The New Kid's Story: Part 6

Starting a new path in life is really, really hard.
This is the story of someone looking to start getting healthier and live longer, as they told it to me. “Jim” is a pseudonym, and he doesn’t like the internet, or writing, or even talking about himself. But this is his story, through his eyes. Missed the first one? Start here.
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What kinda gym IS this, anyway?!
Last night our “gym family” got together for pulled pork, coleslaw and beer. Yes, beer.
There’s a CrossFit competition starting at the end of February. I’m nowhere near ready to do CrossFit competitions, and probably never will be. Nor will I want to. But we got invited to this gym party, so we went. Somebody picked four Captains from the members and they drew random names to split us into teams.
I recognized a couple of people who were put on my team – they go to noon group. Now they’re making up t-shirts for us. So I went on the CrossFit Games site and registered my wife and I to do this competition. Seriously, it feels crazy just saying that. But we’re doing all the workouts already, and I guess these are just harder ones. The coach on Thursday said we’ll just modify them the same way we modify every workout, and it’s only 20 bucks, and the draft party was pretty fun. If you’d asked me last month, I would have said, “I don’t need more friends”–that’s not why I joined a gym–but you can’t help liking these people. One lady named Boo hugs me every time she sees me. I had to miss pickup hockey to go to the draft, but it was better anyway.
My wife’s schedule always gets crazy at work before tax season, so she had to stop coming to noon group. She’s going to try going to the 6am class, but honestly I don’t think that’s going to work. If it doesn’t, I’m not sure what she’s going to do. She has to have her CrossFit. I’m still fine to make noon groups about 3 times a week.
If you looked in our window on Thursday nights, you’d probably get a good laugh. There we are, Mr. and Mrs. Fitness, watching our homework videos on a laptop and stretching. My coach told me to stretch again on Saturday while I was watching Coach’s Corner, so there I was: rolling around on a lacrosse ball to loosen up my hips while Don Cherry was saying “beauty” and “there he goes again.”
I’m struggling a bit to eat all the vegetables I’m supposed to be eating. And meeting the boys for a donut on Saturday is starting to give me a bit of stress. I’ll ask Karly the dietitian about it next time; I’m working pretty hard and I don’t want to keep going backward. The other hard part is drinking a glass of water every time I have a coffee; that’s a LOT of water. But no one’s selling me supplements or anything (I was totally on the lookout for that) so our food bill hasn’t gone up at all.  I think I’ll ask my wife to figure out how much we’re actually paying and post that on the next blog.