Several women in pink bras and cut off shorts stand with clip boards amid ripped athletes hoisting barbells from ground to overhead... over and over again.  Weights crash to the ground as shirtless women take score.  There is pain, there is joy, and there is A LOT of pink.

This was the scene I came upon two years ago at the CrossFit Games as I strolled through the vendor booths of the Home Depot arena.  I looked from barbell to bra, bra to barbell, and contemplated who was the bravest amongst this group.  Was it the athletes that crumbled to the hot concrete ground after just a couple minutes of intense lifting?  Or was it the women standing half naked in a stadium full of thousands of people?  My gaze finally shifted from the bras and weight plates to a banner stretched across the scene that read "BARBELLS FOR BOOBS! MAMMOGRAMS IN ACTION".  It was then that I realized that the heroes were not the ones lifting weights or counting reps, though courageous in their own right.  The true heroes are the thousands of women battling breast cancer.  My perception of the scene changed.  I still saw joy, but I saw pain beyond that of the contestants... and the color pink never looked more bad-ass...

My sister Natalie called me a month ago and said "I'm thinking of running a marathon."  This was surprising considering I once convinced her participate in a 5k race with my Cross-Country team in high school and when she finished all she said was "That was stupid."  She looked genuinely pissed off as she traipsed through the field after the meet, huffing and puffing the whole way home.  Point being, she hates running... 

Eleventh.  That little word hit us all in the gut like a 300lb Atlas Stone.  After day two of the 2011 Reebok CrossFit South East Regional Competition, my team and I found out that we were just three points away from making it into the top ten and advancing to the third day of competition.  I was standing at the bathroom sink rinsing the last of my recovery drink out of my water bottle when I heard the announcement over the loud speaker.  I exhaled a four-letter word and walked out of the bathroom with my head down, avoiding eye contact with mirror on the way out...