Blog

I Choose Joy

I will choose joy… Completing my 20th marathon, 19 years after my first. Travelling to a safe race, amidst a pandemic.  Finishing my 21st healthy and injury-free build (I have 1 DNF).  Running my fourth world major marathon and placing 5th masters. Loving every day of the training build. Completing every component of my training program – every stride, strength …

Read More »

2020

When asked to write the 2020 iRun finale, I knew it would be a challenge. Even Oxford Dictionaries found it difficult to summarize 2020, describing it as “a year which cannot be neatly accommodated in one single word.” So it lived up to one of its words of the year, “unprecedented,” by choosing a list of words instead of just one.  Pandemic, …

Read More »

Good Health for the Season

Krista DuChene unpacks her nutrition tips with plenty of dairy for a mentally and physically healthy holiday season With the long, cold and dark winter days ahead of us coupled with the uncertainties of our current situation, we must aim to help prevent potentially negative effects on our health. Physical activity, good sleep, drinking water, practising mindfulness, living with gratitude, …

Read More »

The Marathon Mom Guide to our Pandemic Winter

With winter ahead of us and the continued unknowns of the COVID-19 pandemic, we must prepare more than ever to help prevent or lessen the winter blues. Some people are understandably already feeling very stressed and anxious due to the changes, losses, and uncertainty of our jobs, education, family plans, social lives, and travel restrictions. Adding the long, dark, and …

Read More »

Trail Ultra Debut

54 km. 5 hr 4 min. 1,224 m Elev. Gain. Pic: Jodi Gallo. After only a few specific workouts in August followed by decent back to back Time Trials, a 36:08 10 km Sept 12 and a 17:10 5 km Sept 19, it was time to shift gears and get on the trails to prepare for my first ultra. The …

Read More »

Running with the Boys, and other Wins from a Lifetime of Firsts

Endurance Tap fuels me

Mike Gill pacing me in our 10 km Time Trial. Picture: Reid Coolsaet. Do you know what I loved doing as a child? Competing. Competing with the boys. Competing with the boys because I could.  I still remember the day my dad asked my sister and I if we wanted to play hockey like our three older brothers. I was …

Read More »

Back to School

August 18, 2020 We’re 5 months into this ugly covid19 pandemic and getting a little (or a lot) weary, anxious, tired, bored, discouraged, depressed, sad, …you name it. There are no big races on the calendar, the zooming is getting old but here to stay, and we’re done with the jokes and conversations about sourdough bread, toilet paper, haircuts, hand …

Read More »

Krista DuChene on a New Way to Train

I’ve incorporated water activity in my marathon training for nearly as long as I’ve been racing marathons. The first time I went to our local Wayne Gretzky Sports Centre to use the pool was in 2004 when I had my first injury. I had debuted in Niagara Falls in 2002 in 3:28 and completed my second marathon in Ottawa in …

Read More »