Carl Alviani
June 11, 2015 13:36
I've been coming to Crossfit Portland regularly for nearly four years -- which is kind of a miracle, to be honest. I've never been much of a gym guy (bike touring and backpacking are more my speed), and always found gyms to be kind of monotonous, and focused more on looking good than being healthy.
This was different. I got dragged into Crossfit back in 2011 by a girl I was dating, and was completely shocked by how much I liked it. The constant variation is fantastic, and the people you work with (especially at *this* Crossfit) are endlessly supportive. Working out with a team encourages you to push harder than you would on your own; having a coach means you're doing it safely.
What really hooked me, though, was how it changed things *outside* the gym. I went on a snowshoe trip with some super outdoorsy friends, and we got hit by 3 feet of unexpected snow, and I was still able to keep up. On a multi-day bike ride, the ferry across the Willamette wasn't running, forcing a 20 mile detour, and it was fun. I got to climb Mt Adams last winter with some climber friends and snowboard down it. I ran the last 6 miles of a marathon with my girlfriend...and I'm not a runner.
Point is, Crossfit Portland has made it so that I don't have to worry about whether I'm in good enough shape to do something. I can just go do it. And that's kind of incredible at the age of 40. There are plenty of other reviews on this page telling you about how helpful the trainers are, how welcoming the community is, and how good the programming is, and they're all absolutely correct. But I wanted to call out the other part: you can go here, and work hard, and have fun, and be in better shape than you were in college, and go do all of the other stuff you want to do. And that's awesome.