Four PAX convened at Kenan Stadium on Memorial Day Monday in the second workout since the Covid-19 suspension of the spring of 2020. In keeping with a long-held F3 tradition of staging “the Murph Challenge” in honor of Lt. Michael P. Murphy, the Navy Seal who lost his life in Afghanistan in 2005, we held a “Modified Murph.”

                The standard challenge is to run one mile, do 100 pull-ups, 200 merkins, 300 squats and run another mile. Given that we don’t have access to enough pull-up bars and that YHC in his old-age and injury-ravaged dotage cannot run two miles, we adjusted.

                The Thang:

                Warmup SSH x 20, Imperial Walker x 10, Air Squats x 10, Arm Circles x 10 forward and back, Merkins x 10.

                Into the stadium where we found railings, spread out keeping our social distancing and did four sets of 15 incline pull-ups for a total of 60.

                Then we moseyed down to the playing field. Running 24 aisles up and down, moving to the next one and making your way around the entire lower bowl is approximately one mile. So we each ran the stairs of the lower bowl and at the bottom of each aisle, we did alternating 10 merkins or 10 air squats.

                Forty minutes into the session, we’d run a mile, done 60 incline pull-ups, 120 merkins and 120 squats.

                We finished it off with Mary: 20 of each Heels to Heaven, LBC and Flutters and a 60 second bows-to-toes plank hold, then went off on our respective days, our legs, arms and backs challenged and our spirits humbled. At St. Ambrose so aptly said, “No duty is more urgent than that of returning thanks.”