photo by Steve Penland

Sunday, May 4, 2014

Murph Prep

Three weeks from tomorrow, on Memorial Day, I'll be doing this:



CrossFit it full of traditions.  There's the (much-maligned) tradition of having its own vocabulary--EMOMs and AMRAPS and WODS and Rx and HSPU.  Personally I have no issue with this; CrossFit seems to me to be half workout and half sport, and no one complains about baseball's bunts and cutters and BB's and WHIPs.  (But, as usual, I digress.)  Another CrossFit tradition is naming some of their WOD's. Some, in the grand custom of giving female names to catastrophic storms, are named for women--and this is quite fitting. Fran and Jackie and Angie and Barbara and Cindy and their sisters will do to your body what Katrina did to New Orleans.

Other WOD's, the Hero WOD's, are named after military or police or firefighters who gave their lives in the line of duty.  One of the most well known of these Hero WOD's is Murph, named after Navy SEAL Lieutenant Michael Patrick Murphy.  Here's what the Memorial Day Murph website has to say about "Murph:"

Michael Patrick Murphy was a United States Navy SEAL lieutenant who was awarded the U.S. military’s highest decoration, the Medal of Honor, for his actions during Operation Red Wing in Afghanistan.
Most notably portrayed in the film “Lone Survivor”, Lt. Murphy put himself into harms way in order to relay the position of his unit, an act that ultimately led to the rescue of Luttrell and the recovery of the remains of the three who were killed in the battle.
Lt. Murphy was an avid adherent of CrossFit and after his death one of his favorite workouts was named after him. The workout, which he referred to as ‘Body Armor,’ is now called ‘Murph.’ While wearing a 20 lb. weighted vest (substitute for body armor), it is a one-mile run followed by 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups and 300 squats, followed by another mile run; done for time.
Apparently CrossFit boxes around the country do Murph on Memorial Day.  Many of them just have Murph as the WOD that day, but CrossFit SISU is up for something bigger--Memorial Day Murph.  I wasn't doing CrossFit last Memorial Day and so this is my first exposure to Murph, but I'd read about it and was hoping to get a chance to do it.  Of course, I'd need to scale it; while the running and squats are within my capability, the only way I'm doing 100 pullups and 200 pushups is if I'm given about a month to complete the task (and I'm pretty sure 30 days exceeds the time cap on the WOD).   So I checked out the MDM website (you can check it out, too--just click on the words under the picture above); it looked like a great event, for a great cause.  Sign me up.  Except--it seemed that there were only three options for athlete divisions: Elite, complete with weight vest--definitely not me; Rx, no weight vest but no scaling--also not me; and team divisions, single-gender or co-ed.My sore bicep tendon currently precludes me doing any pushups or pullups (I figure that, healthy, I'd be good for maybe 5 pullups and about 50 pushups without being able to scale by using a band for the pullups and doing knee pushups), so whoever I teamed with would need to do all of the upper body work.  Since I'm assuming that most women capable of doing all 100 pullups and 200 pushups would want to go Rx or Elite, I figured I'd need a male teammate. Now, where to find one?
Photo: Jackie Jaspers aka "Crash", has stepped up to represent CrossFit SISU in the Memorial Day Murph Elite Female division.  

Jackie has only been doing CrossFit for 9 months.  During that time she has earned the respect of her fellow SISUites, known for her intensity, passion and reckless abandonment when attacking WODs!  

If there was a heart and soul award Jackie would win it 100 out of 100 times.  

She is a U.S. Marine Corp Captain, making this competition very near and dear to her heart.  We are so honored and proud to have one of our active service men and women represent not only SISU, but also the Marine Corp.  Good luck "Crash" we know you will do awesome.
One of SISU's Elite female competitors.  Clearly she does not need a teammate.
I put out a few feelers at workouts, but everyone I talked to was doing it solo.  So finally I put a message on the SISU nutrition Facebook page, hoping one of my fellow "SISU Challenge" survivors would take me up on my invitation.
And they did.  Within an hour I had a message from the female winner of the challenge, telling me her husband, K, would love to team with me.
Sweet!
So on Friday K and I met at CrossFit to make sure we knew who each other was, come Memorial Day plan our Murph strategy.  K turned out to be a nice fellow who looked like he could do the whole WOD himself without breaking a sweat, and he also turned out to have the same patient, encouraging style as the SISU coaches--which I figured was essential.  In the team divisions, teammates have to complete the run together and only one team member can be working on the other exercises at any given time.  If K could remain positive and encouraging while witnessing me being the only one--except for the guy who had only been doing CrossFit for a month--to DNF the workout on Friday (my double unders still suck) then I figured he'd be OK with having to slow down to run with me and with waiting while I did my "oh so slow and careful because I still need to really focus to do them right" squats. 
I think I'll time a mile run sometime in the next couple weeks so we know what pace to expect for the first mile (the second mile, after I've done 300 squats, is anybody's guess).  I should also probably do 50 or so squats a few times a week, not so much to improve my strength as to make sure that "squat" is not a foreign-enough concept for my body, come Memorial Day, as to result in a crippling case of Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness the next day.  Other than that, I think we're all set for Murph.

No comments:

Post a Comment