Run Canada Podcast

Jenine LaFayette is the Country Manager for Brooks Running in Canada... and also a super cool human. Her lifelong love affair with the running community started with cheering on her favourite track and field stars as a kid with her parents, and flowed into a career that has allowed her to be equally passionate about marketing for some of Canada's top sportswear brands as well as finding her place...

Jess Tuomela is a former national swim team member turned triathlete. She is sight impaired and works with a guide to compete in para races. Marianne is a triathlete, a former NCAA track runner and a skilled trail and ultra runner. She is Jess' partner and guide who worked together with her most recently to achieve a 5th place finish at the Tokyo Paralympics. These two have the highest levels of t...

Erin Teschuk had an extremely successful high school and university career, setting some pretty impressive records at her alma matter NDSU. She became one of three of the first Canadian women to compete in the steeplechase at the Olympics in Rio in 2016. While Erin's most recent attempt to join Team Canada in Tokyo didn't work out the way she hoped it would, Erin is a shining example of taking big...

Kirsty Beck is a pretty remarkable lady. After a long struggle with her weight she decided she had had enough of being unhappy and committed to making a change. That change started small and led to big things: it led to a life that isn't based around thinking about how her body looks but how it makes her feel and what it has made her capable of accomplishing. Today she has lost over 80 pounds and...

Megan Kuikman has dedicated her education to helping athletes perform better. Working primarily on RED-S and disordered eating in sport, women have been her focus as they are vastly underrepresented in current research. We talk winter nutrition: Megan shares what we can do to help ourselves get through the deep freeze in Canada and fuel ourselves for a strong spring. 

Lynn Keane is a five-time Boston qualifier, an Ironman triathlete and a Lululemon legacy ambassador, but her physical strength only tells half of the story. When he was 23, her son Daniel, who was living with depression, died by suicide. Lynn has turned this awful tragedy into a personal call to action to bring the discussion on mental illness, depression and suicide prevention into the light.

Marissa Papaconstantinou is a two time Paralympian: her first games were in Rio before she turned 17. This past year in Tokyo we watched her bring home the bronze medal in the Women's T64 100 metre and hit double PRs in the 200m. In our interview Marissa used the phrase "learning through challenges" which I think perfectly summarizes her years in the sport. Life has brought her injuries and hardsh...

It's a motivation day with Chiropractor, coach and elite runner Brittany Moran! Brittany is an accomplished marathoner who just set a smoking new PB of 2:33:37 and took 9th female at CIM in December. She is also the creator of StrideWise Coaching and helps people as a chiropractor at The Runners Academy in Toronto. Brittany brings her balanced approach to running and shares her advice for setting...

As we celebrate 100 episodes, I am joined by Heather Gardner, the first female run crew leader in the GTA and creator of Kardia - a boutique fitness studio and community located in Toronto. Heather is the queen of connecting, both in the best of times and the most challenging of times, and has proved without a doubt that community is never cancelled. We are also joined by my friend Melanie Murzeau...

Alycia Butterworth is quite humble about the amount of work, effort and mental fortitude she puts into her steeplechase career. This girl is awesome, and I feel like she should shout her own name a little more. If you saw her race in the Olympics, you know that she has mental and physical fortitude that not a lot of other athletes can match. She is always assessing and analyzing, like the data sci...

In editing of this episode, I realize that I sound a little star struck, but if there is a fan club for Stephanie Case, sign me up. A Human Rights lawyer with the UN, Stephanie focuses her work on areas of conflict. She has lived and helped others in some of the most war torn parts of our world, while continuing to challenge herself physically and mentally through ultra running. She founded Free t...

Encouraged by her awesome dad, Hollie Gordon Lawder combined her passions for mindfulness through movement and reading into her blog and Instagram page Reading on the Run. Hollie is a driven runner who completed her first ultra marathon this year. Her training time also helps her read all the books – more than a hundred this year and last! She's got great recommendations for your next favourite re...

Leslie Sexton took the break in races this past year and a half to focus on the fundamentals - shorter distances and challenging workouts. And it paid off: in 2021 Leslie became the National 5K AND 10K champion. To top off her year, this past weekend she won the Philadelphia Marathon and set a new course record, making her the sixth fastest female marathoner in Canada. 

It's everyone's favourite person, Natalie Pirson! Natalie is very well known in the Winnipeg running community as someone who brings everyone together with her positive, friendly personality. She participates in run clubs all over the city and has recently started her own crew called Connection Through Movement which she hopes will give runners and walkers of all abilities a place to meet and conn...

Welcome to cocktails and conversations with the founders of Chix Run the Six: Shazia Banduk, Chantal Chiarelli, Kim Monroe Roberts and Amanda Richardson. These ladies started Chix Run the Six because they wanted other women to have the chance to experience the connections that they were making on the run and be a part of something special. Having just celebrated their one year anniversary, they re...

Sarah is an enthusiastic runner who has completed races of all distances from the 5K to the Marathon... especially races that have the word "Disney" in them. Her passion for running is only matched by her passion for makeup: Sarah creates and shares makeup tutorials and info on her youtube channel, Not your Typical Dollface, so I got her to share some of her best product tips to keep us all lookin...

Not only is Malindi Elmore the Canadian Women's record holder in the marathon, she finished 9th in the 2021 women's Olympic marathon. Malindi's race day motto "patience is power" took her through the grueling race, but also holds an even larger significance: 17 years may have passed since her last Olympic appearance, but she sure made up for lost time. We talk all about her experience from start t...

Mel Paauwe was inspired to become a coach after her own coach brought out potential in her that she didn't know was there. She founded We Run the World Coaching and now she doesn't just inspire her own clients, but a whole run community.  Mel is an impressive duathlete who kills it as a distance runner as well. We talked all about racing, traveling, coaching, breaking tapes, and the life in betwee...

Gabriela DeBues Stafford and I like to talk and we hadn't caught up since she returned to Canada from Scotland at the start of the pandemic so we had a lot of ground to cover. But we managed to focus and we dug in hard to the Olympics. Gabriela talks about what it was like to attend the Olympics with her sister Lucia Stafford, how her races went out tactically, and how she is a wholly different hu...

A lifelong athlete, Joy SpearChief-Morris started out doing every sport before focusing her talents on the track. Joy followed her heart and her goals from UBC to the University of Western Ontario, to the Santa Barbara Track Club, and back to Ontario again. Like so many Olympic hopefuls, she fought through COVID training on a will to survive and when she got to the Trials she didn't get the win sh...

Dayna Pidhoresky does a deep dive on her experience preparing for and competing in the marathon at the Tokyo Olympics. Dayna's win at the 2019 Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon earned her a ticket to compete, but the guts and spirit it actually took to get to the start line is where her story really begins. This episode will remind you what it means to be a competitor and how far running with...

For this episode, we hop into the way back machine and do a relisten to my 2019 interview with Olympian Dayna Pidhoresky. This interview was hot off the heels of her win at the Olympic Trials at the Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon. Dayna and I talked about her road to this big win and how all of the adversity, grit, determination and challenging finishes led her to be ready for this amazing...

If you need a daily dose of happiness, here it is. Rae Sunshine is so full of light and joy, it's right in her name. Rae is a fantastic storyteller so I won't ruin it, but her journey to triathlon started with her dragging herself on crutches to the bike shop to purchase a bike that she couldn't even ride yet. Now Rae proudly proclaims herself an athlete: she is a dedicated triathlete who is deepl...

For episode three of our August how it started how it's going, we talk about a subject very close to my own heart: being a race volunteer. Amy Li was just a girl who started out hating running but grew to love it. In fact, she grew to love it so much, she wanted to play a role in everyone's race day, so she got involved as a volunteer. Today Amy holds multiple volunteer roles and she and I chat ab...

For our second "How it started, how it's going" episode, I chat with B.C. runner Siobhan McManus. Siobhan has a lot of marathons under her belt, but with the guidance and support of her running coach Malindi Elmore, she looked towards a new challenge.... a 5000 metre track race. This masters athlete had never set foot on a track before; but her story will show you that even if you are also brand n...