CrossFit "Murph"

It's a CrossFit tradition to do a particular Hero WOD on Memorial Day.  That workout is named Murph, in honor of Michael Murphy (listed third at the previous link), a US soldier who died in Afghanistan in 2005.

I have done this workout before, but never at the gym on Memorial Day.  This year, my wife wanted to do it, and I knew better than to disagree.  The day before the workout, I went for a fairly easy run - just under an hour, and then spent a couple hours fly fishing through a narrow gorge, boulder hopping quite a bit.

When I got home from fishing, I think I drank at least 3 liters of water, trying to get ready for the workout.

The workout is fairly simple:

Run 1 mile
100 pull-ups
200 push-ups
300 bodyweight squats
Run 1 mile

The pull-ups, push-ups and squats can be done in any order desired.  Most people default to a 5-10-15 scheme or a 10-20-30 scheme.  I decided to start with 10-20-30 and move to 5-10-15 when I felt like the push-ups were getting to be too much.

For the record, I did band-assisted pull-ups and I did knee push-ups.  And I still sucked.  Looking through my logbooks, I hadn't done the workout since September of 2011.  At that point in time, I weighed about 20 pounds less than now and I was running a whole lot more than I've run the past year and a half.  It took me 54:11 to do the workout last time.  I was pretty sure I would be over an hour.

The coach suggested we could (and that some of us should) scale the workout, maybe doing 1/2 mile runs, or only doing 50% or 75% of the bodyweight reps.  I thought about it.  I was seriously unhappy when way more than half the people at the workout were either done or on their final run while I was at 75% of the bodyweight work.  I wanted to just go and do the last run and be done with it.

But, the workout is done on Memorial Day to honor a fallen soldier.  Cutting back just didn't seem right.  So, I continued on.  At about 55 minutes, I finally headed out for my run.  My wife was finishing her run just as I started mine.  I was slow and it hurt, but I finished in 66 minutes.

Today, every part of my body hurts.  We are supposed to do heavy squats at the gym tonight after 300 bodyweight squats yesterday.  Then, box step-ups with weight.  My quads are already sore and this will torch them.  And, then another Hero WOD, this one called DT.  Deadlifts, cleans, and shoulder-to-overhead reps - 5 rounds with the same barbell.  With a Hero WOD scheduled for every day this week, it's going to be a long week.