CrossFit Athletic Group

Yesterday afternoon at the 3:30 session Jessica Suchta beat Jennifer Banet's record for a high school girl on Murph. Jennifer got 37:17 as rx'd back in the spring of 2018 and yesterday Jessica went 34:30 as rx'd.

Earlier this Summer Jessica missed on Jennifer's Helen time by a few seconds, so that record might be vulnerable too. Here's what her session looked like - which included Owen, Chase, Mr. Kuiper, Shakes, Erica, Emma Lang, Sydney, Mrs. Lanette, and Langston.

UPDATE: After going through the archives, Jennifer's time was the fastest any girl (Murley and Shannon included) posted as rx'd ... which means Jessica now has the overall gym record on the girl's side.

Matt Fecht has the guy's record from Summer 2015 with 27:51 (straight through). I am fairly certain that will never be broken - by the Champions Club or anyone in CrossFit. He did it again the next Summer (after running 16 miles that morning mind you), this time with the vest and splitting up the reps. Here's the race that time between him, Murley, and Shannon.

Evan pointed out to me that someone claimed to break the Murph record earlier this year. Only problem is that was 10 seconds slower than Matt's 2016 time. I am seriously curious to see if anyone in the history of CrossFit has done Murph faster than Matt. (Mel, do you know if Speal or anyone else has this beat?)

In Summer 2013 Emma chose Murph as her going-away workout and the entire gym did it with her. In the video you'll see a college track-shape Shannon, Murley, Jay with hair, Katie Bromm with purple stuff on her face, Ricky, Lauren Higgins, Jason, and Mr. and Mrs. Carey looking the same.

...........

The upside to our expression of CrossFit is, I think, it allows for us to get the most out of the workouts and scale them to an intended stimulus. The downside to our expression of CrossFit is that it makes testing/retesting a little more challenging than what the textbook definition of CrossFit usually is. For example, let's look at Shannon's push-ups compared to Jessica; Shannon didn't touch the ground and Jessica snaked, so Jessica technically went through more range of motion but Shannon had less points of support - which, I think, makes the movement harder. The opposite was true on pull-ups: Shannon used a band to get her chin over every time, Jessica got her chin over most of the reps but didn't have that extra support.

The tactical standard yesterday was also different and didn't favor Jess: she and everyone else had to do the squats unbroken at the end, splitting the push-ups and pull-ups however they wanted. If I recall correctly, Jennifer did push-ups like Shannon's in 2018 (that ended up looking like Owen's, as everyone's do) but she was allowed to split it up however she wanted. Plus nobody is counting reps. There are two main classes of miscounters in the gym: the middle school versions of Carter/Ricky skipped reps on purpose and the JZ/Alyssa class just plain lose count. Jessica is in that second category for some workouts.

I'll take the tradeoff. For the 15 times a year I wonder about a pr, the other days I'm glad I don't feel constrained by range of motion and tactical standards set in stone. And I'd rather you lose count because you were concentrating on your form than the other way around. This is why the most consistent records we keep track of are not traditional benchmark workouts but other stuff... like Noah sharking 13 people in 2019's Shark Week workout. So a lot gets left up to judgement.

With all that being said, I think the Murph record belongs with Jessica. At least until Lulu hits puberty.

Great work Jess!