Every Memorial Day around the country, Crossfitters honor the sacrifice of one Lieutenant Michael Murphy by putting themselves through some serious effort and pain. Lt. Murphy loved this particular WOD, calling it "Body Armor." After he was killed in action, the workout was renamed for him. This is the official WOD from CFHQ. This is more about Lt. Murphy.
Most of our coaches and several athletes as well were at the Regional competition over the holiday weekend, so our box did this WOD late. We had 2 hours scheduled for this because it is a brutal and lengthy workout.
6/2/12 WOD #56 "Murph":
- Warm up: 400 m run
10 jumping lunges
10 clapping push ups
10 inchworms
10 pull ups - WOD: Murph
1 mile run
100 pull ups (two red bands)
200 push ups
300 squats
1 mile run
Time: 86:11
We could (thank God) partition off our marathon of pull ups, push ups, and squats however we wished. After all, there is no point in shaking out your arms from your pull ups when you can shake out and do some squats at the same time. I decided the easiest way to partition everything was to break it down into 20 sets of "Cindy." Cindy is one of the mean girls of CrossFit and she consists of 5 pull ups, 10 push ups, 15 squats. I know I can do all those sets unbroken so I knew that would be faster than trying to do 10, 20, 30.
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| Push ups. |
I won't lie: this sucked. And it could have sucked worse. We were also encouraged to do this with a 20# weighted flak vest. I declined to do that because I knew darn well I would hurt quite enough, thank you, even without it. Next year I will do the vest. The day was quite warm, and that quickly became an issue. I came in from my first mile and everyone else was well into their pull ups/push ups/squats...this meant the box was hot and super stuffy. I ended up using half my water bottle to splash onto my face, neck, and chest between my push ups and squats (if I did it after the squats then my hands were wet for the pull ups and that is no bueno. Even with hurried wiping off on my shorts and application of chalk).
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| Pull ups |
I felt like the first half went much slower than the second half. I needed to rest more, I overheated more, I hurt more. The second half was easier and better. Even so I managed to do most of my sets unbroken- I had to stop mid-pull up once to kick the box out of the way cause I was hitting it, and towards the end I did stop one set of push ups to lay down on the cold cement floor. I also had to drop to my knees for my push ups starting around the half way point (and I sacrificed several seconds to grab an abmat to pad my knees and keep me from bruising my patellas). I am also ashamed to admit that for the first time in my CrossFit career, I had to walk part of my run. That last mile was a beast.
But I finished it.
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| Suffer to Honor |
