Grand Prize Winner Lizz Cogan Talks About Her Prize Weekend with Paul Plakas

Lizz Cogan (lizz.cogan) was the 1st Grand Prize Winner in the 2010 X-Weighted National Challenge. She won a weekend with Paul Plakas at his annual fitness retreat in Canmore, Alberta.

She was flown out to Canmore, and got to spend lots of one-on-one time with Paul, where she was able to pick up advice about how to continue on her journey. We asked her to fill us in on how the weekend went...

I had an amazing time, it was just great, but I was really, really sore afterwards! It was really neat to hang out with Paul and we got to spend a lot of time with him.

I took my friend Alice from work to enjoy the experience with me, because she had been instrumental in helping me reach my goals (Lizz lost 35 pounds while doing the National Challenge). She was the one that dragged me into the competition.

Climbing the mountain with Paul was pretty good, and fortunately for me Alice went quite a bit slower than I did so I got a few more breaks while I was waiting for her, at least in the first part of the climb.

Canmore was awesome, it was so beautiful up in the mountains. It is definitely worth a trip out there!

I learned a lot through being at the retreat, and it was also very useful for reinforcing me on things I already knew and just needed to be reminded of. It was an inspiring trip, and I got lots of great nutrition tips from Paul.

One of the first things we got to do when we arrived in Canmore was go on a helicopter tour, which was just amazing. Seeing the moutains like that was just incredible, and I was glad that when we were in the air nobody pointed out which mountain we were going to climb - if they had I would have been scared to do it!

Paul took us to a playground for a workout, which was really fun. He showed us a workout that didn't require fancy machines and just mostly used our bodyweight. He gave me a rock to add to my bodyweight though! We used the monkey bars and the swing set, it was fun!

Alice had an amazing time, we are both totally stoked and loved showing the pictures to everyone at work! It was an amazing experience. Now I'm back at work, it seems almost surreal that I got to be there with Paul at the retreat.

We'd like to thank our sponsors Travel Alberta and Tourism Canmore for helping us to put this great prize together.

Also, thanks to Alpine Helicopter for donating that amazing tour over the mountain tops.

And last but definitely not least, we'd like to thank Paul Plakas for his tremendous generosity in helping with this prize.