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I've always felt that I was in fairly decent shape given the lifestyle I've choosen to lead, from hiking around my parents property in my youth, three years in the Army, mountain biking, backpacking, mountaineering, rock and ice climbing have forced me to maintain a certain level of fitness. Surely at times over the past decade I've maintained high levels of fitness then others. I always figured the stamina and endurance which got me to the Summit of Denali and other mountains wasn't really needed when pulling myself up the crags on the escarpment in Canada, being able to do a million pull-ups was more helpeful right?

About a year and a half ago I heard about this exercise program called Crossfit in a thread on the NEIce message board so I decided to check it out, also when some of the most elite American climbers, here, and here, are doing it one tends to take notice. What is Crossfit? Here's an exert from the Crossfit website...

"CrossFit is the principal strength and conditioning program for many police academies and tactical operations teams, military special operations units, champion martial artists, and hundreds of other elite and professional athletes worldwide. Our program delivers a fitness that is, by design, broad, general, and inclusive. Our specialty is not specializing. Combat, survival, many sports, and life reward this kind of fitness and, on average, punish the specialist."

I was intreged by what I read and even more so after seeing how innocuous the workout appeared, needless to say I was quickly brought back to reality. I started adding some of the exercises into my routine, having never done any weight lifting I stayed away from the lifts, and was surprised by how quickly and easily I was left lying on the floor in a pool of sweat! Shortly after this brief introduction life interfered and Crossfit was put on the back burner.

Fast forward to October 2007 and for some unknown reason I end up on Crossfit.com and I do a quick search of the affiliates and low and behold I see Crossfit Buffalo listed! Within seconds I'm boucing around the site and gobbleing up as much information as I can and I fire of an email to get more info about where the program is being offered locally and how I can get myself some. Rather promtply I'm looking at a message in my Inbox from Dave Rice who "is" Crossfit Buffalo and he's answered my questions about the program and how I can get in touch with him to setup a meeting.