Our Coach stood at the front of the room at the whiteboard at our introductory class, checkmarking and printing and unleashing a whirling blur of information: power, output, full-body movements, paleo diet.  I'd been listening earnestly till then but then my mind stalled out and refused to absorb: Diet, I thought,  A fad diet and I'm not so sure about the whole Caveman premise. I thought: I'll work out here, I like the premise of full-out, strong, short workouts and this seems right up our adrenaline-fuelled, mildly masochistic sensibilities  -- but I'll keep eating what I'm eating.  I've been seeing good results ... [More]

My brother left home when he was 14, a gangly kid with pin-width legs,an affable smile and a shot-on-goal that could tear a bleeding hole through sheet metal.  He was a talented hockey player, and had been touted as a Future NHL Star from the time he was 6 years old. He was a semi-professional hockey player before he could drive a car. He returned home the following summer for break: suddenly taller than me, with giant arms and a steely resolve, suddenly determined to take over the world.  He needed summer work and I got him a job bussing tables at the pub where I worked as a waitress.  During those long shifts, the door would... [More]

I am in the process of writing part 2 of Corey's story, but it's suprisingly hard.  Usually I sit down at the keyboard and stuff just tumbles out of my brain and on to the page but it's different with this because I want to do his words justice.  I want to relay things precisely, in a way that adequately captures the roller coaster of a journey he's been on, and how that all fits into where he is today.  It's an amazing story and I'm freezing a bit, worried I won't do him justice.  So thank you for bearing with me. Anyway, we've had a few emails from readers interested in learning more about what we're eating. So in the i... [More]

Corey and I originally plotted to escape Vancouver during the winter Olympics.  We'd rent out his apartment to the highest bidder and go to surf school in Costa Rica.  Or maybe we'd take a break from our work-packed days and just lie, device free, on a pier somewhere, next to crystal green water. But Corey's apartment didn't rent and our cat needed ridiculously expensive surgery and a million other things happened to make escaping impossible.  So,we decided - we'd just have to brave the crazy traffic and swarming crowds and irritating tourist masses and hole up inside our house with our vats of egg whites and multitudes of lea... [More]

At our first Crossfit class, our trainer asked Corey and I what it meant to be fit.  I turned to Corey expectantly because he is better at talking.  There's a reason I write. Corey explained that fitness, to him, was the ability to do anything - any kind of physical activity - with ease.  Scale mountains, I thought, sprint when you're 60, race to Starbucks with your four year old, ad nauseum. Dave was nodding energetically, yes, yes.  He told us: most people provide examples of people or events when they define Fitness.  Fit is an Ironman athlete.  Fit is Michael Phelps, minus the bong.  Fit people have ri... [More]