I Keep Coming Back

On Pallas, the people, and why this place keeps calling me home

by Lex E. Santí, LCSW, MFA

On May 3rd, from 2 to 4 in the afternoon, I’m doing something vulnerable: my first real public reading of The Song of the Midnight Rider at Pallas Fitness. My debut novel. The one I’ve been working on, in one form or another, for twenty years.

I’m doing it here—not a bookstore, not a library, not a stage with a podium and strangers in folding chairs—because this gym has shaped the last thirteen years of my life and my evolution as a human being. My gym. My box. My place. The people inside it are the people I want in the room when I finally read this thing out loud.

Talking about my writing is something I love to do. Standing up and reading it in front of people I care about is something else entirely. It requires a different kind of courage than anything we do in a workout. But then again, this community has been teaching me that kind of courage for over a decade.

—

I joined Pallas in 2013, back when it was the old box. Different space, different colors, different walls absorbing different sounds. I remember those early workouts the way you remember any formative humbling—with a mixture of pride and something close to disbelief that you survived them. I remember my first Murph. I remember thinking: this is going to break me. And then it didn’t. And then I came back the next week.

That’s been the pattern ever since. You get injured and have to step away. You wring yourself out navigating life—work, loss, the thousand things that pull at you—and somewhere in the middle of it all, the gym falls away. Sometimes you move. Sometimes you just disappear for a while, the way we all do. And then at some point, you find yourself walking back through that door. The colors have changed. The leadership has evolved. Some faces are gone, and new ones have appeared. But the box is always there. Waiting. Ready to challenge you, to make you stronger, to hand you back something you didn’t realize you’d been missing.

We need that today more than ever. We live in a world that is increasingly privatized and isolated, where community has to be chosen deliberately because it no longer just happens around us. Pallas is a place you have to choose. And every time I choose it, it gives me something back.

—

There are faces I walk in and see, and feel something immediately settle in my chest. Julie Sahler, who brings a quiet ferocity to every workout. Brian Dozoretz, whose love for muscle-ups is so evident because he flies like an angel on that bar. Sarah Acker, whose quiet commitment and grit make you want to shout out, even though she would never dare. Jason Fulton, who looks across the room, lifts truckloads and then breaks into a grin after he’s done. Darrin Gardner, smoking workouts and laughing at something Andy Lonsky said to encourage him. Paula Geary, who moves through difficulty with more grace than she probably knows. Joe Rogan, whose competitive edge at the Open still makes me shake my head and grin. Jeff Lower is flying across the room, banging out another rep. Jeff Niederdeppe, who moves like he’s still on a basketball court, dominating the paint. Todd Fox, taking calls in between lifts. Hannah Young, who shows up with the kind of steadiness that anchors a room. Jami Johnston, whose presence in the gym makes it warmer. Daniel Longaker, like a gentle giant, strides in and crushes a workout and then tells you he meditated on a mountainside for a month. Leon Miller-Out, who moves through a workout like it’s a conversation he’s been waiting all day to have and then hugs you like an open sunrise. Zach MacGovern, grinding away in a silence that earns respect and then coaches you through the worst parts of your life. Mark Valley and the Fullers and so many, so many more, so many more I could go on and on about these people that I love.

There are members who are no longer part of the gym. A split happened a few years back. I miss them. I want them to show up at this reading. I’m asking them here, directly, to come—it would mean everything to me to see them again.

And over all of it, Tim Scheftic—our fearless leader, the person who holds the culture of this place together and makes it what it is. A gym is only as good as the person setting the tone. Tim sets it right.

I’m connected now to a different constellation of people than I was at the start, and I am deeply, genuinely thankful for that. Every new chapter of my life has brought a new layer of connection inside that gym. Most communities thin out over time. This one keeps thickening.

—

Here’s the thing about this community that I don’t think gets said enough: these are the people who actually show up. Not just on Friday nights when there’s music and a crowd. I mean, when you’re moving apartments (thank you Brian), and you need bodies and a truck. When your lawn has gotten away from you, someone just appears with a mower (Thank you Jason). When you’re sick or grieving or going through something that doesn’t have a clean name and you need another human being to sit with you in it--thank you Samantha Fishman.

That’s what a small-town community is supposed to be, and it’s rarer than it should be. I have found it, reliably, at Pallas. The gym is where we meet. But what we’ve built doesn’t stay inside those walls.

—

The novel is about a man trying to get free—carrying a debt, running toward something, trying to find his people along the way. It’s about found family, which is another way of saying: the people you didn’t know you needed until you needed them. Sound familiar?

I am deeply moved to be able to do this in front of this community. More than I expected, honestly. I thought it would feel like a book event. It feels like coming home.

I began my yoga practice when I was fearful. I began CrossFit when I was depressed. I keep returning to Pallas because something in me knows—has always known—that the way back to yourself runs through other people. Through the work you do beside them. Through the ordinary, stubborn, glorious act of showing up.

The box is always there. It’s my home. And the people in it—you’re my family. That’s everything.

I’ll see you on the 3rd.

— Lex E. Santí

Trumansburg, New York • April 2026