The list of things I can’t do for myself now includes brushing my teeth, blow drying my hair and taking off a sports bra. These are only the tested items. I’m expecting to have trouble a little later on with getting food down off a shelf and, most disturbingly, applying deodorant.

It probably says something un-feminist about me that I’d rather go hungry than stink. But there you have it. It’s true. Although, I’m pretty sure this isn’t an either/or proposition. Things are tanking quickly on all fronts.

I decided as part of my new and improved training plan, I would include more weight lifting. And by more, I mean any at all. Running is more or less lower-body specific, with a little abs thrown in. So while I can run 32 miles through the desert (see previous post), I cannot, say, open my own pickle jar without a wrench.

So in pursuit of physical – and perhaps cosmic – balance, I went about figuring out what other people were doing. And what they are doing is CrossFit. The mania that surrounds this workout style cannot be overstated. So committed (read: deranged) are its followers, I’m starting to suspect Scientology involvement.

Imagine that you are a high school physical education student in a 1970s Soviet Bloc country, and that’s pretty much CrossFit. Pull-ups, push ups, climbing ropes, medicine balls. That sort of thing. Probably you could use a pig bladder and some cinder blocks if you wanted to. But the best part (what the pig bladder wasn’t good enough for you?) is that they post the recommended workouts online each day FOR FREE. And I love me some free, so I was onboard.

Today’s workout: 5 pull-ups, 10 push-ups, 15 squats in constant rotation for 20 minutes.

“Cake!” I thought. “Total cake!”

There was one teeny obstacle. I sort of, kind of can’t actually do a pull-up. But the handy-dandy FAQ in fact had the following question: “What if I can’t do a pull-up?” Answer: Get yourself above the bar by any lifting/climbing means necessary and then slowly lower down, working the negative.

“Cake! I can so do that!”

I really must stop being so optimistic.

For reasons unknowable to we mere mortals, the pull-up bar in my apartment complex gym has been installed approximately eight and a half feet off the ground, as though management were expecting the Lakers to stop by. But the website said “by any means necessary” darn it, and I am not a quitter. So I dragged a weight bench under the bar and stood on it.

Still too short.

I looked left, I looked right and when I was sure only four or five beefy weight-lifter types were staring, I squatted down and lunged at the bar like the most earnest froggy you ever saw. And I got it! No time for celebrating though, I had to “lower slowly and work the negative.”

We can only hope that by “lower slowly” they meant “have your biceps collapse entirely under the weight of your own body so that you drop like a rock and dangle hopelessly in midair in an exact recreation of your worst seventh grade P.E. nightmare.” ‘Cause that’s EXACTLY what happened. And it happened over and over again because I am a crazy person who insisted on not giving up and doing the whole ridiculous exercise for the prescribed twenty minutes, even at the expensive of personal pride and self worth.

People were starting to get concerned. By the end nobody was really bothering to pretend they weren’t gawking. And while it’s too early to see any actual muscle development, I wasn’t able to hold my arms up in a bent position long enough to get my gym key back on the key ring. I’ve decided to tell myself that I like it loose. That the likelihood I will now lose it, is just part of the challenge.

Thursday’s workout: Dragging tires.