Want to mingle with ex-NHLers and Canadian Olympians, meet local media figures and watch some exciting 3-on-3 ice hockey all in one day while contributing to a great cause?

Look no further, 94.7 Hits FM’s 2008 Montreal Media Celebrity Hockey Marathon is being held on Sat May 17th, from 7am to midnight, at Excellent Ice in Kirkland (2950 Edmond. Tel: 514-695-4368). Entrance is FREE and open to the public.

There will be food, drinks, after-game parties and raffles with great prizes to be given away. 100% of proceeds are going to the Lakeshore General Hospital Foundation. Highlight of the day will be the 5pm All-Star game which will feature ex-NHLers and Canadian Olympians! Come make some noise and cheer on these athletes.

Some members of the iLovetoPlay.com team will be on-site and hope to see you there as well!

Luca Toni, who plays soccer for Bayern Munich and the Italian National Team, is a great striker - one of the world’s best. He was a leading goal scorer in Serie A for the past few years and is now top of the scorer’s table in the Bundesliga. Now even though he’s a great player to watch, haven’t you had enough of his strangely-repetitive goal celebration? He has had the same goal celebration, over and over again, for every goal he’s scored, for the last 3 years. He does the “this is crazy” hand gesture on the right side of his head, takes a few steps to wind up, and then pumps his fist into the air. What’s the deal Luca?! It’s getting weird.

Yesterday he scored the 3 goals in a 3-0 win over Hannover. He did it for all 3 goals! Check it out.

StatsCan recently published alarming findings stating that only 28% of Canadians (aged 15 and over) practice a sport at least once a week. Yikes! That figure is down by 6% when compared to results from 10 years ago. Video games, long work hours or packed schedules to blame? Perhaps, but let’s not take for granted that in the past decade, most Canadians tend to turn to their computers or handheld devices for organizing their leisure activities like buying movie tickets, checking restaurant reviews, booking holidays, etc. Why not do the same for your sports life?

That’s exactly where iLovetoPlay.com fits in! No more excuses as to not having anyone to play with or not knowing where to go to reserve ice time / find a team to join or organize a game of pick-up. We’re here to solve those problems for you, in your sport, in your city.

On a more positive note, jogging, indoor training, cycling and other traditionally solo activities were not included in the aforementioned study*; so us Canadians are not as inactive as the study makes us out to be! More and more, people are jogging and training in pairs or groups, mainly for motivational reasons and to give a social twist to their work-outs. Guess what? It just so happens that you can find those types of workout partners, regardless of your age, gender or level, on iLovetoPlay.com as well…

Find, connect, game on!

(*Study sample consisted of 19 600 Canadians)

Nike, for the first time, has designed a shoe for a specific race or ethnicity. The Air Native N7 is designed with a larger fit for the distinct foot shape of American Indians, and has a culturally specific look.

Nike designers and researchers looked at the feet of more than 200 people from more than 70 tribes nationwide and found that in general, American Indians have a much wider and taller foot than the average shoe accommodates. The average shoe width of men and women measured was three width sizes larger than the standard Nike shoe.

The full story: http://money.cnn.com/2007/09/26/news/companies/bc.apfn.nike.indianshoe.ap/index.htm

I love learning about new things, even about people’s feet.

Part 3 is up.

Part 2 is up today.

I did a video interview with VC-TV. It’s being featured in 3 parts. Check out part 1.

What do you think of it?

…if you’re Canadian, and only under very specific conditions. The Canadian government, starting this year, is offering a tax deduction to “players on sports teams or members of recreation programs”. Check it out: http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/tax/business/topics/payroll/whatsnew-e.html. Let us know if you qualify!

…for a little while because they’re doing a system upgrade. I don’t know how long it’s going to be down for (it’s been about 10 minutes now), or how often they go down for maintenance, but I can’t help but ask myself: how much money are they losing every minute they go down for maintenance? Oh, and do they even care? It’s around 1:40 PM so it must be rush hour for them from coast to coast. Yikes! Maybe all their systems crashed and we’ve all lost all our stuff! Maybe we’ll all hear about it in the news in a couple of hours. Just remember: you heard it here first!

UPDATE: 2:20 PM, my sister must be having a nervous breakdown, she has to have her Facebook fix!

UPDATE: It’s back up. Happy Facebooking!