The town of Jordan River, is a small settlement on the west coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, located approximately 70 km (43 mi) west of Victoria. Originally founded as a logging camp it is now home to Vancouver Island’s second largest hydro-electric plant. The town itself is easy to miss, home to only 100 permanent residents with no cell phone service (there are a few points where you can pick up US service from the San Juan Islands across the strait). The settlement is most known among outdoor enthusiasts for winter surfing (although locals are known to be EXTRA territorial of their waves) and the Juan de Fuca trail - a 47 kilometre/ 29 mile long wilderness hiking trail located within Juan de Fuca Provincial Park.

As with everything I am not an expert - but over the years this is something I google almost every morning before I go for a run. The more comfortable you feel the more likely you are to stick with this! A few notes: I am Canadian through and through and do not do well in hot temperatures so I will stop running outdoors when the temperature is above 20°c/68°f - I will either run in the early morning before the sun (with a headlamp or very well lit, safe route that I know well) or (and I hate this) hop on a treadmill if I am in training. Or I will swap my cardio and cycle or swim or jump rope or do a workout class. I also have run at temperatures below -20°c/-4°f and I would not say it is particularly enjoyable but with the right layers it is, to me, better than running on a treadmill indoors.

My mother is a many-times Boston Marathon runner, her sister a world champion IronMan competitor and as for me… I like to put heavy things on my back and walk uphill. Moving fast has never come naturally to me. But about a decade ago, to distance myself from my “freshman 15” I decided that I, like my mother, would be a runner. She is three inches taller than me, her hips line up with my armpits and our running technique would be akin to watching a race between a gazelle and a pug (I am not the gazelle in this comparison in case that was not clear). I remember the day I decided to start running. It is 2.5 miles from my parents’ house to the highway (they live on a farm, in the country, on the top of a hill) and I ambitiously (read: naïvely) thought that 5 miles would be a good starting distance. I made it down the driveway, too