Kristel Coronado runs, bikes and swims long distances routinely, sometimes among a field of competitive triathletes.

Pulling a private plane that weighs several tons with several other women? Hey, no sweat.

That was one of the tasks facing Coronado after trying out and making the cast of X-treme Warrior , a reality TV show scheduled to air on Comcast Cable for 10 consecutive weeks, beginning in January.

Coronado, a 2000 Lake Orion High School graduate, said she isn't one to pursue reality TV roles but decided to take up the offer when a fellow triathlete brought up the topic.

"We were coming to the finish line within a couple of seconds of each other so we just started talking," Coronado said, recalling the sales pitch. "She had just done an episode and mentioned to a friend and I that we should try out. The pull for me was the fitness thing, (another reason) to work out."

Subsequently, Coronado and her friend, Brianna Roy, tried out and won roles, proving their stamina in a series of three exercises, three minutes at a time, at a Troy health club.

"Most people describe it as 'nine minutes of hell,'" Coronado said. "It's (an) easy circuit for me. That's what my body was used to."

The tryouts led to a three-day, grueling stretch of non-stop physical and mental challenges, in the hot August sun, no less.

"As easy as (the tryout) was, the three days were not," she said.

To think, a decade ago she was a couch potato.

A GOOD ADDICTION

Coronado is 5 feet tall, just as she was in the eighth grade, but she has dropped more than 40 pounds, changing her diet and gaining an "addiction" to exercise.

In February of her eighth-grade year she weighed 160 pounds. Allergic to lactose, she didn't add pounds eating ice cream, but she liked her share of junk food.

"A lot of popcorn, anything with mayonnaise and butter, all that junk," said Coronado, an engineer with General Motors. A Kettering University graduate, she is currently pursuing a master's degree through a University of Michigan extended learning program.

Her adolescent weight loss was quick, not gradual. By the start of ninth grade, she weighed about 120, leading to a spot on the cheerleading, softball and track teams. She said she conquered the weight issue without a personal trainer, educating herself with books.

She doesn't recommend unsupervised methods, especially for a teenager. "I did it more dramatically than I should have," she admits now. It was a desperate measure, due to teasing by peers, she recalled.

"At that point, you're sick of people making fun of you," she said. "I had a sister that was always so tiny. One day I took a look at myself, what I was doing, and I didn't want that. I got into the gym, aerobics, all that stuff."

Coronado said her weight fluctuates between 115 and 125 pounds now, and she works out 1 1/2 to 5 hours per day, covering five-eight miles of roadwork.

Coronado said her father, Reyes, is an exercise enthusiast and she remembers him indirectly promoting exercise during her childhood, when she got in trouble.

"I didn't get spanked, I'd have to run around the house (for punishment)," she said.

If she liked jogging then, as much as now, she'd have gotten in more trouble.

WOMEN ONLY

Leona Larson, the producer of X-treme Warrior , is a former special projects producer at WDIV, Channel 4 in Detroit , and she calls the jump to reality TV a "logical progression."

"I think news is pretty real," she said of her former career.

Just as with other reality TV shows, Coronado and Larson declined to reveal the individual winner before the show airs. Larson called Coronado "amazingly strong, very focused and very dedicated."

Larson said she got the idea for a reality TV show involving physically and mentally challenging tasks through her work with a personal trainer, Omar Akl. The two are now business partners and they run an 18-hour boot camp on weekends, which she found women to master better than men.

It's a women's-only reality TV show, for now, because Larson finds that gender is more likely to stick together during tough times.

"Every year that we did (boot camp) the men quit, the women don't quit," she recalled. "It's not the pulling of the plane (and other tasks), it is the (long) hours and the close physical contact. A woman is much more comfortable carrying and being carried by another woman. It's a lot more about mental fortitude."