment and climb a little bit to a platue that we could then run on. A little bit of a climb turned into a solid like 10-15mins of a run/walking up a crazy steap hill. Once we reached the top there was suppose to be a trail that kind of leveled out that we could run along for about 2km. In theme with the run, this was not the case. We could not figure out/find the trail we needed, so instead we decided to run along some train tracks. "At least they'll be flat." We followed the tracks for about 20mins and then realised that on either side of us was a pretty steap drop, and that we needed to somehow get back down to the car. We took the next trail we saw that headed roughly in the direction we needed to go... down. The trail was more of an illusion than anything, after about 10m it had disappeared and Cliff and I were in the middle of the forest. We figured that it could be too far until we found a trail so bush-wacking it was. 30mins of no trail, no sign of life, lots of dense bush, tree scaling, laughter, and a few false alarms we emerged on a real trail. Taking this as a good sign we cruised along it until we found another map. Surpringsly we were actually where we had planned to be, just didn't take the way he had planned. So once again, we looked at the map intently and took mental notes of the rest of the trails we needed to take.
I think I'll make a diagram of this, but for now I will explain it as best as possible.
Once we were done looking at the map, we'll call this map #1, and were sure we had figured it out we set off down the trail. We knew that we had to do a bit of a figure-eight type deal. We did the upper loop of the eight and conviniently there as another map, map #2, we rechecked ourselves, confirmed the trail we needed and went on our way. Can you guess what happened, somehow we took the wrong trail and looped all the way pack to map #1. So back to map #2. Once again we checked it and figured out what we had done wrong and set off, this time on the right trail. We arrived at another map, well, looked like a map from a distance. I am certain at one time it was a map, but when we arrived it read "Seven Foot Midget". We relied on our natural instincts and go left. WRONG, back to map #2. "This is ridiculous, worst mark trails ever". From there on in it was pretty smooth sailing. Had to do a bit of a sketchy river crossing and running along the highway. But about 75-80mins after departing and only MAYBE a total of 60mins running, we arrived back at the car. Luckily despite the crazy parking pass it was still there and ticketless. We did a bit of a stretch session and headed into Langford for a quick snack. The quick snack turned into the most delicious masher meal. We went to Nando's Chicken and ate a fully chicken, 3 cobs of corn, 3 baked potatoes, and 4 pieces of garlic toast. Nando's only serves corn on the cob for the summer and I suggest getting there ASAP and having it. Best corn ever, full stop. My mouth is watering just thinking about it...
Long story short, no matter what you do, ALWAYS turn right at the seven-foot midget.
