Miller exercises with rings as part of her pullup journey. “I am getting stronger,” she says.

Blame the flexed arm hang.

Does that even exist anymore?

When I was a kid, we had to do the Presidential Fitness Challenge every year in school. I was (and sometimes think I remain) an athlete — I played soccer and basketball, ran track and cross-country. And when it came to the challenge, ridiculously, my best events were the shuttle run and the sit-reach, in which you sit on the floor and bend over as far as you can and your gym teacher bends over in his short shorts to measure how far your fingers can reach. That was a measure of fitness, somehow.

The flexed arm hang was my great downfall. It measured in seconds how long you could hang from the pullup bar with your arms flexed. I distinctly remember the tiniest girl in our class, April Ferriera, just hanging there for minutes. I could do it for, solidly, nine seconds before collapsing to the floor.

This has not improved. For starters, I’ve never been a woman with a great deal of arm strength — my strength is focused, shall we say, entirely in my thighs and butt. I once threw my friend’s college-aged little sister over my head and into a bush after she questioned my flip cup win (a drinking game) — but that was done completely thanks to pure leg strength. And really, beer-related is the kind of athletic pursuit I’m most successful at these days.

I’ve maintained a level of activity that some would consider impressive — I play soccer two days per week and over the past couple of years have taken up CrossFit, a fitness program that combines weightlifting, gymnastics and high-intensity exercise.

And that brings me to my 2016 New Year’s resolution. Usually it involves things like: drink less, use eye cream, read 50 books.

This year it is to do a pullup.

And I have a heck of a long way to go.

So. CrossFit. You’ve heard the rumors, and some of them are true. There are meatheads. (Secret truth: A lot of meatheads, 99 percent really, are nice people who love lifting weights and want you to feel the same way about their hobby.) There are times you risk injury because you want to compete in the workout or impress your coach. (Secret truth: That’s really stupid and you shouldn’t do that. Stop doing that.) There are really terrible, hard workouts. (Secret truth: It doesn’t matter how much better shape you get in — because then you just do them harder, faster, etc.)

Here’s some more truth: It’s super fun, and it’s taught me a lot about both my mind and my body.

My mind: I am a cheater at heart. You tell me to do 20 repetitions of an exercise and I have to WILL MYSELF not to do 18. I am mentally weak — all I think about sometimes is quitting. And then, another insight: I am tremendously competitive, even if I’m in last place. I want to quit all of the time, and the only reason I don’t is, really, that I see other people finish a hard workout and start telling myself: Come on, Miller. You can do this. Yes, when I work out I refer to myself by my last name. Always have. It’s my tough kid name.

My body: I am really strong. OK, “really strong” might be a stretch. I am nowhere near as strong as many of the other women, let alone the men, I work out with. But I shock myself all the time by how much weight I can lift and the number of times I can lift that weight. I think there’s no way I can do one more burpee. Then I do 10 more. Twenty more. It’s astonishing what your body can do once you think it’s tapped out.

But my arms. God, my arms. They’re still so weak. And doing a pullup is not just about arms. It’s about strengthening your core and your back and, probably, not drinking so much beer and eating doughnuts at work whenever they’re available.

Still, it’s my goal. So I am supposed to do ring rows and pushups (ha!) and lots and lots of these workouts. I’m not there yet.

And if I’m honest with myself, it might not happen this year, in part because the past few months I haven’t exactly committed myself. But I am getting stronger. Sometimes I don’t even finish last in the workout.

Perhaps soon I’ll be able to hang with flexed arms for more than nine seconds. •