The Secret I Didn’t Tell Anyone

For the first six months, I was just “exercising.”

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I was happy enough competing against the other dads in the 9:00am class. If I beat “Steve” on the whiteboard, it was a good day. If I didn’t, I’d try harder tomorrow. My world was small. It was bounded by the four walls of the gym.

Then came 2014. And with it, the CrossFit Open.

For the uninitiated, the CrossFit Open is the worldwide qualifier. Suddenly, you aren’t just competing against Steve; you are competing against the planet.

I remember watching the announcement for Open Workout 14.5. It was a brutal ladder of thrusters and burpees. I watched Rich Froning, the absolute king of the sport, attack that workout.

He didn’t look like a person. He looked like a machine.

I watched him find a perfect pace—not too fast, not too slow—and just hold it. His face was blank. It looked like he had successfully separated his mind from his body. His mind was the control center; his body was just the machinery doing the work.

I sat there mesmerized. I thought, I need to figure out how to do that.

I went into the gym to retest the workout, trying to channel my inner Rich Froning. I tried to separate my mind from the pain.

I failed miserable. My “machinery” broke down. The workout crushed me. I didn’t have the capacity, the engine, or the strength.

The Delusion

But something dangerous had happened: The seed was planted.

I was 38 years old. I looked at the calendar and did some “gym math.” If I work hard now, maybe—just maybe—I could make the CrossFit Games as a Master’s athlete by age 40.

Objectively, this was insane.

I looked up the stats for 40-year-old Games athletes. They were overhead squatting 225 pounds like it was a PVC pipe. Me? I was shaking trying to overhead squat 95 pounds.

The gap wasn’t just a gap; it was a canyon. I was a novice with a shaky barbell, dreaming of standing next to giants.

I didn’t tell a soul. I didn’t tell my fellow athletes because they would have laughed. I didn’t tell my wife because saying it out loud to the person you love makes it real. And if it’s real, you can fail.

So, I kept the secret. But I changed the behavior.

The First Taste of Blood

If I was going to close the gap, I needed to do more. I started doing “extra work.”

Most people finished the workout, high-fived, and went home. I stayed. The owner of the gym allowed me to train with him after class. I remember doing a second workout when my body was already wrecked from the first one. It was “un-fun.” It hurt. But I felt cool. I felt like I was part of a secret club.

About ten months in, I signed up for a local competition called “Fittest at the Rock” in Castle Rock, Colorado.

Walking onto that competition floor brought a rush of nostalgia I hadn’t felt in decades. It reminded me of being a teenage gymnast. The chalk dust, the judges, the nerves in the pit of my stomach. I was terrified of coming in dead last.

I fought for every rep. I chased the younger guys. I chased the older guys.

I finished 5th overall.

There was no podium. There was no trophy. But I tasted blood.

I realized that competition wasn’t something I had left behind in my youth. It was something I could reclaim. That 5th place finish was the gasoline on the fire. I was hooked. I was ready to work hard to get to the Games.

So, I decided to do more. More volume. More intensity. More suffering.

I thought the path to the Games was paved with “more.”

I was wrong. And in the next chapter, I’ll tell you how that mistake almost broke me before I even started.

Stay tuned!

Jason

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