GREENSBORO, N.C. — Lieutenant Michael Murphy was a Navy Seal who was killed in action on June 2005 while in the middle of a fire fight in Afghanistan.
Lt. Murphy went out on a ledge so he could send a clear signal to headquarters for support and extraction. However, he put himself in the line of fire and eventually succumbed to his wounds.
Now, on Memorial Day, CrossFit gyms across the United States, do what is called "The Murph Challenge" -- a workout with the intention to put you in Murphy's shoes.
"The Murph Challenge as it is originally intended to be done, is you wear a weight vest, 20 pounds for guys, 14 pounds for the ladies. With that weighted vest, you run 1 mile, and then you come back and do 100 pull ups, 200 push-ups, 300 air squats, and then you finish with a 1-mile run. And the whole intention is that, apparently, Michael Murphy would do this workout and he would call it body armor," said College Hill Collective CrossFit coach and former Marine, Jamison Roberts.
Roberts doesn't just see Murph's Challenge as a simple workout though.
"You know it's a little more surreal because you can actually imagine yourself in that position. You can actually imagine being there when Michael Murphy made that call was a little more surreal because that could've been me, that could've been the guy next to me, it could've been a lot of the guys that I knew while serving in the Marine Corps," Roberts said.
College Hill Collective and Roberts both hope that gym goers can see it as a way to put yourself in a hero's vest.
"You know the workout is gonna suck, it's going to hurt, but it's in those moments that you were thinking about the people that didn't give the ultimate sacrifice. We are above dirt and they are not and, so I would hope that people would treat this outside of just another workout to be done every year on memorial day, I hope they treated with significance and reference as they have the ability to be able to do this workout," Roberts said.
The Murph Challenge happens every Memorial Day at participating CrossFit gyms. Sign up to join the hour long workout next year.