What could I possibly say? This past week has been one of the most humbling times of my life. I might as well start off with showing you the video, and then fill in a bit of back-story:
So the Crossfit Journal came to the Black Box last month as we were in the midst of the Crossfit Games Open. We're also opening a new space a couple blocks north. So the camera crew took 24 of our resident badass Crossfitters up to the new place to do a main site demo of the WOD known as J.T. I was not part of this video. However, the next morning I roll in at 7AM, prepared to do Open WOD 12.2, the now infamous "Snatch Ladder." A guy with a camera walks right up and asks "are you Reis?" I said yes and he proceeded to explain to me that he surveyed the crowd at the filming of J.T. and asked who the best candidate would be for a lifestyle Journal piece. Apparently they unanimously said me. I was stifled by this information, but I had no problem letting them film my workout, and I talked to them for about 10 minutes afterwards.
What happened next was kind of surreal, and morphed into what you see above, a video that as of this writing has been seen by over 7,000 people and shared on Facebook by over 100 Crossfit gyms. Along with some rambling that I forgot as soon as the interview was done, I went into the WOD hoping to hit just one of the 30 snatches at 135 pounds. Previously this had been my 1-rep max, and even in the warmup I put up a pretty sloppy rep at that weight, keeping my expectations rather low. So low and behold I cruise through the 30 reps at 75#, and one by one the 135s started rolling in...over and over until by the end of the WOD I had completed 18 of them. You see 15 of them in the video, and until later that day I thought the last one didn't count because it was at the buzzer, but coach Avery logged me for 18 reps (you see me say in the video that I got 17). Either way I blew my expectations out of the water, and I was pretty overtaken by euphoria while the whole interview happened. Frankly I didn't think it went so well at the time, as I didn't remember what I said, and I was hesitant to let them publish it if I was going to sound either horribly boring or terribly incoherent. Turns out it wasn't half bad, and I'm still blown away daily by people reaching out from around the world letting me know that they enjoyed my story.
Well thank you all for checking it out, and while it's simply a snapshot in time it plugs into everything else that has solidified my path to fitness. I'm so driven and so excited to build on my success and really accomplish great things. I'm honored to have so much attention so early in my Crossfit life, but hopefully down the road I can affect other people's lives the way you all have affected mine. The appreciation is simply beyond words. I Love you all...peace.
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