Mike Markowicz

Another great tribute to the power of CrossFit to transform your life and a testament to our great coaches as well. Each time I read a new testamonial from one of our clients I think to myself…”there cannot be a more remarkable story” and then someone emails me with theirs and I am floored all over again. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, people like you Mike are the reason we love our job so much. We are humbled and grateful to count you amongst us. Thank you.

Mike’s own words

A year ago, I weighed 80 pounds more than I do right now.  Numbers like that, however staggering and unimaginable they were to me then, mean almost nothing to me today.  Since I joined CrossFit Relentless in January, it’s all about the journey.  Before joining, I had already lost a bunch of weight on my own by radically changing my diet and doing a couple of home video workouts, but I could already feel that I wasn’t going to be able to sustain it.  I was bored, losing motivation, and my “goals” were all about numbers on a scale. 

Mike before

Enter CrossFit Relentless.  Now I know I’m in it for the long haul, and by that I mean the rest of my life.  Every single day, the workouts are something I’ve never done before.  Plus, you keep score as a means of motivation.  And don’t get me started on the intensity.  But none of these are the main reason why I love CrossFit so much.  It’s the people. 

Before I came in, I e-mailed back and forth with Merle, one of the owners, and found him to be simply awesome.  His partner Glenn is the single most knowledgeable fitness professional I’ve ever met, particularly in terms of communicating ideas in a way that is understandable.  My daily trainers—Ryan, Tony and Rick—are absolutely amazing.  They are brilliant at educating and motivating, are always willing to stay late to work with me on one of my (many) weaknesses, and never fail to cheer my (far fewer) strengths. 

Better still are the variety of people I’ve met and trained with every day.  We know one another’s names, encourage one another’s progress, and cheer one another’s results.  There is no attitude or ego here, only inspiration and support.  When you consider how amazingly fit some of these people are, that’s just unbelievable. 

I’ve lost a bunch of weight in the 3 months I’ve been doing Crossfit.  Still, at 6’5 and 220 pounds, I know I’ve got a good bit more to go.  I just don’t care about that anymore.  I have different goals now, and they involve the journey not the destination.  Of course, along the way I’ve also already had some unbelievable results.  I discovered quite by accident that I can run a sub-six-minute mile when I almost did so while saving plenty in reserve for the rest of one of crossfit workout.  In the 36 years prior to CrossFit Relentless, I’ve never been able to even approach that kind of speed or fitness. 

Armed with that newfound discovery, I entered a 5k race two weeks ago.  It was a brutal day—pouring rain and a hard uphill finish.  Knowing that we had timing chips on, I started in the very back of the 412-person field with my fiancé, who was planning to walk the distance.  After the gunshot signaling the official start, she and I slowly inched behind everyone to the starting line.  Once I finally hit that start line, I said goodbye to her, put my head down, and ran as hard as I could.  In the next 20 minutes, I passed 388 people and finished in 24th overall before subtracting my long shuffle to the starting line.  I was terribly disappointed when I later learned that for some reason they weren’t calculating actual time and my “gun time” would be my final result.  That disappointment turned to pride, however, when I found out that, despite giving away almost two full minutes at the start, I was still 2nd in my age group by just 41 seconds.  Better yet, I had won the “Clydesdale” category for runners over 200 pounds by more than 1.5 minutes.       

Mike at his 5k race 

To be clear, I am not now nor have I ever been a runner.  I am a CrossFitter.  I may never achieve the fitness level of many of the athletes I train with on a daily basis (let alone the trainers), but I leave every workout exhausted, beaten (but never broken), and loving every second of it.  My fitness level is already higher than it’s ever been in my life, and I’m just getting started here.  If you’re interested in life-changing results that will be delivered in a way that is so fun and inspiring that you’ll never quit, there is no better place to be than CrossFit Relentless.