Murph

Husband and I joined a few of my CrossFit athletes to do Murph on Saturday morning. It was quite the hellacious experience, just like last year.

"Murph" aka "Body Armor"
For time:
1 mile run
100 pullups
200 pushups
300 air squats
1 mile run

Partition the pullup, pushups and squats as needed. Start and finish with a mile run. If you've got a twenty pound vest or body armor, wear it.

 Results: ~80 minutes -- I was laying on the ground and didn't personally look at the stopwatch, and the only time I heard said out loud was "an hour and 20 minutes". I guess that's as exact as it needs to be in that time domain. :)

This was a 10 minute PR for me. Definitely came from improvement on pullups.

Like the last time I did this, I ran a separate stop watch which I started after returning from the first mile run. I partitioned the work into 20 rounds of 5 pullups, 10 pushups and 15 squats. Having that second watch helps me gauge how well I'm doing with moving through my sets without taking too much rest.

5 rounds competed -- 9:25
10 rounds completed -- 22:59 (9 rounds completed at 20 mins)
16 rounds completed -- 42:20
20 rounds completed -- 55:38
Avg/round: ~2:45

Pullups were absolutely spot-on -- all 20 sets I did 5 reps. And they were all GOOD, chin way over. Didn't use grips or any tape, except in the last 2 sets I wore my left hand grip because my left hand ring finger callous ripped a bit. This is a huge departure from last time, when I had tape grips on both hands, and ended up ripping open a bunch of spots on my hands and fingers.

Pushups were... UGH. Every time I came to these, it was a mental battle to get them done. I think that pushups defeat me mentally more than physically. With pullups in hand these need to become a main focus. It's not as "sexy and cool" to do tons of good pushups, but so necessary...

Squats were consistent, but not fast. I only broke 1 or 2 sets for rest, and that was in the last 5 rounds.

--
I guess LT. Michael Murphy should have been my mental inspiration, but what mentally drove me to persevere and complete this workout was thinking about the American Widow Project. I had seen a post on their Facebook page in the morning before we went to meet the group to do the WOD. And I made it my goal that when I felt horrible, I would think about how lucky I am to be doing this workout side-by-side with my husband, who has come back from war safely 3 times now. I'm sure those widows would go through any amount of painful experiences to be able to spend time with their husbands again. So I dedicated my workout to them. They are the unspoken heroes that I will remember this Memorial Day.