Our bodies are feeling a little battered and bruised lately; trying to make the most of summer and inspired by the exploits of the Tour de France riders to go for long runs and bike rides. Our regular yoga practice goes a long way to strengthen our muscles and ease those aches and pains; Ryan Leech, lululemon Elite Ambassador, certified yoga instructor and mountain biker extraordinaire, is taking it to the next level.

ride and reach

In August, Ryan will be leading a 15-person Ride & Reach retreat in Canmore, Alberta. The retreat will feature:

• Yoga for cyclists workshop at Gaia Studio
• Mountain biking skill progression at the Nordic Centre
• Guided all mountain ride
• Post ride yoga flow at Gaia Studio
• Dinner & social at the Paintbox Lodge

6 important questions

what: Ride & Reach mountain bike and yoga
when: August 6, 2011
where: Gaia Collaborative Medicine, Inc. Canmore, AB, Canada
who: Ryan Leech
how: contact the Gaia Clinic to sign up
why:

• meet amazing people
• be proactive about taking care of your body
• improve your technique on the mountain and in the studio
• to encourage Ryan to run more of these workshops

what's going on locally?

With only 15 spots available, this may seem like a bit of a tease but we thought we'd share the love and hopefully get a little love in return. If you know of other workshops like this one in your area, let us know. If you need help finding yoga (closer to home than Canmore), your local lululemon store can connect you with yoga studios and styles.

Time stood still. I was floating through the air upside down and actually took the time to think that I might die. I thought of the many things I still wanted to do, places I wanted to see. The cool things I was happy I’d done, and the many people in my life with so much love to share. It was not my day.

A second later I hit the ground head first from 10 metres above. My back explodes at L-1 like a pop can a kid jumps on and the vertebrae above and below break in nine places. I am stuck upside down in wind blown corn snow up to my ears and cannot move.

I am airlifted out of the glacier to the Whistler Health Clinic where my fears are confirmed Although I am alive, I am paralyzed from the waist down. Later that night I am sent down to Vancouver to be patched up to live in a wheelchair for the rest of my life.

Luckily, the doctors were wrong, and my spinal cord injury is incomplete vs. complete. But luck is an understatement. Nine years later, although I am considered 40% paralyzed below the waist, I have learned to walk again, learned to cross country ski, and even learned to snowboard again. Not everyone can do what I did. Most people with a spinal cord injury do not have the opportunity to get any muscles back and even if they do, they don’t get enough of what they need to walk.

So, I am lucky, but I worked hard at it. I set goals. I stayed positive and looked at the world with what I could do, not what I couldn't do. I took up yoga and believed that I could think my way into a pose even if I couldn't do the pose. I thought to myself to just try every day to do more, to learn more, to be strong and understand that if I fall down, it is because I am pushing the limits. In fact, I learned to walk again by falling down and getting back up and falling some more. Metaphorically I believe this is what success is all about – falling down and getting back up until you don’t fall down anymore.

Staying positive and looking for the positive aspect in everything I do is my key. I like to say I can turn two negatives into a positive. It sounds corny, but I believe it and I believe in myself. It doesn't mean I don't ask for help. It means that because I try to help myself in a positive manner, others will believe in me and help me too. All I need to do is ask.

Last month, I received an email from my super cool friend, Olympian Nicole Forrester, asking for people to climb the CN Tower with other national team members to raise money for the United Way - a charity I have always believed in. They help people ask for a better life, thus helping communities and families throughout the world.

I wasn't sure if I could do it, so I drove down to Vancouver and trained in a stairway doing 20 flights at a time and taking the elevator down and doing it seven more times. I figured I could do it, the 147 flights of stairs (1776 steps), in about 35 minutes.

Tyler and his team about to climb the CN Tower!

A group shot of the amazing athletes before climbing the CN Tower for United Way.

The team cheering for a great cause.

When I took the challenge two weeks ago I blew my attainable goal out of the water by clocking a time just under 20 minutes. Kayak Olympian and World Champion Adam Van Koeverden did it in about 14 minutes. Paralympian Stephanie Reid Lakatos ran it in about 17 minutes on her below the knee carbon fiber prosthetic, young Leah Robinson did it like me with some paralysis in her right leg and Wilfredo (Papito) Moré Wilson did it with just one leg and two crutches - was I ever impressed! As you can see, we are all capable of achieving greatness. As Muhammad Ali said, "It isn't the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it's the pebble in your shoe."

So here I am: climbing new mountains every day. Although there are several hundred things I can't do, there are several millions I can continue to do. I can't run and I can't jump but I can get up and be happy every day. I can set goals and achieve the seemingly impossible and I am not afraid to try. So in March of 2010, look for me racing in cross country skiing at the Paralympic games. I hope you are able to climb your mountains and leave the pebbles behind.

Namaste - Tyler

Check out Tyler Mosher's fan Facebook page for updates: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Tyler-Mosher/42536243617

Clara Hughes is an amazing Canadian cyclist and speedskater who has won multiple Olympic medals in addition to many other athletic achievements. She also happens to be an amazing person, and her list of personal accomplishments and commitment to programs such as Right to Play (an international humanitarian organization that uses sport to improve health, develop life skills, and foster peace for children and communities in some of the most disadvantaged areas of the world) is just as long as her list of athletic titles. We are very proud to call her a lululemon elite ambassador.

In preparation for the upcoming World Cup Speed Skating season, Clara completed a 19-day hike in the mountains of California for altitude training where she and her husband hiked to heights of 14,200 feet and camped in windy conditions with the temperature hitting -17 degrees celcius at times. Why would someone put themselves through something like this, you ask? Read on to find out, in Clara's own words:

A friend of mine recently suggested I take up golf. It was after an email I had sent, letting him know I had to come out of the mountains in order to pick up an ice axe, crampons and snow shoes. Why all this gear? My husband Peter and I were attempting to complete a desert mountain traverse that few, if any, have completed. When I think back to day number two of the 19-day hike, as Peter and I huddled beside a fallen tree in futile attempt to get out of the raging wind and -17c temperature to eat our dinner, I think that maybe that friend is right. We crouched down on a nameless ridge up at 10,800 feet wondering just where was the warmth we had traveled so far from Quebec to enjoy. There were many days on this trip that left me questioning my rational for such endeavors.

The place I'm talking about is a little known, little hiked, mountain range in California. First with the Inyo and then the White Mountains, it's a desert range that runs about 200 kilometers as the crow flies. It begins at an abandoned mining camp called Cerro Gordo on a rough dirt road that branches off the highway to Death Valley. The elevation along our route along the range never dropped below 7,000 feet and reached peaks up to 14,200 feet. Because it's the desert there was no water water to be found, save for a few springs. But we didn't see any of those. Our sole source of drinking water was snow, melted over an open fire or the cook stove. Though purified or boiled, it was still at times dirty, smokey and hard to swallow. It's amazing what you drink when you're thirsty.

This 'trip' was my idea of altitude training. No team, no guide, no group- just me and Peter out there to fend for ourselves against the elements. It's a situation I crave compared to my normal existence as an athlete. It's organic and it's real. There's something about being self-contained and the challenge this situation entails that thrills me. When I think back to two years ago when the National Team funded the purchase and installment of an altitude room at my training location in Calgary, Alberta, it makes me laugh. I lasted approximately two hours in that set-up. I woke up, gasping for air, from a nightmare that had Darth Vader (the ultimate Star Wars villain) haunting my room. The sound of the generators made me crazy. I have made many sacrifices for sport, but some are just too much for me. Thus, this idea to live and train high that our team physiologist suggested that I decided to take to my own extreme.

While packing for the trip we prepared for mild to cool weather. In fact, we could see the range from our friend's home in the town of Bishop as we planned and packed. It took two days and we spent much of the time looking up at the massive range spread before us, wondering how much snow waited for us up there, or if we'd run out of snow pack to melt.

With eight days of food we set off for the first leg of the traverse, and I now know what it's like to weigh 220 pounds. Those first few steps with the burden of gear and supplies on my back made me feel like a pack mule. It was up to us to make sure the carefully measured and planned contents of the backpack would get us to a food cache we stashed about 100 kilometers ahead in the pinyon forest on a 4 wheel drive road a few miles below the mountain crest. We would be taking a layover day at the cache so I packed a few treats in – beer, chips, salsa, cookies – along with a 5 gallon container of water.

The first day was hard and it remained hard for the rest of the trip. There were no trails but at times we could follow along an abandoned mining road. The rest of the hike was navigating with topographic maps while trying to find the best route through the mountainous terrain choked with sage bushes and little-leaf mahogany trees, enormous boulder fields that formed ridges up peaks and at times, some very sketchy snow fields on the steep northeastern slopes off the highest peaks.

My husband and I don't really care to sleep in tents. Instead, we prefer sleeping out under the stars, bringing along a lightweight tarp for shelter in case it happens to snow. For some some reason, this trip we brought a small tent made for one person but big enough for two, 'just in case'. The weather is always unpredictable in the Spring and it happened that instead of sleeping out, which we did on only two nights, we found ourselves taking shelter from the raging winds that made camping out in temperatures averaging from -3 to -17 a little more than I bargained for. We'd finish a grueling day of walking, navigating, climbing and/or tearing through unforgiving desert brush and set up that tent, working as a team so that the paper thin shelter did not blow away with the relentless winds.

From 6pm on everyday, we'd cram into the space that offered minimal protection but at least conserved some of the warmth our tired bodies gave off. Into the cocoons of our sleeping bags we'd go, Peter beginning the 3-hour process of melting the snow we'd hack away from hardened packs with our ice-axes, first for tea, then dinner and ultimately enough for two quarts of water each to get us through the next day. It was excruciating to squeeze into that tent every night, not being able to stretch and barely able to shift positions because of the space allowed and the amount of clothing we wore in our sleeping bags. Muscles ached and stiffened, and I thought many times of the amount of stretching I do before, during and after training. This was the antithesis of my life as an athlete and exactly where I wanted to be.

We slept little because all camps were above 9,000 feet, the highest at 13,400 feet. Such thin air makes sleep restless, and when combined with the roaring wind tearing away at the tent, it was as if we slept within a battle field in full tilt. That same wind raged day after day, with gusts blowing so hard we would sway back and forth in unison. We wore toques and neck gators, pulled high, while pulling the hoods of our wind jackets over our heads.

Native Americans used this entire area for hunting which was evident by the continual pieces of arrowheads found along the way. They ranged from tiny ones that, I assume, were used for birds, to points discovered above 13,000 as we walked mile after mile. Here, there were many signs of Bighorn Sheep, with droppings and resting spots found in the highest reaches of the White Mountains.

With so many challenging, beautiful moments during the journey, it's difficult to pick just one that stands out from the rest. But if I had to choose, it would be the penultimate day, a thirteen hour effort. We slept at 12,500ft the previous night, and our little tent bore the brunt of the strongest winds yet, threatening to snap its poles. With filthy hiking boots wrapped in plastic bag in the foot of my bag to keep them from freezing yet again, we rose at first light and brewed coffee, remaining in our down bags. The rising sun added some warmth inside the tent, but outside, in the wind, it was bitterly cold. We forced ourselves to get an early start.

All day we walked methodically, rarely getting to sit for more than the quickest of rests as we'd get too chilled otherwise, nibbling on trail mix and candies for fuel. We climbed even higher on the plateau to 13,000 then dropped two thousand feet at a placed called the 'jump off' to the point where we would begin climbing Mt. Montgomery, the most technical climb on the range. Its steep ridges were draped in snow. As I looked up from the saddle below, knowing we had long passed the point of no return, I gasped at the intimidating grandeur. The closer we looked, the route became evident. Without snow, it would have been a technical scramble, but this was late spring, so away went the hiking poles and out came the ice axes. It didn't look easy, but at least it looked like we would be able to climb along its ridge if we were careful and methodical. We'd step onto steep snow fields and work our way from one rocky outcrop to another. Just when I thought we'd reach the last rocky ridge and the summit, there'd be another one to get around. Back onto another snow field and steep drop-off below to another outcrop. On and on it went.

Now, let me be clear and say that this wasn't necessarily supposed to be an adventure hike so much as merely a solid base of high altitude exercise forming the foundation for the upcoming skating season. So when I found myself on those terrifyingly steep slopes, mirroring Peter's kicks into the snow and placements of the ice axe, I have to admit I questioned the situation. Thoughts like 'what the hell am I doing up here with the Olympics in nine months!' turned into 'who cares about the Olympics I just want to get off this ridge alive!' and I learned, as I have many times before, what is really important.

I also realized just how much my years as an athlete have given me. Outside of the experiences, the victories, the moments I will never forget, they have given me a resilience that I believe stronger than ever can and will get me through any situation I find myself in in life. I learned how to use that ice axe and use it well, up on those ridges, because I am an athlete. I kept the intense focus hour after hour, feeling I could go on for days if I had to, because I am an athlete. I kept calm and rational even in those moments of intense fear, because I am an athlete. I followed and mimicked someone more skilled than me efficiently and confidently, because I am an athlete.

I can't imagine a better place or experience to prepare me for the stress, the unknown and the thrills of the journey ahead. Because I survived the 250 kilometer traverse and survived it well, I can't wait to see what the next nine months throw at me. Watch out, Tiger Woods!

- Clara Hughes