It was about a year ago now that I started on this fitness quest: a few weeks before I met Corey for the first time.  I was running, albeit kind of feebly and somewhat sporadically.  I was learning to tear up the forest paths as a direct way to pound out the stress of single Motherhood and full time career-ism, and I was finding it mildly more effective than immediate wine and cheese pounding the Exact Moment I put my 3 year old  to bed.  I ran the Sun Run in 52 minutes and experienced the rush of accomplishment, exacerbated by my sidekick's sticky Goldfish fingered hug at the end. I remember thinking: I am getting older... [More]

Friday the sun beamed lemon yellow and hard in the December sky; we decided on an "easy" lunchtime run and quick gym workout - maybe just abs?  We would run up to the gym - a short run - and do a quick workout, then turn around and come home.  The gym is only 3 kilometers (1.86 miles) away from home for us, and it's a super easy, downhill run back to the house.  That means, of course, that the way there is purely uphill. The hill to the gym is steep and unrelenting - I have to look down at the sidewalk cracks and concentrate, pumping my arms hard to make it to the top without puking in that nice elderly lady's maincured garden... [More]

Corey and Stefan Kuhn(twitter: @StefanKuhn) have been friends "forever." They attended the same childhood birthday parties in their small town home of Canmore Alberta, and sucked back sliced oranges together during half time at soccer. Stefan is one of the most adept athletes Corey's ever met: immediately able to kick ass at everything from street sign snowball hucking to rock skipping. Stefan is a year younger than Corey but Corey remembers him beating the kids in higher grades at at time when a year makes all the difference in terms of skill, ability and bragging rates. I've yet to meet Stefan but I can't wait to meet him - he sounds ... [More]

I love going to the health food store. I feel like a wizard collecting regents to cast spells...night sage, spiders silk, muscle milk! (wtf). There are brilliantly colored lineups of pills and powders with flexing giants hulking on the labels. It's like a socially accepted opium den for fit people! But seriously... I know very little about supplements and powders and the right mix for me has been an experiment in trial and error. Right now, I'm drinking protein shakes twice a day between meals: a mix of three different brands: ISO Sensation (chocolate fudge and Cafe Brazil) GNC Well Being Be Buff and ISO Femme Vanilla (Kristin's, but the... [More]

Running is uncomfortable, highly so.  Body parts jiggle, compress, collapse and chafe.  The heart pounds and thuds and sweat pours and the whole ordeal is an exercise in tolerating discomfort.  I like to be as comfortable as possible when tolerating discomfort, and over the years I've honed my running gear to a mandatory set.  I can't run without my marshmallow earbuds and my Lululemon tall pants and if my iPod is dead, it's a deal breaker.   Here are my top 5 absolute must haves for long runs in particular. Great Ear Buds The grey earbuds that come with the iPod don't even fit in the hole of my ear.  I can't... [More]