Crossfit

I need to type fast - I had three margaritas and half a bottle of wine last night and I need to be at the Rosedale Ride in about 15 minutes. So why am I thinking about Crossfit now? For to the same reason: living healthy and living life keep colliding all the time.

My journey toward living healthily started a little less than one year ago when Jo invited me to start working out with her at the Hills. She had a coach and I told myself that I would see what the coach made me do and in about 4 weeks I would be my own trainer. By the way, I hated the idea of working out or running. A few months after I started going to the Hills, Jo's coach moved to Crossfit - first as a client and then as a coach, and we followed her there.

Last night Jo and I met Jen, our coach, for a few drinks. This is Jen at work :-)

Crossfit seems a bit like a Macintosh. It works. It isn't cheap. It's faddish.

At the end of last summer I went back to the Canadian Rockies to hike. With a few months of working out under my belt, the hiking felt great. I was literally running up the mountains. At the end of the year, Jo suggested that I look at the upcoming Crossfit Challenge. I joined - and about 8 weeks later I had reached a different level of fitness.

When I posted some updates to Facebook, Sharath asked what it was that got so many of us working out so suddenly at this point in our lives. I started it because my weekly soccer and squash games weren't enough to keep my fitness level in place. I have a family history of diabetes. I am married to an amazing woman who is 14 years younger than me. And there's Vivian and soon another one in a few short weeks. So there's the motivation to cheat death for a little bit longer. Yes - I am painfully aware of the fact that I could be hit by a truck tomorrow.

Then there's an even more basic reason - vanity. Almost everyone who I know and has seen me in the last month has commented on how I have lost weight. It's a bit scary to know that a little Lindsay Lohan is hidden somewhere inside me.

And then there's the faddishness. Philosophers say that religion and patriotism meet the very basic needs of humans to belong to something bigger than themselves in time and space. Not having those needs met, I turned to Crossfit....

But I'd like to think I like Crossfit because it works. Advertising and politics drown us in ideology. We do or buy things because we think we should. Every once in a while, we are pleasantly surprised when something works as advertised. I joined Crossfit to feel fitter. I feel fitter.

Jo, Jen - thanks. It sure would have been a lot harder without the two of you helping me. Vivian - the list gets longer: eat well, watch less TV, believe in reason, stay healthy.

Gotta go ride.