christmas in kelowna

i just got back from visiting my very most favorite sister (mfs) and my beautiful little red-headed nephew ben. it was so great! the flight out was uneventful - arrived in kelowna just after 8:30 and was met by mfs at the airport. saturday morning i got to watch 'the benster' open his presents. i love the fact that he didn't tear through them - he stopped to play with each one of them.

christmas day we just spent hanging around eating. i think me and bob (dina's husband) found ourselves grazing every 20 minutes or so. good grief! boxing day had me feeling like a stuffed turkey, so i waddled myself out onto the 'mission creek greenway' trail for an hour+. what a gorgeous place to run - i must have stopped every 10min or so just to check out the scenery. after that i didn't feel so bad as i indulged in several of the many types of homemade cookies my sister offered . . .

and really, the whole visit was perfect. i got to spend time with my sister and i got to know 'the benster' a little better. i wasn't very good about taking pics, but here are a few . . .

check out the 'chicken' at the top of mfs's tree !!!

bob putting together the workbench at 8 in the morning . . .

alright - who got the kid punching gloves . . .


the bat cave was a big hit !

i love this picture . . .

it really was the best christmas i've had in a long long time. i'm already making plans to get back out there this summer.

thanks mfs - i love you !

not again . . .

so i leave for kelowna to see my very most favorite sister in about an hour and a half. and what am i doing instead of packing (cuz most of you know i haven't even started that) - i'm blogging! naturally!

thursday was a hilly snowshoe run day. did a couple of hours up k2 and through glenn haffy. still not a lot of tracks ahead of me and the snow just south of 9 was pretty deep! very beautiful though (the woods, not me!)

no friday night club this week due to the holiday, but the gym was pretty packed thursday and a bunch of us made plans for the upcoming 'winter crossfit games' put on up in collingwood early march!!! details to follow!

friday me and christine did our annual 'christmas eve' run - a relaxed-pace hour+ on the humber. and then followed by our annual 'trip to timmies'.

here's a pic of our lovely server . . .

mmmm - chili

AND - my dions now have big sisters!!! after winning 'caledon snowshoe salesman of the year', cuz i've ordered 17 pairs so far, coach spaff sent me a set of frames for stomping through deep pow! how fucking sweet is that!?

i've received some interesting gifts from clients this year. love the chicken calendar and the 'dora' ornament, and am pretty sure i'll be in a diabetic coma from the truffles, but what the hell do i do with the underwear . . .

and as for this one, well, i'll leave you all guessing . . . but thanks mark - awesome gift . . .

okay, so it's now 2:30 and i have just over an hour to pack, shower, shave my legs and possibly get distracted at least 6 more times before the moose picks me up. have a merry christmas everybody!!! i'll be working at gaining 5 pounds at my sisters !!!

wahoooo !

more snow

wednesday was spectacular on the humber. threw on the dions and ran for almost an hour. i think i was smiling the whole way.

thursday was another attempt at 'speed work' - ahhh, coach spaff has such faith that i will eventually get faster. regardless, it was a little dicey trying to pick up the pace on a snowy, slushy, somewhat hilly section of duffy's lane, but i did my best. couple of gorgeous shots taken in palgrave forest on the way back.

friday night club was all about deadlifts and thrusters. here's a shot of the incredible, (and adorable) kane maxing out his back squat at 400lbs !!!!! good grief!!! check out the bend in the bar . . .

and this photo was at the suggestion of fedon - a piece of artistic mastery.

saturday after crossfit, me, elora and the glp did a good hour on the humber. trail conditions were perfect, and elora only wiped out once !

sunday was another story. the instructions from coach spaff were as follows:

3:45 ~ Longest run in a long, long time. Enjoy it. As long as your foot is okay in the snowshoes, I'd like to see you get as much of this run in as possible on snowshoes. Find a good hilly route and focus on running at a comfortable enough pace that you'll be able to hold it for the entire run. Be sure to take a pack with you and if you want to mix it up and do part of the run on snowshoes and carry them in the pack for part, that is fine.

'what could go wrong?' so after ghetto gym finished up, i procrastinated a bit and finally packed my stuff up for a 'long winter's run'. i threw the dions in my salomon pack, along with some cooked sweet potatoes, chopped apples and a couple bottles of coconut water. i also threw my gators and an extra pair of sox - not thinking i'd need either after the excellent trail conditions on saturday. i drove over to humber station and initially figured i could run a couple sections without the dions - not so ! NOBODY had been out before me, and i found myself running in at least 6" of fresh pow. quick! throw on the dions ! okay, better, and i'm sure there's bound to be tracks the next section over. got to the gore, and again, NOBODY ! argh! AND it sure didn't help that there were tons of heavy, snow-laden branches hanging over the trail.

well, i'm positive there will have been someone leading up k2. ARGH! where the hell is everybody!? where the hell is the japanese zamboni crew?? they're always out here! i made it to cooli's in an hour and was dead! crap, and i still had almost 3 more to go! BUT WAIT - there are tracks leading down into glenn haffy - yippee - NO WAIT - these idiots were not walking single file - they're walking side-by-side - i'm going to scream!! and now my right foot is numb - i can't feel my fucking toes - so change your sox stoopid and put those gators on. fat lot of good they're doing you sitting in your pack! okay, calm down! it's a beautiful day and just keep reminding yourself that a couple of months ago you couldn't run at all because you dropped a barbell on your toe and broke it ! soooooooo, i didn't quite make it to hwy 9 before i got to turn around. the way home seemed a little smoother, but boy was i getting tired. i wiped out a few times but eventually made my way back to the little red mazda, whereupon i fell in the snowbank and just lay there for a few minutes.

running time was 3:46 and it almost killed me. but like the captain's said to me many times before, 'dora, what would you rather be doing . . .'

so true cap, so true!

my fave christmas movie of all time . . .

Where do you think you're going? Nobody's leaving. Nobody's walking out on this fun, old-fashioned family Christmas. No, no. We're all in this together. This is a full-blown, four-alarm holiday emergency here. We're gonna press on, and we're gonna have the hap, hap, happiest Christmas since Bing Crosby tap-danced with Danny fucking Kaye. And when Santa squeezes his fat white ass down that chimney tonight, he's gonna find the jolliest bunch of assholes this side of the nuthouse.

Hey! If any of you are looking for any last-minute gift ideas for me, I have one. I'd like Frank Shirley, my boss, right here tonight. I want him brought from his happy holiday slumber over there on Melody Lane with all the other rich people and I want him brought right here, with a big ribbon on his head, and I want to look him straight in the eye and I want to tell him what a cheap, lying, no-good, rotten, four-flushing, low-life, snake-licking, dirt-eating, inbred, overstuffed, ignorant, blood-sucking, dog-kissing, brainless, dickless, hopeless, heartless, fat-ass, bug-eyed, stiff-legged, spotty-lipped, worm-headed sack of monkey shit he is! Hallelujah! Holy shit! Where's the Tylenol?

so it started snowing on sunday, and pretty much hasn't stopped since. me and moose went for a 90min run through palgrave and had a blast. he even let me play the princess card by giving me a piggyback over a real swampy section! crap, i could barely get my stoopid inflexible legs around his back and was kinda just hanging off his neck! and we almost fell in - good thing he's 'strong like moose' . . .


monday i hit the dreaded trainer for an hour and then did a sweet 6k snowshoe run. felt amazing! followed all that up with a great cf workout devised by miss elora. the plan was to do 250 push-ups, and every time you stopped, you had to do 10 jumping squats. i ended up completing 200, so i guess i stopped 20 times! oh ya, the triceps are just starting to stiffen up as i type.


even more snow today! headed out directly from the treehouse, and up humber station to the palgrave trail. figured it was safer than driving over, despite having to do some road.

it was so bee-oo-tiful in there, with the only other tracks being richards' from his ski commute to work. i managed a solid 90 min. - with definitely no need for leg strengthening stuff tonight, that's for sure!

oh ya - figured i'd add this shot for my favorite trail trash partner. this one's for you les . . .


10 more days till i leave for kelowna !!!

finally, a picture in the tire . . .

friday night club and we all did 'jackie'. it's not what you think - stoopid digger! 1000m row, 50 thrusters (okay, i can see why you might think the wrong thing) and 30 pull-ups - fuck i'm sorry i ever learned how to do these things! THEY SUCK and i keep steve'ing my poor hands! the shot below is one of me rowing, but not from last night. kool pic though.

poor luca was in a bit of a grump but cheered up when i told him that he 'did' jackie the quickest! and finally, i was able to convince father jimmie and the mighty alex to haul out the 540lb tire so we could get our pic taken in it! love this shot!

on saturday, me and homey had made plans to meet on humber station to go for a '3 hour tour' of the bruce trail. i was just about to leave when the phone rang. it was homey. 'dora, i'll be a few minutes late, i have to take the dog out for a shit.' alrightee then. we did get going finally just after 11:30 and the temp was perfect for shorts. we came across our friends, the asian hikers, a few times along the way and finally had the trail to ourselves once we crossed into glenn haffy. here's a beauty shot just before the first switchback north of 9.

the plan for the day was a 3:15 run, so we decided to turn around at 1:37. we were hoping to reach this BEFORE the second switchback, but that was not to be. argh! oh well, we were better men for doing it and here's a good shot from the top.

the legs held out pretty good right up until the 'last block' from the gore over to our cars. at this point my butt was screaming and my hammies were about 2 seconds away from cramping! oww! but we made it - WOOHOO!

great day and super fun run. ended up with 3:10, cuz for some reason we were 4 minutes faster coming back. must be true what robbie says about it being all downhill.

thanks homey - loved running with you again!

palgrave forest

did a couple easy runs in the forest this week. bee-ootiful !


long run of 3+ hours planned for saturday.

'keep on running'

hello snow . . .

christine and i were determined to do some snowshoeing today, so we got in the car and headed north. conditions in hockley seemed rather slim, so we kept going. once we got past 89, it started to look a bit more promising. when we finally pulled into the parking lot of mansfield, we knew we'd hit pay dirt ! AND, when we met up with richard and barb just finishing a ski, we knew we had it made . . .

we quickly donned the shoes and made our way out onto 6" of fresh pow! it was beautiful and i belted out a loud 'whoop' as i let the dions carry me across the snow.

awesome pic of christine looking out over the ridge . . .

we messed around for over an hour and couldn't stop commenting on how amazing it was to be out. at one point, we came across a guy wearing full camou gear and toting a cross-bow. he replied, 'no' when christine asked if he'd had any luck. we then decided that the deer had the last laugh, as we spotted, not 1, but 3 of them, following his tracks a little deeper into the forest! hahaha! and of course, we just HAD to take a pic of us by this sign . . .


what a day !

'life is good'

3 more weeks

and i'll be in kelowna - spending Q'time with this adorable little redhead !

i received an email last week from a former client - LOVE getting stuff like this. when i first met pat, she was one of my 'spinners'. i used to give her a hard time for yawning everytime she got on a bike in one of my classes. she ended up hiring me on as a trainer and that lead to a lot of good times - and hard work. at first, she'd show up in assorted 'beer' t-shirts and baggy sweats. she even smoked! she and her (now) husband craig would quit drinking, and she would quit smoking, for the month of january. i guess i kinda wore off on her after awhile, as she totally gave up that nasty habit, and started teaching spin and fitness classes, and she became a personal trainer. AND, she started 'jogging'. anyways, i just want to pass on this email, as i absolutely love when i can motivate people . . .

"So there I was last night, on the King Side road running towards the town line, jogging in the dark, (on my own, as Craig refuses to run this route in the dark) dodging puddles, potholes, traffic and whom knows what I did not see (dog poop and dead animals is what I imagine), wearing my head lamp, thinking WHAT AM I DOING OUT HERE - and one word came into my head - Kendra!! Then my head lamp came away from elastic, I stopped cursing you, then I stumbled a little grabbing everything , and fortunately came out unscathed able to finish the rest of my run- All I can say is - THANKS A LOT :-)"

friday night club was the best! me, lia and sara did the 'squat ladder' - owww! made 25 complete rounds +21 for a total of 346 with the 45lb barbell. good gawd i felt that the whole weekend! here's a great shot of 'house of pain' - the club's resident expert on everything . . .

and our traditional post workout photo . . .


4 of us hit the palgrave/bruce trail on saturday. even managed to get moose to join us! went from humber station, up k2, and up and up the dingle. little bit of snow on the ground and the temp was pretty good.

moose kept bugging me about my 'munchkin' sox - ha - they'll look great in rochester/michegan when we do the snowshoe race in february with the captain!

so, another fab day out on the trails - and it just wouldn't have been complete without a round of coffee and snacks in palgrave!


thanks guys! that was fun!!!