The Tragic Story of Why I Didn’t Go For a Run Today

I had such grand plans to go for a run today after giving my guest lecture. My lecture went just smashingly ((Rachel’s students = tres awesome. I’ve already asked to come back and give this guest lecture again next year!)) and since I had a few hours to kill while Rachel taught for the rest of the afternoon, I figured I’d use that time to go for a run. I brought all my running gear to campus. I changed into said running gear. I plotted out a route around Westwood Lake ((because running next to a body of water is the best. thing. ever.)) and checked Google Maps to find out how to get there. Now, it was raining out. And, generally, I enjoy running in the rain. What I do not enjoy, however, is running in a torrential downpour – like the kind where you end up with every bit of your clothes soaked straight through and your running shoes full to the brim with water. So when I went out to Rachel’s car to drive to the lake, I was a wee bit dismayed by the, you guessed it, torrential downpour. But I thought to myself, “Stop being a wimp!” and off I drove to lake. Or so I thought. I have to say that Nanaimo is the most confusing place to drive in the history of motorized vehicles. Few of the roads are straight and those that are straight are not perpendicular to the other straight roads, so all the intersections are at really weird angles! Gah! Basically there is no direct route to anything here ((Rachel had told me this last night on the way to her place from the ferry, but I *really* saw what she meant when I tried to find my way the mere 5 km to the lake!)). Even with my Google Maps my iPhone, I still had to do 27 U-turns along the way, because I kept inexplicably ending up on the wrong road or going the wrong direction on the right road ((I’m sure my DTD added to this!)). When I finally got there, I discovered that if you tell Google Maps that you want to go to Westwood Lake, it assumes you want to go to the trailer park there. Which, in fact, I did not. Anyway, I somehow managed to find a place to park near a trail and at that point, I realized that going for a run would be a terrible, terrible idea. The trail was SOAKED. There was even a sign warning that the trail might be flooded ((though there was also a sign warning of thin ice and given that it is currently 7 degrees C out, these signs are probably all just let up all year round)). And the few steps I took on said trail made my feet feel very wet. And I thought, “10 km of this? I don’t think so!” And I promptly got back in the car and asked Google Maps to find me a coffee shop.

So I made a quick detour (on which I only had to do one U-turn) to Serious Coffee:

Serious Coffee

Serious Coffee is a Vancouver Island coffee chain and I when I’m on the Island I like to go there, mostly because I like to say, “I’ll have a Sirius Black coffee.” True story.

And now I’m sitting in Rachel’s office, where it is warm and dry and I have a delicious caffeinated beverage. Running will just have to wait for another day!

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