In Memory of Sarah

Catalyst Fitness sees one of its members die from a brain tumor and re-dedicates itself to exercise for the benefit of the brain. Chris Cooper explains.

Sarah Grand arrived at our gym in 2008, bald and pierced, with a chip on her shoulder.

She wore the baldness as if she was daring you to ask why. There was no victim in her swagger, no black cloud over her death-metal baseball cap.

Two weeks earlier, she’d been swinging her legs as she sat perched on a doctor’s examining table. Her mother, father and boyfriend were with her. The doctor gave them the diagnosis: a large tumor in the brain. Situation: terminal.

He offered Sarah a plastic bag—a Ziploc full of pills—to help with the anxiety and depression that were sure to come.

Sarah looked up from the baggie and met the doctor’s eyes.

“Fuck you,” she said. “You don’t know me.”

Sarah became a vegetarian. She started doing more yoga.

And she started CrossFit.