Late in 2017, while making resolutions for our upcoming sojourn in the Pilbara, I was struck by the desire to set a specific goal around my ongoing failure to lose weight. At the same time, Luscious and I stumbled across a documentary about the 2015 CrossFit Games. Apart from developing instant envycrushes on Mat Fraser (and in a subsequent doco, Rich Froning) and three athletes we thought of as ‘The Dottirs’ (Annie Thorisdottir, Sara Sigmundsdottir and Katrin Davidsdottir), we were also introduced to a particularly hellish-looking piece of business known as ‘Murph’.

Murph is a competitive routine named after a US Navy Lieutenant and crossfit enthusiast, Michael Murphy, who was killed in Afghanistan in 2005. It consists of the following elements:

• 1 mile (approx. 1500 metre) run
• 100 pull-ups
• 200 push-ups
• 300 squats
• Another 1 mile run

Continue reading “THE FAT MAN MURPH: HOW IS *THIS* MY NEW YEAR’S TRADITION?” →