"It's obviously huge in the gay community. I remember I first heard about it in a bar in Hell's Kitchen. Someone mentioned CrossFit and I asked, 'What's that?' and he was like, 'Well the first rule of CrossFit...' and it was very Fight Club-y like that, which I thought was weird. Then he told me all about it and tried to convince me to do it, and I didn't for a while. Then my best girlfriend started doing it, and she invited me. I did it a couple of times, and then, I died.""I don't know if I literally remember the first time I heard the word, but I remember having a kind of sense of 'this is what really tough people do — it's intense, it's only for people who are super strong or super in shape.' And then Elettra [Weidemann, Refinery29's contributing food editor ] was doing a column in Self magazine, and she said she was doing CrossFit as part of her routine. She has a kind of similar body type to me; she's slim, and you wouldn't look at her and think, oh she must be a beast in the weight room, and I think that sparked something in me. I'd always been curious about it, but I didn't think it was something I could do.""I went to this really small CrossFit box, in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, about two years ago. It was right about the time I was thinking about trying it, and I walked past this gym, and they had a free trial class for beginners. In that first class it was me, two former football players, a guy who used to play baseball, this guy from the military, and this woman who was like, 'My name's Clarice, and I coach rugby.' They took us through a sample workout and, in CrossFit context, it was a really easy workout, but it floored me. It was overhead squats with just a plate, and maybe burpees. And I was sore for a week. But I was really into it.""There's one box, I think it's called CrossFit Velocity, that opened in Williamsburg, and it was the same type of people. Lots of dads and moms, young parents, which was cool to see, because I come from a place where fitness is not a focus in any aspect, especially with young parents. I was really concerned because I hadn't stretched before, or warmed up, which I was expecting to be a crucial part of the class, because of the kind of workout it is, because it's so hard on your body. I remember just feeling really welcomed, because I spoke to some people before, and there was a range of people who hadn't been doing any workouts before that, and so they were just trying to get back in their fitness. Or it was people who had been athletes who were just trying a different type of workout. It was fun. It was really, really hard. It was not something I was used to, though I had taken high-intensity classes. It was more weight-lifting than I could have imagined."