So, yes, I’m sure that I’m writing into the ether on this lonely blog. But, I’m putting it out there. It’s been a bunch of months since I last wrote about this Bleeping Monkey, but rest assured that dude is still here. Quite healthy, and might even have gained a few pounds, much to my continued disgust and chagrin. So, desperate times call for scary desperate measures, the likes of which I hadn’t even let myself think about. The dark, and dangerous kind of measures.
I am venturing into the den of *gasp*, the den of … well I’m not even sure what to call it. By all measures, it’s a cult. There, I have said it. It’s laid out at my feet and ready to grab me by my kicking ankles and drag me screaming into the belly of the beast that is Cross Fit. I’ve been warned by some dear and transformed (on the hotness scale) converts that I’ll hear a funny sound (a sucking noise) before I’m sucked in and turned into a Believer. More likely, that sound will be the loud ringing in my ears before I pass out.
The “box” owner who I’ll call Scott, because that’s his name, says that I’ve nothing to fear. “But, you don’t understand,” I exclaimed through the anonymous phone call, “I’m an athlete gone bad; very, very bad.” I explained that Cross Fit folks are a bunch of hard bodies and that I couldn’t just be thrown into a class with a chirpy, barely dressed hard-body whose 1/3 of my age. That’s cruel and unusual. I avoid those types at all costs! “But, it’s intimidating,” I sputtered and I’m sure it didn’t sound whiny, just saying. “I try to bend over and somebody puts a roll of cookie dough in my lap so it’s hard to bend over. It’s not cool,” I rationally said. “You can’t even let yourself think that way,” Scott patiently and strangely calmly replied.
He went on to say that folks in the classes (after the Elements/intro class) are all at different levels. I could be standing next to someone whose been working out for a week, or a day or 3 years. The “community” (brainwashing?) aspect is what draws people in and keeps them here. “That guy next to you whose lifting a ton of weight will most likely be the one whose telling you that you can do it! He might also be the guy who is still struggling to master certain moves like the handstand.” WTF? Dude! I’ve got that one. I was a gymnast (about 150 pounds and 35 years ago…) Right, I’ve got that… don’t I?
“You’ll be fine, and you’ll love it!” Scott, the Grand PooPa, enthused. Bawhahaha, easy for him to say… he without the cookie dough weight belt. I had to hang up quickly, I was hearing a funny little sucking noise and I hadn’t even crossed the threshold yet. Was that the weak whimpering of hope I heard in the distance, or my stomach?
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