For the Honor of Heroes

Every Memorial Day, Americans gather around their grills and have an extended weekend filled with family, friends, beer and BBQ. May 27th, me and 60+ of my CrossFit friends joined together at CrossFit Reston to perform the annual Memorial Day Murph. This event is the celebration of the life of Lt. Michael P. Murphy who was killed in action on June 28th 2005 in Afghanistan. "Murph" is arguably one of the toughest Hero WODs in the CrossFit arsenal!


Murph
1 mile run
100 Pull-ups
200 Push-ups
300 Squats
1 mile run

It's a test of athleticism to even attempt to complete a half Murph, let alone the whole thing. But the most important thing is to do what you can and scale. If you choose to perform a 1/4, 1/2 or the full, your decision to honor a great hero should be your driving force. Every hero WOD deserves 150% of your ability and should push you. It should suck and it should be painful but deep down you must find the drive in order complete a workout these heroes can no longer complete. They dies for us and deserve our blood, sweat and tear in honor of their sacrifice.

CrossFit is not a Globo Gym. It's a community. It's an extension of your family. Most of all though, CrossFit should be synonymous with compassion. How else do you explain the constant community of athletes willing to donate their blood, sweat and tears for various charitable organizations? I recently began working out at CrossFit Walter Reed at the combined Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Currently, we are confined to the cardio and weight rooms of the main workout facility. The actual gym space has been approved and the equipment is en route care of CrossFit HQ. The magic of creating a box for these Wounded Warriors is that all of the coordination, all of the coaching and all of the work is being done by volunteers!

The owners of CrossFit Fairfax and CrossFit Reston, Maggie Dabe and Jeff Tincher have graciously offered to help me start volunteering and hopefully working towards coaching these adaptive athletes by sponsoring me for the CrossFit Level Certification Course. To say that I am excited is a HUGE understatement!