HAPPY ALMOST BIRTHDAY TO ME!!! I love birthdays! And not just because my amazing husband spoils me pretty (right from the get-go, he’s known how to win this princess’s heart) and not just because I get to tear into wrapping paper, which is always a great time, and not just because I get showered in love, which I do so love. Nope, there’s more to it than that. When I was a kid, post-diabetes, my birthday was the one time of the year where I was allowed to indulge in a sweet treat, and by golly that sweet treat became my all-time favourite birthday sweet treat: Ice Cream Cake from none other than Dairy Queen! When I was diagnosed with diabetes 23 years ago, which when you think about it, really isn’t that long ago, diabetic doctors were like nazis when it came to sugar. They gave me a big, […]

Today is one of my most favourite days of the year – and it’s not even my birthday. But it is my big brother Matt’s, which means mine is just three days away! Let the countdown begin! I LOVE MY BIRTHDAY!!! June was a pretty busy month for my mom, with three of her four kids all having birthdays within 13 days of each other, starting with Matt’s, then mine, then my oldest brother Cory’s. Matt is exactly two years and three days older than me, and for the first several years of our lives, we shared birthday parties, which to this day, I have no idea how my mom managed with that many kids terrorizing her house. There were a few years – the sleepover years – when we had our own parties, but once we grew out of those, we were back to sharing our birthday cakes and our birthday get

This runner’s recovery remedies: Hot-cold baths, bath salts, leafy greens, and oodles of comfort chocolate! For the past two days, pretty much from the second I lifted myself out of bed yesterday morning, my body has been at war with me. I walk, it hurts. I laugh, it hurts. I lift the freaking water jug out of the fridge, it hurts! A good hurt, a fatigued, holy crap you pushed us well beyond our limits kind of hurt, the best kind of hurt, but hurt nonetheless. Apparently, my “oh-so-fragile” body doesn’t like that I jumped into a race with hardly any training at all. And for those of you who don’t think you need to train for a 10k, or run more regularly than I was running the last few weeks, think again. My calves are so tight, they’ve lost their jiggle factor; my abs are so clenched, it’s a

A feel-good, race-of-the-year recap: So, you know how I said I was gonna treat Sunday’s race like a regular Sunday 10k easy run? Yeah, that didn’t happen. My competitive juices boiled over right from the get-go; I bolted out of the gate with a 5:15 pace! I tried slowing down, believe me I did. I kept telling myself to reign her in, race your race. But no matter how hard I tried, my pace just would not brake. And I felt great – I LOVE RACING! RACE DAY DETAILS: 7 a.m. BG before: 10.2 (Gu energy gel, no bolus (wouldn’t normally take one of these for a 10k, but my blood sugars dropped two points in a matter of 20 minutes, so just to be on the safe side I took one) –> -50% temporary basal rate Distance: 10 km (10:1 = run 10 minutes, walk 1 minute) Chip time: 57.47

To be clear, I do not like feet, never have, never will. It doesn’t matter if you claim to have the most beautiful, pristine feet in the world, I will find fault with them. I mean, seriously, just look at them. They’re long and spindly, or fat and wide. They’ve got bunions, and calluses, and blisters and toe jam and jaundice-like discolouration and yeah, they stink too. And as such, I’ve never really been one to enjoy a good rubbing of the feet, and don’t even think to ask me to touch your grody foot matter. But that being said, desperate times call for desperate measures. Hello plantar fasciitis, I so have not missed you! So, the overstretched feeling in my right foot did turn out to be a flare up of that not-so-welcomed plantar fasciitis I suffered two years ago. I tried living in denial, thinking it would go