Memorial Day Murph

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I really love the CrossFit Community. I’m sure you know that by now. Owning a CrossFit Box has made that love for the community even deeper. Now I feel like some sort of mother hen. Our box is still pretty small, but doing well for being open for a month. As Memorial day approached we knew we wanted to do the Hero WOD “Murph”

For those of you not familiar with CrossFit – They have benchmark WODs called “Hero” WODs that are named in memory of people in the armed services that have lost their life. This workout was named in memory of Navy Lieutenant Michael Murphy, 29, of Patchogue, N.Y., who was killed in Afghanistan June 28th, 2005. From CrossFit.com:

“This workout was one of Mike’s favorites and he’d named it “Body Armor”. From here on it will be referred to as “Murph” in honor of the focused warrior and great American who wanted nothing more in life than to serve this great country and the beautiful people who make it what it is.

Partition the pull-ups, push-ups, and squats as needed. Start and finish with a mile run. If you’ve got a twenty pound vest or body armor, wear it.”

We were only having one class time on Memorial Day, which is kind of exciting because everyone gets to work out together! I LOVE big groups of people sweating it out! Also, since we have quite a few people who are new to CrossFit we allowed people to work in pairs. How that would work is everyone ran the first mile, then the partners could break the Pull Ups, Push Ups, and Squats up between the two of them with only one person working at a time.Then they would run the second mile together. After warming up it was time to go. That 3-2-1-GO was on and we were off!

I paired up with Brooke and she was a quick one on the run! Which means she had time to rest before I got back. I haven’t been running much since my last race, so i wasn’t sure how fast my run would go. Well… Peer Pressure pays off… Running with that group of speedy people had me at a 10:07 mile – My fastest in quite some time! I jumped right into pull ups… Literally, as I did jumping pull ups off the box, haha. We just broke the work in half so each of us did 50 pull ups, 100 Push ups, and 150 squats. I wanted to get the pull ups out of the way right away so I broke them into sets of 10-15. Then I broke the push ups and squats into sets of 25. We took turns working and resting. Everyone else was hitting it hard too, the box was buzzing with energy (and lots of sweat!)

It seemed like Brooke and I had a pretty good pace. I was shocked when we finished first and set off for our run. Let me tell you, after jumping pull ups and squats my legs were jello. Those first 100 meters or so I wasn’t sure my legs would hold up. We found our happy pace and just kept pushing. We hit the half mile turn around and saw the guys catching up to us. I was spent, but didn’t want to get passed, ha! We got back and finished in a time of 36:42.

And we all looked dazed/confused/spent when we were done. It was an honor pushing ourselves (and each other) beyond what we thought we could do to remember those who gave their all so we could have that freedom.

Our sweaty after picture… before we headed to IHOP and slammed some pancakes.

I love my CrossFit 70 Family, and am so excited to see it growing.

Don’t forget, we are also giving away a pair of Reebok Nanos over on the facebook page. Check it out!

How did you spend your Memorial Day?
Have you ever done Murph?