Murph 2024 Recap: 50 Belltown Athletes, One Brutal Workout

Memorial Day morning at 3025 1st Ave

The first runners hit the front door at 7:42 AM. Coach AJ was already back in the lot on 1st Ave, vest still on, walking off a 38-minute Rx Murph. Inside, the rig area was packed: sweat on the rubber, pull-up bars still humming, chalk thick enough in the air that you could taste it. Belltown was barely awake. We had been at it for almost an hour.

This was Murph 2024 at Persistence Athletics. 50 athletes. One brutal workout. The longest single morning of training the gym ran that year.

If you have never done Murph, here is the prescription: 1-mile run, 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, 300 air squats, 1-mile run. Done in a 20-pound weighted vest if you are doing it Rx. It is named for Lieutenant Michael Murphy, a Navy SEAL killed in action in Afghanistan in 2005. CrossFit affiliates across the country run it on Memorial Day to honor him and everyone like him. We have run it every year at Persistence since we opened the doors on 1st Ave.

I am Ravi Dewangan, CFL3, MS in Strength and Conditioning, and CrossFit Seminar Staff. I program our Murph day every year, and I am on the floor for all three hours of it. This is the recap of the 2024 event: 50 athletes, real times, real stories, including the ones that did not go to plan. Updated June 2026.

Table of Contents

• The morning briefing: 50 athletes, four heats
• Heat 1: the elite group hits the floor
• Heat 2 and 3: the long middle
• Heat 4: the finishers
• Real times: the 2024 results
• How we coach Murph at Persistence
• Frequently Asked Questions

The morning briefing: 50 athletes, four heats

Murph day at Persistence runs as four staggered heats over about three hours. We start the elite group at 7:00 AM, the second heat at 7:30, the third at 8:00, and the finishers at 8:30. There is a reason for the structure. It spreads load on the rig so nobody is fighting for a bar, it gives every athlete real coaching eyes instead of one coach trying to watch 50 people at once, and it lets the early finishers stick around to cheer the later ones. That last part is the whole point.

At 6:50 AM, 50 athletes were standing in the warm-up area off the front roll-up door. The energy was nothing like a normal 6:30 PM class. There was nervous laughter. People kept re-cinching vests and re-taping hands. Jacque, our Head Coach (CFL3, Precision Nutrition Level 2), was walking the group through partitioning strategy. Most athletes were planning 20 rounds of 5 pull-ups, 10 push-ups, 15 squats, the classic Cindy partition. She has run this briefing enough years that she can read who is going to blow up in the first mile just from how they are standing.

Six athletes had announced they were going unbroken. None of them succeeded. That is part of Murph. The workout humbles the confident and rewards the patient, every single year, without exception.

The briefing was short. Run the first mile easy. Honor the workout. Cheer the finishers. Drink water between runs. Tag a coach the second anything feels wrong, not after.

We started Heat 1 on the dot.

Heat 1: the elite group hits the floor

Eight athletes in the first heat. Coach AJ went vested. So did three members. The first-mile splits told us how the rest of the day would shape up.

Manny, one of our advanced members, finished his first mile in 7:18. Two more came in at 7:40 and 7:55. The rest landed between 8:30 and 9:30. Heat 1 had the gym to themselves on the rig for the first 25 minutes, which is the only time all day the place is quiet.

The first round of partitioned reps moved fast. Pull-ups sharp, push-ups clean, squats aggressive. By round 10 (50 pull-ups, 100 push-ups, 150 squats in), the pull-up rate had dropped about 40 percent. By round 15, athletes were doing pull-ups in singles, dropping off the bar, shaking out the forearms, jumping back up. This is normal. Murph is a grip-and-shoulder destruction event by the back half, and no amount of fitness changes that. It just changes how long you can hide from it.

Manny finished his rep work in 22 minutes, which is genuinely absurd. Devang, going unvested, finished his rep work at 28 minutes and was out the door for his second mile before most of the heat had hit round 16. If you have read his arc, that is the same Devang who walked in as a beginner software engineer and built himself into one of the strongest athletes on the floor over 700-plus classes. Aidan was right on his heels.

The second mile is where Murph reveals you. Legs are fried from squats. Grip is gone from pull-ups. Push-ups have detonated your shoulders. The mile that felt easy at 7:00 AM now feels like it runs uphill in both directions. Nobody talks on the second mile.

Manny ran his second mile in 9:42 vested. Total time, 38:14, the fastest Rx Murph at Persistence in 2024 and a flat reminder that the most consistent athletes are the ones who own the hard days.

Heat 2 and 3: the long middle

By 8:30 AM the rig was full and the lot on 1st Ave was alive. Heat 2 was on the floor. Heat 3 was warming up. Heat 1 was finishing or done and already pulling chairs to the wall.

This is the real heart of Murph day. The middle heats are where the workout happens at full volume, 30-plus people working at once. Three coaches on the floor, Jacque, AJ, and me, making real-time scaling calls and watching athletes take the same partition strategy in 30 different directions.

Some were running 20 rounds of 5/10/15. Some were running 10 rounds of 10/20/30. A couple were grinding 100 pull-ups straight, then 200 push-ups straight, then 300 squats straight, which almost always blows up around push-up 80. Some were partitioning 25 rounds of 4/8/12 just to keep moving. The art of coaching Murph is not stopping the bad plans before they start. It is standing right there when they fall apart, so you can re-route the athlete to something they can finish.

Katie was running her usual disciplined splits. If you have trained next to her, you know the pattern: she does not have a fast round and a slow round, she has 20 nearly identical rounds, the same composure she has built through years of strict gymnastics progressions. Eric, doing his first Murph, was running a beautifully scaled version: ring rows for pull-ups, knee push-ups for push-ups, full squats. This is the same Eric from our back-pain-to-strict-pull-ups story, a guy who a couple of years ago could not have imagined any version of this morning. He finished, and he had the look of someone who just did something he had filed under impossible.

That is the part I want a prospective member to understand. You do not have to be Manny to belong on Murph day. You have to be willing to show up and do the scaled version honestly.

If reading this far has you wondering whether you could survive a scaled Murph, you almost certainly could, with the right coaching ramp. Book your free first class and we will scale it to wherever you are starting. Come try a normal Tuesday before you worry about the hardest day of the year.

The middle heats are also where the cheering starts. The early finishers are along the wall eating bananas, working through electrolytes, yelling at the athletes still grinding. By Heat 3, the gym is loud. Real loud. The kind of loud that drags a tired athlete through their last five rounds.

Heat 4: the finishers

The last heat at 8:30 AM is what we call the finishers. These are the athletes who knew going in that they would take 70 to 90 minutes and wanted the room mostly to themselves at the end. Some are first-time Murph athletes. Some are coming back from injury. Some are masters athletes pacing for completion, not for a number on the clock. Tom, who is 66 and has more classes logged than half the people a third his age, is exactly the kind of athlete this heat is built for.

Eight athletes in Heat 4. The Heat 1 group was sitting along the wall with cold towels and bananas, cheering every single rep. The energy was different here. Quieter. More patient. Murph at minute 70 is a different workout from Murph at minute 35. It is less about output and more about refusing to sit down.

The last athlete crossed the line at 1:31:48. Scaled distance, scaled pull-ups, scaled push-ups, full squats, and she had not stopped and had not quit. The whole gym was up for her last 100 meters down 1st Ave and back through the door.

That moment, the last athlete crossing, the entire gym yelling, every coach on the floor, that is what Murph day is for. The workout is the medium. The community is the message.

Real times: the 2024 results

The full distribution of finishing times from our 50 athletes in 2024:

A few specific real highlights:

• Coach AJ. 38:14 Rx vested. The coach benchmark for the gym in 2024.
• Manny. 38:14 region, fastest member time, the consistency icon delivering on the hardest day.
• Devang. 41:33 unvested. A personal Murph best by about 4 minutes over prior years.
• Aidan. 43:08 unvested. Second-fastest member time on the day.
• Katie. 47:21 unvested. Disciplined partitioning, nearly identical splits across all 20 rounds.
• Eric. 1:04:12 scaled. First-ever Murph. (See Eric's full transformation story.)
• The last athlete to finish. 1:31:48 scaled. The whole gym at the line.

How we coach Murph at Persistence

The coaching for Murph day starts about 4 weeks out. We program pull-up volume into the regular classes. We add longer aerobic intervals. We coach the partitioning strategy in the week before the event. We do not surprise athletes with Murph. We prepare them. With a coach-to-athlete ratio of roughly 1 to 12, there is enough eyes on the floor to actually do that prep right.

On the day, the coaching looks nothing like a normal class. Three coaches on the floor, and we are not teaching technique. We are managing pace, hydration, scaling, and grip preservation. The single biggest job is keeping athletes from going out too hot on the first mile, because that one decision determines whether the rest of their morning is hard or miserable.

The most common mistake I see on Murph day is the unbroken pull-up attempt. Athletes who try to do their first 50 pull-ups unbroken almost always fail around rep 30, then spend the next 30 minutes paying for it with dead arms. The partition (5 pull-ups, 10 push-ups, 15 squats, times 20) is what gets people to the second mile with something left in the tank. It feels too easy in round 1. That is exactly why it works.

For how the gym operates year-round, our about page covers the founding story and culture. For the team that runs Murph day, see our coaches page. For how a normal class is structured compared to the chaos of Murph day, see group classes.

For the rest of the community story, our member transformations hub covers five longer member arcs, including Eric's full back-pain-to-pull-ups story. Our member stories collection profiles five members in shorter form.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Murph and why is it done on Memorial Day?

Murph is a hero workout from CrossFit, named for Lieutenant Michael Murphy, a Navy SEAL killed in Afghanistan in 2005. It is a 1-mile run, 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, 300 air squats, 1-mile run. Done in a 20-pound vest if you are doing it Rx. CrossFit gyms across the country run Murph on Memorial Day to honor service members. We ran our 2024 Murph day at Persistence with 50 Belltown athletes.

How long does Murph take to complete?

Time bands at Persistence in 2024: sub-40 minutes was elite (3 athletes), 40 to 50 minutes was strong (12 athletes), 50 to 60 minutes was solid (18 athletes), and 60+ minutes was finishers (the rest). Coach AJ ran a sub-40 with vest. Top member time was Devang at 41 minutes. Most first-time Murph athletes finish between 55 and 75 minutes scaled.

Can a beginner do Murph?

Yes, with scaling. We scale every Murph variation. Common scales include reducing run distance to 800 meters, swapping pull-ups for ring rows, swapping push-ups for incline push-ups, and partitioning the rep scheme into 20 rounds of 5-10-15. Half of our 50 athletes in 2024 ran scaled versions. Every one finished. Murph is hard but accessible if scaled correctly.

Do I need to do Murph in a 20-pound vest?

No. The vest is the Rx (prescribed) version. Most members do Murph without a vest. Of our 50 athletes in 2024, only 8 did the workout vested. The vest adds significant time and difficulty. Doing Murph without a vest is still a serious workout and counts. Honor the workout, do not hurt yourself.

What should I do to prepare for Murph if I want to attempt it?

Build pull-up volume in the 4 weeks before. Practice partitioning rep schemes (20 rounds of 5 pull-ups, 10 push-ups, 15 squats is the most common partition). Do at least one 1-mile run at workout pace in the prior 2 weeks. Hydrate well in the 48 hours before. Eat a normal breakfast 2 hours before the workout. Most failed Murphs come from going out too hot in the first run.

Will Persistence run Murph again next Memorial Day?

Yes. We run Murph every Memorial Day. The 2025 event was the largest yet. We will continue running it as our annual community gathering. Members and non-members are welcome. Scaled and Rx versions both available. Watch our group classes page closer to Memorial Day for sign-up information and start times.

Try a free first class at Persistence Athletics

If reading this made you want to be on the rig for the next Murph, that is the right reaction. The way to be ready next Memorial Day is to start training now, not in May. Your first class at Persistence Athletics in Belltown is free and scaled to your exact starting point, no experience required. Book your free class at 3025 1st Ave, Seattle, about 8 minutes from Amazon. Questions first? Call us at (206) 593-4236. We will see you on the rig.