Meeting Murph

“Are you new here?” She said as she overtook me in the warm-up run.

“Yeah, this is my 3rd workout.”

“Well don’t worry, it doesn’t get any easier, we are all dead by the end of the workout.”

And with those words of encouragement, Danielle blew by me and went on with her run.

I am quickly finding that the words “check your ego at the door” are a requirement of my trips to the CrossFit box.

Be it a 5 foot nothing, 100 and nothing pound girl, or a 6’7” guy, I have found that most anyone can run circles around me or just make me look foolish in any endeavor.

But, here we are, a week and a half into it, and I am finding that I look forward to getting to the box everyday after work. Last night I cursed myself as I was driving home, since I had agreed to take my wife out to a movie, and I hadn’t gotten out of work in time to get a work out in 1st.

And while we are on the subject of discoveries. I have found that Crossfit has a funny way of paying tribute to our fallen soldiers.

Tuesday was my 1st “Hero” workout. These are torture devices named for a brave member of our armed Services who has lost his or her life defending our country.

My introduction to the Hero workout was “Murph” named after a Navy Seal who lost his life in Afghanistan. Later I found out that the mission that he lost his life on has a book written about it call “Sole Survivor”, it has been added to my reading list.

But back to Murph, I’m not sure how they go about picking the workout that is dedicated to the individual, but If it was a favorite workout of the individual for whom it is named, than Murph was a sick fuck. Start with a mile run, then 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups and 300 squats, oh and tack on another mile run just for fun.

Fortunately they let you break up the pull-ups, push-ups and squats however you want. Unfortunately I only made it through about a 1/3 of the prescribed workout before the trainer came over to me and let me know I should start stumbling through my 2nd mile if we ever wanted to get home that night.

So while it may not have been CrossFit’s intention, the result was me cursing the name of a fallen soldier as I jogged around the parking lot in the rain Tuesday night. Actually, it was more me cursing myself for thinking that any workout involving 2-miles of running was a good idea, seeing as it had probably been 10 years since I had run 2-miles in a day, let alone in a workout.

That said, I will be back at the box tonight, hopefully for an indoor workout, since I have been soaked to the bone everyday so far this week, and am quite sick of it. I thought I was moving to Wilmington for the beach and sun, not 20+ inches of rain in 4 days.