My First HERO

Warm up: a little stretching, couple of pull ups and squats.
WOD: "Murph" -- 1 mi. run, 100 pull ups, 200 push ups, 300 squats, 1 mi. run

I've had my stomach in knots about Murph for days. Silly me, I was most worried about throwing up from the intensity of the WOD. What I should've been worried about was how my knees were going to survive 300 squats. Doing my first "hero" WOD was kinda like having my first baby: I was terrified of delivery, when I should've been a lot more worried about my labor. Hindsight is always 20/20, right?!?

Meet Navy LT Michael Murphy, for whom today's WOD is named:

CrossFit doesn't just forge elite athletes. It supports our military and honors our fallen soldiers. We have an American flag in our gym, and I have rarely seen a picture of a CF gym that didn't have one in the background somewhere. As the spouse of a fallen soldier and the girlfriend (and hopefully future spouse!) of an active duty soldier, I think it's fantastic that CF goes out of its way to show such solidarity with these heroes. Going along with that concept, there are some WODs, and they are usually real smokers, called hero WODs. They are usually the ones with male names, and they honor a fallen soldier. Are there any hero WODs that honor fallen female soldiers? Don't know, but it's a definite possibility.

Here was the background to "Murph" as posted on CrossFit and quoted on CrossFit Centex's site:

"In memory of Navy Lieutenant Michael Murphy, 29, of Patchogue, N.Y., who was killed in Afghanistan June 28th, 2005. This workout was one of Mike's favorites and he'd named it 'Body Armor.' From here on it will be referred to as 'Murph' in honor of the focused warrior and great American who wanted nothing more in life than to serve this great country and the beautiful people who make it what it is."

OK. All nostalgia aside, let's talk about "Murph."

AAAAGGGGHHHH!!!! Oh, the pain and the misery! OK, it wasn't that bad, but it's the hardest I've worked in my life since popping out two ridiculously large babies several years ago. The first mile went by at a nice pace, and each time one of my teammates passed by, I made sure to say something to cheer them on. I really love working out in a group and motivating each other. I needed that on a day like today in particular.

Next came the calisthenic portion of the WOD. Prior to starting, we talked about different strategies for conquering the mind-blowing numbers of pull ups, push ups, and squats. I knew ahead of time that I needed to plan for knee discomfort and try to do mine in sets that would maximize my efforts and minimize stress to my joint. I ended up with this method of attack: 10 rounds of 10 pull ups, 15 squats, 20 push ups, and 15 squats. Basically, you could do 10-20-30, but I knew that I couldn't do 30 straight squats for 10 rounds, so that's why I broke mine up. However, on the last round, I did 10-30-20 so that I wasn't ending with squats prior to running. This plan worked like a charm for me. I broke it down pretty manageably, even though it was still a struggle.

I mentioned earlier how nervous and anxious I had been going into this WOD. Today was equal parts physical exertion and mental dedication. Going into round four, I hit my wall with knee pain and quads getting tight. By the end, I was walking and bending my knee as little as possible. I really didn't know if I was going to be able to finish it. But just like my coach says, I just knew I had to keep moving, keep getting one more. By round five, I was trying to just break those squats down into groups of five and resting more between exercises. I just knew that, if I didn't fully complete this WOD, I would never forgive myself for quitting. And my coach won't let you sit still for long; she's excellent at keeping us moving and utilizing planned rest.

I have to say, I was proud of myself with my pull ups and push ups. I still can't do a completely unassisted pull up, but that's OK. I used a band and was really able to knock them out many times. My push ups had to be on my knees, but I was able to knock those out pretty fast, going all the way down to the mat and touching my head almost for almost every rep.

That last mile was just nuts. I started off at a pitiful little jog, but my knees and calves were laughing hysterically at my efforts to run. At one point, I even mused out loud, "Who the heck am I kidding here?!?" So, I decided to power walk the rest of the way. My coach and a teammate motivated me to jog the last quarter mile, so I ended on a very positive note.

As I was out there doing that last mile, I started thinking. I could imagine this young man in his PT gear, probably outside with his buddies in the humid darkness of early morning, cranking out this WOD. Then I thought of something that another one of the coaches said this morning, which was that hero WODs are really hard, and the least we can do is to give it everything to do this WOD in their honor. And as I write this, it reminds me of the amazing soldiers of C Co, 2-30 IN, 4TH BDE 10TH MTN DIV, who were going to name a FOB after my late husband in his honor as their first CO. Remembrance is so important; it is how we keep a little piece of that person and what they stood for with us forever.

I may not have posted the fastest time at the gym, but I completed "Murph" and will likely be "feeling" my tribute for days. For me, this was a milestone in many ways. Thank goodness tomorrow is a rest day!

Posted time: 72:42

A Cure For Migraines

Warm up: Pick a "goat", Coach Burg's snatch clean progressions
WOD: Power cleans, 1-1-1-1-1-1-1

I went to bed last night sick to my stomach from a migraine. I can tell you that my pulse was probably in the upper 60/lower 70 bpm because I could feel the veins pulsating in my head. I have had some sort of headache since the 13th of September, on and off, but mostly on. I woke up with the same headache and having hot flashes that would've made me look like I was up in flames had you looked at my image through a thermal lens. Yet somehow, after I got up and started warm ups today, my headache dissipated. As I sit here typing, however, I can feel it coming back. I think the physical activity I'm doing at CF every morning somehow diverts the flow of blood to my muscles and lessens the pressure in my head. Just a theory.

What is this goat thing? you may ask. Are you guys doing CrossFit with farm animals? While I wouldn't put that past some of the local yokels, no goats were harmed at the gym today. A "goat" is something that is a roadblock for you, something that you could use some practice on. Box jumps can be a goat for some because of the tricks your mind will play on you about the height of the box. For me, pull ups will always be a goat until I can get up there and knock them out like a pro, doing the kipping and going all the way up on my own strength. I worked on doing good jumping pull ups and then practiced kipping back and forth. I can tell I'm getting a better range of motion on the kipping but still lack the strength to pull up my body weight. With a little practice, I think it will come.

The snatch clean progressions break down each step of this olympic lift into three reps each, finally putting them all together in one fluid movement at the end. We did these with the PVC pipes, so we weren't bearing weight but working on form and warming up those joints we would need for today's WOD. Pretty easy, pretty fun.

When we got ready to do power cleans, we did lots of practice with PVCs before actually handling the bar. It was a little intimidating to finally pick up something heavy, but once I did that and did it with the proper form, I was so proud of myself! Now for the real test -- adding weight...

I started off with 65# and got that up easily. Once I added what I thought was 10#, I just couldn't get up past the shrug. I was so bummed! Long story short, I had not added 10# -- I had added 10 kg! Big difference! Basically I had unwittingly gone from 65# to 85#. No wonder that weight wasn't going anywhere! So the girl working with me swapped out kg's for lb's and we got to cranking them out. She and I finally topped out at 80# successfully! WOO HOO!!! I worked well past the WOD requirement of seven reps because I really wanted to see how far I could go, and once I got up to 80#, I was sooo close. I failed a couple of times but was just too close to walk away from it. Finally, that last time I got it up there, and let me tell you -- that felt gooood. :)

Side note: I have learned the art of a good bail. A couple of times I either lost balance and rocked too far back or just couldn't get underneath the weight properly. Allowing myself to fall and just letting the weight go was all I had to do, and I was able to dump the weight safely. Check!

Posted weight: 65-65-85F-85F-70-70-75-75-80F-80F-80

Monday Morning Butt Kickin'

Warm up: 20 modified HSPUs, practice hand stands, 10 GHD sit-ups, 10 GHD back extensions.

WOD: "Christine" -- 3 rounds for time of: 500m row, 12 deadlifts (0.5 bodyweight), 21 box jumps (16" box).


First of all, I want to say how bummed I am that I missed Muddy Buddy day last Friday. Instead of doing things like bear crawls, wheelbarrows, ball tosses, and other relay-style fun exercises, I was lying on my back in a pink paper gown having my tender mercies poked and prodded for my yearly exam. Yippee.


So, after a bit of a hiatus, I was ready to get back to it this morning. It was nice outside this morning, thankfully with a cool breeze that I would enjoy after the WOD. We all gathered around the tractor tire to practice modified hand stand push-ups (HSPUs). Even modified they are still hard. I was really proud of myself when we got up against the wall to practice hand stands. I was able to get my legs up there and hold very still for at least 10 seconds at a time. I felt very stable and might have even been able to attempt a HSPU had I been brave enough. I love the GHD and really like the sit-ups the best. I am planning on adding 10-20 of them both at the end of each work out just to maintain core strength.


Christine, Christine. What can I say... Christine would be the kind of girl that seems cute and easy to get along with on the first couple of dates that reveals her true colors the day after you've made the committment to say you're exclusively dating. This was such a deceiving little sucker! I love rowing, but that was really hard. It really made my left knee, really the muscles just above it, really tight and not want to bend for the lifts or jump up on the box. Any WOD that involves rowing can be tricky because your legs feel like such jello when you get off, and 500m is a significant enough distance to have this effect on me.


I was excited to finally do some of the lifting. It's something that intimidates me but thrills me simultaneously. I realized how important it was not to ease the weight down but to let it fall, so to speak. A couple of times when my left knee was really tight I just sank down sloppily with the weight, and I just hope and pray I don't pay for it later. I was only using 65# of weight, so thankfully it was suprisingly light. When I get going fast, though, it's hard to remember that form, but it's so, so important.


Box jumping is just no fun. I was kinda proud of myself during elements for how high I can jump, but it's such a crap out during a workout. P.U., plain and simple. But I think I'd rather do that than pull-ups...


By the time I finished the last box jump, I remember thinking I couldn't possibly take one more step or do one more rep. I was tapped.out. The only position that could bring me relief was to lay out flat on the parking lot, in the shade of the building where I could catch that aforementioned breeze. I've always seen CrossFitters collapse like that but never done it myself. Now I know. I'm also proud of myself for not barfing, because that was a serious possibility today!


Posted Time: 14:47, using 65# on deadlift.

AMRAP, not Aflac!

Warm up: "5-4-3-2-1"
WOD: AMRAP in 20 min. of 10 kettlebell swings, 15 box jumps, 20 sit-ups.

When my coach told me to do the warm up and told me what she wanted me to do, I was totally peeved. During Elements that was a full WOD! And while I realize that the WODs for Elements are smaller than regular ones and are meant to be sample-sized portions of CrossFit, I was not pleased that I had to do all that work, on top of really sore muscles, and THEN get to the WOD. Oh well. I did the warm up at a nice, steady pace -- nothing too fast or too slow. The squats burned and I did jumping pull-ups, which sucked more than usual because of sore biceps and lats.

So, an "AMRAP" WOD simply means to perform As Many Rounds As Possible. Twenty minutes seems like a significant amount of time, which it really is, but during the actual WOD the time flies pretty quickly, despite what your body tells you.

I used a 25# dumbbell for my kettlebell swings. On the very first swing, I hit myself right on the money spot/crotch and had to take a second to regroup. I am quite thankful that KB swings are driven by momentum in the hips. That definitely helped me mentally.

I used the 29" (I think) box for box jumps -- it was the tallest one without adding more height to it. The first round by far felt the worst due to my pre-existing soreness. By the last couple of rounds, I was cranking through them pretty well, breaking them down into groups of five, resting for two or three seconds, and then continuing on.

The sit-ups were the easy part. I love using the Ab Mat -- it provides great lower back support that way you can really focus on engaging your abs and not worry about lower back strain.

One lady in the class was flying through the rounds and barely breaking a sweat, and the other lady was almost exactly my pace, if not a hair slower. The coolest thing about CF is that you are not in competition with others -- only yourself -- but by working out in groups, you motivate yourself to keep working at a certain pace. I didn't want the first lady to start "lapping" me, and I didn't want other lady to catch up to me. Great motivation technique for me. I was really having to take planned breaks after each activity for most of the rounds to push back nausea. I don't know if it's the coming off of being ill, having taken medication this morning, or just working hard that made me queasy, but I kept hold of my cookies. Yahoo!

Bottom line: I completed six full rounds and was 16 sit-ups away from completing my seventh when they called time. I really didn't think I'd make it past four or five, so I'm pretty happy about my first day with the group. We practiced handstands for a few minutes after we cooled off. Overall, it was a good workout.

CrossFit Elements

I completed this three day program today. I had to take a week-long hiatus due to injury and illness. It's a great way to overview and practice some of the basic components of the WODs (Workout Of the Day) safely, and getting one-on-one instruction on any new movement or exercise is crucial, especially when lifting heavy weight is involved.

Day One focused on proper form for squats, which is as basic to CrossFit as learning the alphabet -- everything builds off of it. We also looked at proper form for rowing on the Concept 2 rower. Something I noticed on Day One, and would notice on following days, is that there are multiple steps to rowing the right way. It's really a lot to think about! Once I practice these movements enough, I know they will become muscle memory and feel more instinctual. For now, though, it's a mental and physical workout to remember all the steps.

WOD for Day One: "5-4-3-2-1": 500m row, 400m run, 30 air squats, 20 push-ups, 10 pull-ups. My time was 8:06, but I wasted a few seconds between the squats ad push-ups. Rowing 500m doesn't sound like much, and at first you think, "Wow, this is going to be a breeze!" But let me tell you that, around 300m, your quads start to burn and you have to will your legs to keep moving. Pacing my breath and concentrating on my rhythm worked well to keep a good pace. Transitioning from the rower to running was nearly comical. Talk about jello legs! And running past the donut shop nearly proved fatal -- the smell of the hot grease was so nauseating that I almost lost it. My coach met me for the last 100m and had me tail her in to complete the WOD. She is a great motivator and does a great job at getting me to push a little harder.

Day Two began introductions of some of the lifting, such as the push press and thruster. The form that I learned on Day One for the squat was crucial to setting yourself up to do these lifts safely. It is very understandable how poor or incorrect form can result in a serious injury to your back, at the very least. It's also amazing to discover how you can use momentum and strong muscle groups and joints to do some of the heavy lifting. Just because you're taking a bar over your head doesn't mean that your arms are the only things working to move that weight. A lot of explosive energy comes from the hips which seems to me to make the lifts not feel so intimidating. We'll see if I still feel this way after adding real amounts of weight, haha... I also learned that rope climbing is not my strong area. Let's just say I have the grip of a 90 year old woman. Heaven help you if you're hanging on the edge of a cliff and I'm the one designated to hold onto you to keep you from slipping to your death!

WOD for Day Two: Four rounds for time of 10 thrusters and 250m row, resting for 3:00 between rounds. Since I had never done a WOD with real weight, I used 15# dumbbells for my thrusters. I forget my exact times now... The first one was around 1:57. Round two was only slightly longer. Round three was the "worst" time around 2:13. I actually improved and got a better time in round four, just under two minutes.

I have to say that, out of all the Elements WODs, this was by far the hardest. By the end of round three, my form was really starting to suffer on the thrusters in that I was allowing the dumbbells to collapse down. It was increasingly harder to control them as they came down. (Over the weekend, I was in debilitating pain in my neck, down to my left trap and shoulder. I actually couldn't even turn my head for a week and was prescribed muscle relaxers!) What I have learned is this: if my form is starting to suffer from muscle fatigue or failure, utilize "planned rest" (stop and rest and tell myself I'm starting up again in X number of seconds) and focus on form rather than time. Doing each exercise, especially one involving weight, in the proper form keeps you from getting hurt, so it's worth taking the time to do the full range of motion in the right form. Lesson learned.

Day Three happened a full week later (today). As I mentioned, I had a menacing injury to my neck. In addition to that, I came down with a virus (not flu but close enough!) that had me laid up in bed for an entire week. We had a lot to cover in a short amount of time. We worked on pull-up progressions, which was everything from various assisted pull-ups to the crazy kipping pull-ups. The kipping motion will definitely take some practice to feel more natural. We worked various lifts for the majority of the time, from cleans to snatches to deadlifts and so on. The form came very easy to me. While I am enormously intimidated by lifting heavy weight, I am really anxious to try some since I have learned the right way to do them. I did use a 45# bar for deadlifts and sumo deadlift high pulls.

WOD for Day Three: 1/2 Tabata. Since there was a lot -- and I mean, a LOT -- of squatting in today's practice, and I had been doing yardwork for over an hour before I even got there, I had been experiencing some pretty sharp pains in my left knee. My coach substituted push-ups for air squats to have a little mercy on my Rice Krispie-sounding knee. So, my 1/2 Tabata consisted of four rounds, 0:20 each of push-ups and ab-mat sit ups. My best score for push-ups was 11, and sit-ups was 13. As time went on, the push-ups were fewer and fewer, but I actually improved each round with the sit-ups. Crazy, huh?

So, the bottom line for CrossFit Elements for me is: focus on form and range of movement. Overall I feel pretty strong and am a little surprised at how well I could do some of the things she asked me to do. For a beginner, that is. I join up with my class on Wednesday.

Get the motrin and ice ready!

Show Me Your Jazzhands -- NOT!

So I'm on my way to Day 2 of my CrossFit Elements class when it occurs to me that, as much as I'm in the gym and care about exercise, I should be blogging regularly about this. But the journalistic focus over at One More Thing really is one of passing along introspection and experience, fostering debate, challenging my readers, talking religion and politics, and so on. I decided that I needed an appropriate forum for my thoughts and experiences as they relate to exercise, nutrition, and being a thirty year-old woman who leads an insanely busy life and is trying to fight middle-aged spread and gravity. Hence the new blog.


What you will not see on this blog:




I just cannot bring myself to join groups of women who wear make up to the gym. I do not go to gyms to stand around and talk (believe it or not), although there is definitely social interaction going on. I do not get on any machines with reading material. I don't want to be in a class where the instructor wears a headset that is connected to a PA system blaring out '80s classics playing so fast it sounds like Alvin and the Chipmunks have decided to peform covers of Blondie and M.C. Hammer songs.

What you will see on this blog:

When I work out, being indoors or outdoors, I look like I've gone swimming in my clothes. I have to buy new running shoes several times a year because they break down and stop supporting my feet. The only music in my ears is raging at at least 120 bpm. If I am in a workout routine for much longer than six months, I get bored and either slack off in my workouts or I start on something completely different. And I cannot put fast food in my mouth anymore without feeling a little bit icky.

Let me be the first to say that, if you love and adore your local gym and some of their aerobics classes, then I am proud of you. You are one of the few Americans who will put down the coffee and donuts and commit to doing something active. You have bought years back of your life, for the ones you love and most importantly for yourself. I have been in some similar classes that were a lot of fun and a nice change of pace for me. It motivates me to see women of all ages and walks in life take charge of their health and their looks and start kicking butt. It also motivates me to see the one stray man in a room full of women try to coordinate their movements up and down from a step.

I've just reached a place where I want a little bit more, and I'd like to share my experience (and no doubt plenty of pain!) with you. Live vicariously through me if you want, or join me in battle, my friend.

I will try to post on days when I'm doing CrossFit at CrossFit Centex and tell you about my progress through the WODs (Workout of the Day). On the days I head to the gym for pilates, I'll chat about that. Other days I'd like to toss out ideas about learning about biking, hiking, and my favorite subject: food. I'd really love to hear from anyone who has tips or knowledge to share, too.

So don't hold a spot for me at Jazzercise -- I'll be down at the CrossFit gym working on my squats and learning how to do a decent pull up. But keep your cell phone handy -- I might be too tired to move when I'm done!

-GGG