Murph Revisted

Will & James tackled Murph head on — a la Angie. Will finished at about 40 min and James finished at 52 min with this “catch the punch with your face” approach to this Hero WOD.

Being all hyped up to tackle Murph, they forgot to closely examine the actual Rx for this workout and / or peruse the CrossFit message boards for more detail. Perhaps they could have spared themselves the horror of non functioning legs during the first quarter of the second mile (after the 300 squats — in a row) had they done so.

“This is horrible” was a direct quote from both of them more than once.

So, lets take a look at the WOD prescription for Murph:

“Murph“

For time:
1 mile Run
100 Pull-ups
200 Push-ups
300 Squats
1 mile Run

Partition the pull-ups, push-ups, and squats as needed. Start and finish with a mile run. If you’ve got a twenty pound vest or body armor, wear it.

Emphasis mine. Turns out what this means is that you don’t have to Angie this WOD – you can take a Cindy-esque approach and do 5 pull ups, 10 push ups, 15 squats – or take a Barbara approach and do 20 pullups, 30 pushups and 50 squats and rest 3 min. Whatever. You don’t have to do the 100 pull ups, then the 200 push ups and then the 300 squats and stumble out the door for the second mile.

Anyhoo, more than likely, the guys would have finished faster with one of these partitioned approaches. Same amount of work, but just a physiologically better way of approaching it and totally within the Rx. That said, knocking off each exercise in order is a testament to their fortitude.

Good job fellas!