Strong is the New Skinny

I went to my first CrossFit class exactly 22 days ago.

I know this because 23 days ago I could actually move without feeling like I've just been run over by a truck. A very large truck.

Over the past year or so, pictures have been popping up all over Facebook of my faraway friends at CrossFit doing really ridiculous things - jumping on wooden boxes, hitting tires with hammers, doing handstand push ups - and I knew there was only one explanation.

It's just a fad. And my friends are all nuts.

(Okay, so two explanations.)

I mean, these people are like flipping giant monster truck tires in parking lots (which probably came off the truck that later ran me over). Seriously, who does that?!? The only place I have ever seen anything remotely similar is on The Biggest Loser. And let's be honest- there is absolutely NO WAY a reality show could actually be based on real life.

My curiosity started to get the best of me when I witnessed the amazing transformation of one of my good friends from school who has been going to CrossFit in Texas. She has always had a great figure, but her recent pictures have literally had me drooling. Yes, drooling. At the risk of sounding like a creeper, I admit that I have been tempted to put her picture on my refrigerator as motivation. (At the risk of actually being a creeper, I have refrained.)

Curiosity later caught up with Nick when a friend of ours starting going to the local CrossFit Destin. Nick, of course, isn't the type to look at pictures of other people doing something and wonder (from afar) what it's all about. He had to check it out himself. Immediately.

It only took one workout and he was hooked. Which left me sweating, anxious, and overwhelmingly intimidated. Listening to my super-fit boyfriend talk about having to sit in front of a fan after his first workout so he wouldn't pass out? Straight up horror. I knew it was only a matter of time before we would be walking through those dreaded doors together.

I successfully procrastinated for a week, then tried to keep my cool through 3 rounds of 5 stair runs, 10 push ups, 15 squats, and 20 jumping jacks.

Whew, finished! This isn't so bad.

Oh, wait... that's just the warm up you say?

Seriously?

I am instructed to then do 5 burpees (Google it), 5 pull ups (which is 5 times the number of pull ups I can actually do), 15 sit-ups (not to be confused with crunches), 10 dips (waaaah!), and 20 box jumps (you do realize this box is almost as tall as I am right?).

But no problem, I can TOTALLY (maybe) do a round of that.

Wait... do as many rounds as I can in 20 minutes?

Hold on, what's a burpee again?

Can you restart the clock?

I wasn't ready!

Seriously?!?

Let's just say I did more than one, but less than three. (Nick did 8, but who's counting.) That's when the truck first ran me over. And when I noticed the shirt hanging up on the wall that reads: Your WORK-OUT is Our WARM-UP.

Ah, makes total sense. Glad I didn't see that on my way in... I might have just left and sat in the car.

I joined two weeks later (after I knew for sure that my shoulders wouldn't fall right off my body) and I am HOOKED. Never have I been so excited to be drenched in my own sweat and feel like I might fall flat on my face at any given moment from pure physical exhaustion. A little extreme, but a lot true.

It looks like I've joined the crazy train people, only something tells me it isn't a fad.

"This S*** Sucks. What time tomorrow?"