If you told me a year ago that I’d be running, boxing, and doing CrossFit, I’d have thought you were slightly nuts, especially the running part. The only history I have with sports and fitness is the PE class I took online for high school.

However I had been feeling low energy, mentally foggy, and when I was on shoots I’d get sharp muscle pain in my arm from holding the camera rig. I was doing a lot more post work than before, so lots of sitting was involved (which is quite hazardous). I knew I needed to get more active, both for health and to be more functional.

So I joined the cult of CrossFit (I know, I know). What attracted me to CrossFit was the intensity and variety. In the future I’ll cover some thoughts and lessons learned as I progressed, but what struck me the most was how remarkably quick you see gains. It becomes addicting and effective at getting your mind going, more so than caffeine for me. CrossFit lead to boxing (which was being offered at the gym), though I’ve since paused due to some knuckle issues.

All of this is leading up to Mt. Rainier. After getting into shape I was reminded of how much I liked climbing mountains in Boy Scouts and that it was something I wanted to try out again, but on a more technical level. I also wanted to expand my skill set for the type of work I can do and remote areas I can shoot in. So this summer I’ll be taking a mountaineering course that ends with a summit of Rainier.

While reading books about mountaineering it was becoming clear that one of the best ways to prepare was to run more. Running has always been my least favorite activity. Hike? Yes. Run? No. But thanks to the few months of exercise I had been doing, when I started to run, it wasn’t so terrible. It’s actually one of my favorite things to do now (I’ve even brought my gear with me to run in the snow in Park City and Boston).

This is all to explain why I’ll be doing some posts about health and fitness, from the perspective of a guy who has no history of physical fitness but has dropped 30 pounds and is preparing to climb a mountain. So much of filmmaking (and especially documentary filmmaking) involves sitting at a computer for long hours and it’s killing us. This is about getting healthier and working better.