In early 2012, after weighing in at 228 pounds, Keith Taylor decided to join a gym.

Now, after teaming up with a personal trainer and about five years after suffering a stroke, the 49-year-old Powell Butte man says he has dropped 40 pounds and is nearly as fit as he has been in 25 years. He is preparing for a grueling endurance adventure race next month in north-central Oregon — a competition called the “Tough Mudder” — and he has inspired his trainer.

Taylor, a 15-year veteran and sergeant with the Oregon State Police, met up with trainer Corby Kiler shortly after joining Anytime Fitness in Redmond in January 2012.

Married for 20 years and the father of three sons, Taylor recalls that he weighed 228 pounds at the time he joined the gym. He had a goal in mind: to be down to 168 pounds — his weight when he served in the U.S. Marine Corps — by his 50th birthday on July 1, 2013.

It had been 25 years since he weighed 168, but Taylor set it as a target.

“I’m down to 188, probably even lower than that,” Taylor says. “I’ve lost 40 pounds, (and) my stamina, my endurance, my outlook on life — I’ve got so much energy. It’s amazing. … It’s kind of addictive, and it’s a good addiction.”

Fast-forward a little more than a year from when Taylor joined Anytime Fitness to one day this past March, when he overheard a senior OSP trooper talking about the Tough Mudder — a nearly 12-mile obstacle course that weaves through Wilson Ranches Retreat in the small Wheeler County community of Fossil, about 110 miles northeast of Bend.

Then, Taylor had an idea.

“I got home that night and called Corby,” Taylor remembers. “I said, ‘My goal was to lose weight by my 50th birthday, July 1. This would be a great reason to lose weight, to compete in this event.’ ”

Taylor learned that the Tough Mudder race in Fossil — one of nearly 40 scheduled to be staged at sites around the world in this, the Tough Mudder’s third year — is an obstacle course designed by British Special Forces as a test of all-around strength, stamina and mental grit. Through Tough Mudder races, more than $5 million has been raised for the Wounded Warrior Project, a nationwide nonprofit whose mission is to honor and empower injured service members.

“I’ve heard two things about people who live in Oregon,” says Jon Barker, general manager for the Tough Mudder in Fossil. “One, you don’t mind driving. It’s OK to get in the car and commute and spend a little time together in the car to get to your destination. Two, someone once told me that if you live in Oregon and you don’t know how to camp, you should probably move.”

He continues: “What Fossil doesn’t have in infrastructure and doesn’t have in closeness to a population base … what it does have is beauty and the ability for people to have a really unique weekend by coming out and camping and coming to the event and participating in the event.”

After hearing Taylor’s proposal, the 26-year-old Kiler was immediately on board and began making calls to recruit prospects in the Redmond area to compete in the Tough Mudder, for a team that would be called the Anytime Warriors.

As Barker points out, competing as a team is the basis of the Mudder.

“Tough Mudder is all about camaraderie,” Barker says. “This is not about how fast you can run this course. There is no first place. There is no timing. We don’t care about how fast you did it, and we’re not going to time you. What we care about are teams coming out and working together to conquer the course.”

Kiler’s plan was to get the Redmond group together to work out on Saturday mornings and prepare for the June 15 Tough Mudder in Fossil.

Then, it was Kiler who had an idea.

“I started inviting just random people to try to get the community involved and working out for free because we’re doing it (working out),” Kiler says. “Now I’m just doing these free boot camps in the (Redmond) Dry Canyon on Saturday mornings. Whoever wants to come can come.”

What began as a way to train for the Tough Mudder has become so much more.

Two months after the first Saturday morning workout, Sliced Fitness, as Kiler’s boot camp has become known (“It sounded cool,” Kiler says of the name), is still going strong, averaging about 20 participants by Taylor’s estimation, and it has made the Dry Canyon its training grounds.

“We’re kind of all over the canyon,” Kiler says. “I would like to get a group together to climb South Sister, to do Smith Rock one day of the week, but we’re really focused on the Dry Canyon because that’s Redmond’s best facility during the summer for athletic activities.”

The free boot camps have allowed Taylor to continue his workouts — his change in lifestyle, as he calls it. And that change, as Barker notes, is what the Tough Mudder encourages.

“If you want to get out and get healthy and get fit, get in shape and come run a Tough Mudder,” says Barker. “Wherever it is in the world to you (a Tough Mudder race), use it as a goal. Get in shape, get fit and come out and join us and then continue that lifestyle. … It’s not about you, and it’s not about your glory, and it’s not about your time. It’s more than just a challenge. It’s about a lifestyle.”

Although participation in the weekly boot camp has grown quickly, the camp is still in its infancy. It can become much bigger and encompass much more, Kiler says. From CPR certification to Zumba dance fitness classes to area cleanup projects — no matter the activity, Kiler’s goal is for Spliced Fitness to improve the Redmond area.

“My mission statement is just to give back to the community and try to make Redmond a more healthy place to live,” Kiler says.

Five years have passed since Taylor’s stroke, the cause of which, he says, remains unclear, though he believes it stemmed from either a clot or a tear in a blood vessel behind his right ear. Sixteen months ago, when he weighed 228 pounds, he could not have imagined competing in something like the Tough Mudder. Now, Taylor — who says he frequently experiences a tingling on the left side of his body as a result of what doctors described to him as a “minor” stroke — is determined to not just compete in the challenging obstacle-course event, but to complete it.

It is the positivity and personality of Kiler — and each of his Anytime Warriors teammates, for that matter — that motivates the longtime OSP sergeant. Those are the supporters he wants in his corner, Taylor says, and they are the ones who keep him driven to tackle the Tough Mudder in mid-June and to reach his July 1 weight goal.

“They don’t give you a trophy for first place,” Taylor says, referencing the Tough Mudder. “They give you a glass of beer at the end. It’s all about teamwork and all that. That’s what the Marine Corps was all about, that team effort. Here, I get that same feeling, that it’s a team effort.”