This is where the rubber meets the road. Every year, when we launch our annual fitness competition at Tribe, we all start out gung ho. Week after week, everyone hits their goal. But two or three weeks from the finish line, which is about where we are now, some of our toughest competitors begin to drop.

The rules of the competition are simple:

• The first rule of the fitness competition is that everyone’s welcome to play but nobody has to.

• Everybody makes up their own weekly fitness plan, but you have to commit to it up front. No changes allowed once the contest is underway.

• Your weekly fitness plan has to be ambitious enough that the rest of us won’t make fun of you.

• The prize is $500 cash money, funded by Tribe.

The weekly fitness plans vary widely, depending on each person’s interests, schedule  and fitness level. Lindsay combines hockey and the gym. Miles runs and does pull-ups and push-ups. Michele does cardio machines and weights (at 5 am every day). Jennifer works with a trainer twice a week and does an hour of intervals on weekends. Beth does kick boxing classes, runs stadium stairs and tackles hilly trail runs with her dogs.

We also work on the honor system. If you say you made your goal, then you get an X in that week’s box on our master chart. If you somehow fell short of that goal, you’re the only one who can tell us that.

In the meantime, life happens. Lindsay, who was our first year’s finalist in a sudden death that stretched out for well over a month, dropped out immediately this year because she decided she’d rather have a social life. Miles had a period of super-tight deadlines and long workdays that stretched out too late for running after work, so he missed his goal for a few weeks and fell out of the front runners. Beth pulled her back out  midway through her sprint work at the track the other day and was writhing around on the ground in pain, mad that she wouldn’t be able to count that workout towards her goal.

If Beth were anybody else, we’d assume she was out of the competition. But knowing her, it will probably take more than an injury to keep her from somehow managing to hit her goal this week. Come to think of it, just last week she tripped on a root during one of her trail runs, ripped off a toenail and had her shoe filling up with blood. She kept running.

Still in the running for the $500 prize are Alexis, Michele, Jennifer and (I’m proud to say) myself. So depending on Beth’s speed of recovery,  it looks like we’ll have either four or five competitors with flawless records moving into the final two weeks.

We’re still a little iffy on our tie-breaker policy. One year we had the famous sudden death that was painful to watch. Another year we all voted for our favorite finalist, which means it basically became a popularity contest. This year, we’d sort of settled on the vote system again, but now Beth is trying to raise support for a round robin that requires each finalist to do the hardest workout of every other finalist and then vote on who was strongest in each. The logistics alone make me tired.

If you have a suggestion for a better way to decide a winner, we’d love to hear it.