The time had come, it was now or never and after emailing Brian at Capital City Crossfit I had made my appointment to have an intro session. Monday came around, and it was now time for me to follow through on all the talk. I had high hopes and figured that I would come in and show just how strong I was. Almost right away I realized that this was not something that I was ready for. Brian took me through a warm-up, just a short run and some stretching and I was doing OK, we then went through some of the movements for the day. Rowing, OK I can do that, air squats, sure I can do that too. Sit-ups, no problem, push-ups, I can do those too. Lastly it was Pull ups, and I had issues there, I’d never been able to do a pull up, figured I was just a big guy and big guys don’t do them. But with the help of a assistance band I could do a couple of them. At this point Brian says the we’re going to do the workout, at which point I am confused, I was pretty sure that I had been working out for the better part of an hour. What does he mean that the actual workout hasn’t happened yet? The workout of the day (WOD) is going to be a baseline: 500M row, 40 Air Squats, 30 Sit ups, 20 Push ups, 10 Pull ups. As quickly as possible. That was way outside of my abilities so Brian says we’ll scale it down, I’ll do a 300M row, 20 air squats, 15 sit ups, 10 push ups, 5 pull ups. I made my way to the rower, and got myself ready to do some work. 32 minutes later, and a visit to the bushes to puke I was done, laying on the ground, and wishing that my heart would stop trying to jump out of my chest. I should also mention that the second week of July 2011 was record temps for Springfield, even at 7pm when I went into the gym it was 100F and there was no air in the building. So what did I do, run away and find a more reasonable way to work out? No I talked to Brian, he was very encouraging saying that it doesn’t happen overnight, and lots of people that come in aren’t ready for the level of work that a Crossfit WOD is. So I tell him that I’ll see him in two days and walk outside. On the way home I drink the better part of a gallon of water, I had a wedding on Saturday, and after that I was going to start Paleo, so it was time for one last week of eating whatever I wanted and trying to eat all the stuff in my house that I wouldn’t be able to eat once next week started. One last pizza, that will do the trick, and boy was it delicious. One last set of wedding photos with me as the big guy, and yet again I wasn’t happy with my looks. 
It was official I had taken my first steps on this journey, the feelings at the end of that workout would be the first time of many that I would be left on the floor with nothing left after doing the day’s WOD. I couldn’t imagine the challenges ahead of me, or the ways that I would meet them and overcome them, but there I was one workout down, hundreds more to go.
One year's transformation 