Murph

I have a list of "most fantastically fun athletic events that have ever kicked my butt."  The list includes the 2012 North Shore Inline Marathon; my first ever long track 10K; and a skating and CrossFit Christmas combo.

Memorial Day 2014, I added Memorial Day Murph to the list.

"Murph" is an iconic CrossFit workout named after Navy Lieutenant Michael Murphy, a SEAL who died in combat in 2005. Here's what CrossFit SISU has to say about the workout:

“Murph”

1 mile run

100 pull ups

200 push ups

300 squats

1 mile run

Wear a weighted vest if you can. If you are on vacation and will not be participating in MDM complete at your cabin, grandma’s house, campground or other vacation spot. Remember what this WOD is all about. Carry a heavy heart and know this workout is bigger than you, it is for a fallen hero and all fallen hero’s that we have lost. Happy Memorial Day. We hope to see you all in Excelsior tomorrow!

Memorial Day Murph was a full-on event, not just a workout. The day started with skydiving Navy SEALS,




a talk by a SEAL who had known "Murph,"

plus the National Anthem and a few words by a local pastor. All of this served to get us in the proper mindset for the day: Memorial Day Murph would be not just a fun physical challenge, but a chance to honor and give back to the men and women who have fought and continue to fight for our country. I regret to say that this is something I haven't really given a lot of thought to in the past, but after this Memorial Day I know I will be more aware of, and grateful to, those who choose to serve our country.

After the kickoff, it was time to find my teammate and to warm up.  Here we are, pre-Murph.

Smiling, and not at all sweaty.

My teammate K and I spent the time before our 9:40 "wave" to plan our strategy.  We both had to run both miles, but I planned to do all the squats and he planned to do all the pullups and pushups, in deference to my irritated bicep tendon (not to mention my inability to do more than one pullup per day even when completely healthy).  But then K casually mentioned that he, too, had an injured shoulder--"oh, maybe a rotator cuff tear or something"--that he was in physical therapy for.  K and his wife's vigorous assertions that he was just fine nothwithstanding, the upper body part of Murph was starting to sound a bit problematic.

I was excited for the run, though.  I was hoping to improve on my 8:20 per mile pace from the 5K I had done in March--after all, this was only a mile--so when K suggested we start at the back of the pack I agreed, but decided that I would not spend any time behind anyone that I felt we could pass.

And we didn't.  At 9:40 we were off--and you can see that we were, indeed, at the back of the pack.

We've shed a couple layers; I'm in the purple tank top and K is in the gray shorts.

At the end of the run, though...we were the first ones back to the rig.  After a 7:21 mile.

See?  No one on the rig yet, just the red-shirted judges. 

Am I proud that we were first back from the run?

You're damn right I am!

So then we got down to the real test of Murph, the squats and pullups and pushups.  I quickly discovered that if I did squats in sets of 15, I was totally fine and could take a break just long enough to cross off the next "15" on the score sheet and then be ready to get back at it.  If I tried to do sets of 30, though--as I did twice--bad things happened to my legs.  So sets of 15 it was.

As close to "ass to grass" as I personally get, at least

when I'm doing 300 squats.  That's K on the rig mid-pullup.

I got through the squats feeling reasonably good, and then saw that K still had some pushups and pullups left--I think his shoulder was bothering him more than he was saying.  It didn't seem right to just stand there sipping water and shouting encouragement--and by then I had noticed that a lot of women were doing modified pullups and pushups.  So I yelled to a judge I recognized from SISU.  

"Hey D, can I do knee pushups and jumping pullups?"

She responded "of course!" so I threw myself down on the ground and started doing knee pushups, while asking D to move a box under the rig for my jumping pullups.

 Mid-knee pushup...

...and jumping pullup.  Given the height of my chin

above the bar, it was clearly more "jump"

than "pullup."

I was delighted to discover that the knee pushups and jumping pullups didn't hurt my shoulder at all, and with both of us working we managed to finish the upper body stuff quickly.  After a quick break for K to put his shoes back on, we were off.

Stretch those quads and tie those shoes, we've got another mile to do!

I took advantage of "shoes on time" to grab the Hubster and impart something important. I think I'm asking him to take our picture when we're running through the water.

Oh, yeah...there was running through water, Lake Minnetonka to be exact, twice each lap.  It was fun and not too deep, and nice and refreshing by lap two.  The Hubster did, indeed, get a picture of us running through the lake:

We're about to put the pass on the team in front of us.  Just as we did, the guy dove and finished the "water run" by swimming.

The Hubster got some other running pictures as well.  In fact, he managed to capture the one place in the run where I really was wondering if I could keep going.

Why yes, I'm in exactly as much pain as it looks like I am.

And then we were in the chute (not first team this time, but not too far back), with a final mile of 9:45 and a finishing time of 34:00.  

We're a lot sweatier and more tired than we were in the "before" picture, but pretty darn happy!

After saying goodbye--and "Thank You" several hundred times--to K and his family, the Hubster and I wandered around eating Paleo food from Origin Meals (they have mighty good Paleo chocolate chip cookies), trying to stay in the shade, and enjoying the music (me) and trying to avoid the music (the Hubster).

The DJ in the "MDM" shirt was really enjoying his work.  He was fun to watch.

We watched the men's teams, the women's teams, and the solo men and women, and then at 12:30, in the heat of the day, the Elite athletes had their turn.

The men wore vests with 19 pounds. The women wore vests with 13 pounds.  These are some truly amazing athletes.

Wow.

At the end of the day, there were of course Elite winners...including a SISU coach in second for the women, and a SISU athlete in second for the men.

But the real winner was the Lt. Michael P. Murphy Memorial Scholarship Foundation...the SISU coaches have a mighty big check for them.

Yes, that check says "$10,000."

And, of course, all of the athletes were winners as well...not only because they pushed themselves through this workout, but also because they got to enjoy a fantastic event.  The SISU coaches worked their butts off to put on Memorial Day Murph, and they put together a really cool, meaningful event that not only was a lot of fun but that raised a lot of money for a good cause.  

And now, the day after?  Well, my legs are sore.  Epically sore. "Day after my one and only marathon" sore.  "Fourth day of a five day speedskating camp" sore.  "Wish the toilet had a handicapped grab bar" sore. 

But I've already told the Hubster "I know what I'm doing next Memorial Day."

Summer Inline Series!

I got a surprise last week--an email saying that the Summer Inline Series, the inline oval races, would not only be happening again this year, but would start earlier than usual: May 20, to be exact.  Although I had only done two oval inline workouts up to that point, I was happy to hear it; my workouts had gone pretty well, and I was curious to see how Paleo, CrossFit, and weight loss affected my racing.

Last year inliner Columbian Flash ran the inline races, but he moved back to Columbia in the fall.  The future of the SIS was uncertain until one of the racers from last year stepped up and said he'd take over.  He shall be known Ole Skater since he attended the same college I did (St. Olaf)--although I believe he was born after I graduated.  Anyway, he's very involved in the local skating scene and is doing a ton to support inlining, so I was delighted to hear that he'd taken over the SIS, and even more delighted to hear that he wasn't waiting for June but was starting the races right away.

I was perhaps a bit less delighted when I realized that I would have four weeks of racing while school was still in session.  It's not a bad drive from home to the oval at race time, but it's almost 90 minutes--for what's typically a 30 minute drive--from work in rush hour.  Midway through the stop-and-go freeway action I was putting another mental tally mark in the "plus" column for CrossFit--it's only 10 to 20 minutes from either home or work, depending on which location I go to.  Ah, the sacrifices we make for our obsessions!

Anyway, it turned out to be a fun first night.  The weather was almost perfect--mid-60's and sunny, and the wind was only slightly stronger than I'd like.  Since we were a small group, Ole Skater asked us what we wanted to do for races.  I suggested a rolling-start two lap time trial, since that's how we traditionally used to start the season and so I'd have a lot of comparison data from my first-day-of-racing from past years.  Then I chose a four lap race after that, while the guys did a 5K Miss and Out.

We're a small but enthusiastic group.

My times were OK; not super, not horrible.  My 2 lap rolling start was 1:23, with a decent first lap of 39 something and a horrible die to a second lap of 43 something.  A far cry from my all-time PB of 1:14, but that was almost 10 years ago so I don't have much hope of replicating that.  My 4 lap race--which I did solo because by that time I was the only woman racing, Mel having headed home already--was more consistent, with mostly 43 second laps for a total time of 2:55. So I was reasonably happy with my results, especially since I did two fairly squat-intensive CrossFit workouts in the two days preceding the races.  Another positive sign that this whole CrossFit/skating/Paleo thing is working out well.

So the oval inlining season has officially begun, and as I seem to be saying a lot lately--so far, so good.

Who could ask for a better night?

My Hearing Issues are a Pain in the Butt

(Yes, I know that blog posts are usually made much more interesting by the inclusion of pictures. No, you're not getting a visual for this one.  Well, OK, maybe one picture...

There.  Happy?)

For quite some time, I've suspected that I have some degree of hearing loss.  The Hubster is always turning down the TV and I'm always turning it back up; I find myself saying "what" an awful lot; and last time I visited my parents, I had to keep asking my 73-year-old mother what the people on TV were saying--and she always could tell me.  So I had already mentally penciled "get hearing checked" on my to-do list for the summer.  While I'm pretty sure I have some amount of loss, maybe just in certain frequencies, it hasn't been irritating enough to rise past the level of "I'll get around to it this summer" on the urgency scale.  That, however, may have changed today.

Today, my hearing issues became a pain in the ass.

Literally.

After a nice three-day "recovery weekend" at my parents' place (sorry, no dog pictures this time.  I actually forgot to take any!) I went to CrossFit today.  I knew I wouldn't be able to do the first part of the class--max handstand pushups and max pullups--because of my shoulder pain.  I also knew that CoachBoy 3 is very good at figuring out replacement exercises for me, so I wasn't too concerned.  I was sure I'd end up doing something just as hideous challenging as the stuff the rest of the class was doing.

It was a big class, and fortunately there was a coach trainee (who shall become CoachBoy 4) also in attendance.  Due to the 13 athletes milling around during warmup and the usual music blaring, I had a hard time hearing when I asked CoachBoy 3 what my tasks would be.  I managed to hear "max wall sit" and "max unbroken situps," though, and so I figured I was ready to go.  The women were assigned to CoachBoy 4 for the pullup test (and in my case the situps) while the men went with CoachBoy 3 for the handstand pushups.

All the other women finished the pullups, and then it was my turn for my situp test.  I had, of course, grabbed an Abmat; I never even do warmup situps without one.  Based on how my abs felt during a situp-intensive WOD last week, I figured I'd be good for about 50 before I had to stop and rest, so I started off on a brisk pace, CoachBoy 4 diligently counting each situp for me.

I got to 50, and kept going.  By this time the other women were also counting and cheering me on as they waited their turn for the handstand pushups.

I got to 80, and then 90.  And then CoachBoy 3 was yelling for the women to do the handstands, and for CoachBoy 4 to come and count pullups for the men.

100, 101, 102... "keep going," CoachBoy 4 tossed over his shoulder as he headed off to pullup-land.

135, 136...damn, didn't know I could do this many.  155, 156...I'm really getting sick of this.  Hmmm, I'm starting to feel some...irritation.  In the "low back" area.  The very low back area. Damn, I thought, this is not going to "end" well.

165, 166...nope, didn't get 166.  165 it officially is!

CoachBoy 3 gave me a very strange look when I told him I had done 165 situps.

"I said 'max in a minute,'" he said.

Well, "max in a minute" is a whole different situation from "max unbroken."  A considerably less painful situation, I'm guessing.  I had heard of CrossFitters getting "monkeybutt" from situp-heavy WODs (and indeed, we had our own version of "monkeybutt" when the Hubster and I rode long distance cross-country offroad motorcycle races), but I had never experienced it. It's exactly as unpleasant as you'd think it is.  And it's looking like my little mis-hearing incident will be the gift that keeps on giving, because tomorrow's WOD also has situps.  100 of them.

So I think it's time to get my hearing checked, before it becomes an even bigger pain in the butt.

Just the Three of Us

Me, CrossFit, and skating...I think we're going to get along just fine.

I've been doing CrossFit for 10 months now, through an entire long track season.  Up until a couple months ago, though, I was pretty cautious with it--going just twice a week (and only once or not at all if I raced that week), and I was still using super light weights.  Not that I wasn't working hard; I was. It's just that I was afraid to make CrossFit too large a part of my workout routine, to the potential detriment of my skating.

In the middle of March, though, I ramped up my CrossFit to three times a week.  This was fine through the first week of April--no worries about it detracting from my skating because I was still in my "rest break" until then.  And the ramping up felt right...because I was loving CrossFit more and more as time went by and I got better at it.   And even after "rest break," was over and I started dryland, it was only twice a week and it was immediately clear that my dryland had benefited from the increase in CrossFit so that was all right. Add in a trail skate once a week or so, and it was a pretty manageable schedule (although still much heavier than previous years).  Still, I wondered what would happen when the "real" skating workouts--the inline oval workouts--started.  Could I, as I hoped at great length here, handle three CrossFit and three hard skating workouts a week?  And what effect would CrossFit have on my skating now that I'm doing it more often and with heavier weights?

Today I got my preliminary answer, and I couldn't be happier with it.

Bonts and CrossFit bruises...a winning combination.

Yesterday the oval opened for inlining.  My workout was planned, my skate bag was packed...and yet as the workday passed and the time to skate drew nearer, I found myself strangely conflicted.  I wanted to skate but it was cold and windy, and there was still some water on the oval.  And the CrossFit WOD for the day looked like fun...and I could just as easily wear the clothes I had packed for skating to CrossFit...and I had no one to skate with and the Friday traffic to the oval after work typically sucks...

And I ended up going to CrossFit instead of skating.

I felt strangely as though I had cheated on someone; I felt the urge to reassure skating that it was still my favorite.  And yet I was happy I had made the decision I did.  The day was cold and super windy, the track was wet, and the WOD was, indeed, fun (I PR'd my front squat, which isn't hard to do when you've never tried a One Rep Max before.  100 pounds).

Still, today I was going skating come Hell, high water, or a really fun workout at Saturday Butt Camp (yes, yes, there should be an umlaut over the u; I'm just too lazy to Google how to make it).  Butt camp today was going to be Partner Murph, or in other words, an exact dry run of what I'll be doing on Memorial Day. But this time I had eyes only for skating.  It was a beautiful day, I'd arranged to meet Inliner Boy and Mel at the oval, and not even the funnest CrossFit workout in the world was going to change that.

Can't pass up a day like this at the oval...look at those flags hanging nice and still.

Of course, the wind picked up as soon as we started skating, but still...

I did wonder how this past week's four CrossFit workouts--including a squat-intensive one yesterday--and the "eight workouts in the past nine days" status of my legs would affect my performance in the first inline oval workout of the year.  I figured that today would be the true test of whether CrossFit has a positive, negative, or neutral effect on my skating (I already know that skating has a positive effect on CrossFit; my running and rowing and squat performance definitely benefit from skating).  It would also be a test of whether I'm just deluding myself thinking that I can do as many workouts as I have planned for the upcoming month.

It was a perfect morning: cool, almost windless, and delightfully free of any skate park punks fine upstanding young citizens on skateboards.

Now that right there is a beautiful sight: the oval on a sunny morning, with nary a skate park punk in sight.  And yes, all the crap in the foreground is mine.

Mel and Inliner Boy arrived, and we launched into a 4x5 minute (two hard--one easy--two hard) "German Endurance" workout.  Because it's too hard to take lap times and also time the 2-1-2 minutes, we went with 2.5 laps--1.25 laps--2.5 laps (why yes, I am a bit obsessive compulsive, why do you ask?).  It was a hard workout for the first one of the year, not to mention the first oval skate of any kind of the inline season for all of us as well.

And it went...absolutely fabulously.  

Fabulously.

My technique felt good, my legs were strong, and the whole thing was just way more fun than anything that gets your heart rate up to 191 should be.  And best yet, the lap times were good...really  good.  As in "just like 2007, my best year ever" good.  As in "an average of 3.4 seconds per lap faster than last year's identical workout" good.

As in "wow, CrossFit and skating are going to get along just fine" good.

So I finished the workout, and then I did some dryland and some dub practice (yes, I brought my rope) and some air squats for Murph prep.  And it was still fabulous.

And now, ten hours later, my legs feel fantastic and I'm toying with the idea of going to CrossFit open gym in the morning as well as doing a "recovery" trail skate with my sister later in the day.

After all, as long as my two (athletic) loves get along so well, I may as well spend as much time as possible with both of them!

Murph Prep

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

Memorial Day Murph

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?

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.

Moving Up

I'm moving up in the world.

Literally.  Like, from the floor of CrossFit SISU all the way up to the big ceiling beam.

That's right...I climbed the rope today.  Let me repeat that...I climbed the rope today.

Twice.

Now, this may not seem like much of an achievement to you, especially if you're male.  The Hubster recalls scampering up the rope like a squirrel when he was in school, and I think a lot of guys have a similar memory.  Rope?  No big deal.

For me, though--the clumsy hater-of-PE (I even, despite my obsessive rule-following, skipped PE during one whole year of improperly-supervised elementary school)--rope climbs were one of the  iconic "separate the jocks from the klutz's" activities in PE.  There was a lot of stuff in PE class I could fumble my way through (and I lived for the track unit, when I could finally redeem a small bit of self-esteem by being one of the few girls who actually wanted to run the mile).  There were a couple of things, though, that I was just never going to be able to do--no way, no how.   Rope climbs were number one on that list, and whether it was self-fulfilling prophesy or just weak arms, I did not, indeed, ever get more than about six inches off the ground in rope-climb units.

Until today.

I've been having weekly Personal Training sessions with CoachBoy 3, to help me figure out some of the stuff I haven't been able to figure out yet in 10 months of CrossFit.  Puzzling things like Olympic Lifts and rope climbs; things that give me horrible flashbacks to middle school PE, when I would watch the teacher execute some intricate piece of athleticism and then feel my brain seize up with the impossibility of ever even figuring out what he/she had just done, let alone replicating it.  Today was split jerks and rope climbs, and as CoachBoy went through the litany of what needed to be done in a proper split jerk I began to have one of those flashbacks.  Dip drive, chin back, get under the bar, push through...good lord, there's no way I'll ever remember that--I can barely figure out what he's doing. CoachBoy 3 is a very talented (and patient) coach, though, and so I managed to muddle my way through a few split jerks and felt like I maybe could figure them out eventually.

Then we moved to the rope climb.

I'd tried the rope climb once before in CrossFit, when we had a time to practice it before a climb-infested WOD.  I had never figured out the way you trap the rope between your feet to make a step so that you can use your legs to ascend the rope rather than pulling yourself up with your arms, and after flailing around ineffectively a few times I resigned myself to doing the "pull yourself up off the ground using the rope" maneuver to scale any WOD that required rope climbs.  So I didn't have high hopes for the success of today's endeavor.

Today, though, CoachBoy 3 showed me a different way to trap the rope (and one that will help avoid rope burns and the subsequent need to wear goofy tall CrossFit socks.  I don't think I'm a goofy-tall-CrossFit-socks kind of gal.). And, wonder of wonders--I could do it.  So he had me just make the step and then hold myself there on the rope a couple times, and then we went back to the split jerks.  (This alternating-activity strategy was a great approach to keeping me from freaking out about my inability to do either activity).  Before we left the rope, though, CoachBoy said "you're gonna climb that rope today."

Well, I've learned that it's best to keep my "I can't" thoughts to myself...but a little "no way" did creep through my mind.  CoachBoy 3 said that the rope climb at SISU was actually fairly short--but that ceiling beam looked mighty far away to me. And then there were the small matters of fear of heights and the whole "getting back down the rope" thing.  On the slim chance I got up there, how the Hell was I going to get back down?

But I stepped up to the rope, jumped up and trapped it, and started moving up.  I lost my footing once and CoachBoy had to steady the rope so I could re-trap it--but I didn't freak, I kept moving...and suddenly I was reaching for the beam and I actually touched it.

I'm not quite sure how I got back down that first time; I doubt it was any appropriate method, but I was just so thrilled with having climbed a rope that I didn't care.  And when, after another split jerk interval, I tried it again, I climbed it cleanly this time and made it back down in a more controlled fashion.

So yeah.  I climbed the rope today.

I'll stop smiling sometime tomorrow.