100 in 100: Tim Furbush- Day 29

Tim Furbush didn’t go looking for Prototype. He met Mike at a St. Patrick’s Day party — at Colin and Traci Lake’s, the same Traci Lake whose story ran on Day 9 — and by his own account spent a good chunk of it “shooting my mouth off that I used to be in good shape.” Mike got his number. Then the texts started.

One of those texts — when are you coming in? when are you coming in? — landed while Tim was standing at his kids’ lacrosse practice. He finally caved.

Before that, Tim wasn’t a group-fitness guy at all. Left to himself, his routine had “boiled down to” twenty minutes on the elliptical, a few dumbbell presses and curls, and — his words — about as much time in the sauna as actual training. Headphones in, hood pulled down, keep to yourself. He figured that was being in shape.

Prototype was the opposite of all of it. His first sessions — air squats, burpees — left him completely gassed. But something held his attention: the people around him.

For the first few months he mostly watched — people of every age and fitness level going after the same workout and, to a person, crushing it. One older woman, he guessed in her 60s, flew through a workout that had him wrecked. It didn’t make him feel shown up. It pulled something out of him. Nobody was racing each other; everyone was racing themselves — and the part that sealed it was that it didn’t matter where you finished.

He caught the bug fast. He never expected to. And then Prototype kept handing him things he never walked in the door for.

When COVID pushed Tim into solo running and home workouts, he overdid it — pulled both hamstrings and wrecked a knee. Cortisone shots, an MRI, and conventional physical therapy got him nowhere; the knee kept swelling and he couldn’t fix it on his own. So he started personal training at Prototype with Coach Brian Zancewicz: single-leg stability, ankle and foot strength, the unglamorous stuff. The swelling went down, the strength came back, and he got back to training pain-free. Over the years that’s added up to more than 100 one-on-one sessions.

Then he took on the nutrition side, working with Coach Jon — and the weight-loss transformation that followed is something Tim is the first to point to.

Tim after his weight-loss journey, working on nutrition with Coach Jon.

It didn’t stay his alone, either. Fitness became a family language: Tim’s wife is a fitness and nutrition coach at Westborough Swim and Tennis, his daughter is a sophomore at Alabama, and his son is headed there as an incoming freshman.

The Furbush family — a daughter at Alabama, a son on the way there, and a household where training is just part of the day.

And after a decade rotating through nearly every class time on the schedule, Tim knows just about everyone in the building — the kind of member you’ll find lined up with his friends after a Row for Westborough event.

Left to right: Mark, Brendan, Coach Jon, and Tim after a Row for Westborough event.

The man who walked in bragging about shape he didn’t have has now logged more than 1,600 classes across roughly a decade — and at 51, he’s still setting personal records, including a 235‑pound bench press this year. He came in for a workout. He found a second life.

Tim and his family on vacation.

This story was produced with the help of AI tools to organize and draft from Tim’s own filmed interviews and his verified training history. Every quote is Tim’s, and the details were reviewed by the Prototype team before publishing.