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Last Monday was Memorial Day in the US. It’s a national holiday and honors those who lost their lives while defending their country.
Every year on Memorial Day, people across the globe honor fallen service members by completing the Murph challenge. It’s one of the CrossFit hero workouts where you have to do the following
1-mile run
100 Pull-ups
200 Push-ups
300 Air Squats
1-mile run
All the above wearing a 20-pound weighted vest or body armor.
This is a LOT.
I’ve been doing CrossFit for over 2.5 years but had never done a Murph workout before. I have always been scared of doing it as it is quite draining mentally and of course physically. But one good thing about these workouts is you can scale down into how you want to do it and make your own version.
In our gym, we practiced for 6 weeks before the Murph to get to the place where we could do some version of Murph on the day. I did half Murph, and 3/4th Murph before going to the actual Murph. In one of the workouts, It was 90 degrees outside and we still had to run 1 mile in total during a workout. Mentally it was a lot and I didn’t think I could do actual Murph. I know I can’t do it with a 20-pound vest anyway, but even without it, it’s too hard.
On Memorial Day, with my other fellow workout mates, I attempted a scaled version of it.
1-mile run
100 Pull-ups
200 Push-ups
300 Air Squats
1-mile run
I broke these down into 20 rounds of 5 pull-ups, 5 push-ups, 15 air squats, and 5 push-ups (All without a 20-pound vest). I was so glad I finished it in 50 minutes. The hardest part for me was the push-ups I had to break into 2-2-1 during the 2nd half. Fortunately, the weather was a game changer as it was cloudy and 65 degrees outside and I didn’t feel drained after the workout (Next was was different though. I was quite sore)
One realization I had after the workout is that I practiced different versions of Murph before in relatively hotter weather which made the actual day quite easier. I felt the practice workouts were harder than the actual ones.
It is always interesting to see when you practice a lot before, the actual tasks become easier than you think.
I also got to know that Mark Zuckerberg also did it with the vest in almost 40 minutes which is quite impressive.
Personally, for me, this was a great start and I can’t wait to do it next year and beat my PR.
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