We all know the “in the middle of Murph” feeling: your legs and lungs are burning and you look over at the clock or the whiteboard and think, for the love of god, I am only halfway there. You start negotiating with yourself in your mind: one voice says screw it, I don't want to do this anymore, and another says hang in there, just one rep at a time. Somewhere in the back and forth between those two voices is often a weird stillness that comes from paying attention only to the task in front of you.
In response to the extension of the CT mask mandate, it feels a lot like mid-Murph right now, all the time. One day we feel like we can hang in there, but by the next day we are over it. Sometimes we get some stillness in between. This past year has been a lot of mental negotiation when it comes to many areas of our lives, not just the tolerance to wear a mask while trying to grind through CrossFit. It's January, it's dark, it's cold. Most of us haven't been on a vacation in a while or seen our loved ones. We are all just over it.
But we are turning a corner. It is not the first mile of Murph, it is not last March, and it is not even last July. Spring is the season on deck, and the days are getting longer minute by minute. Some of us have already been vaccinated. Better days are coming; we just have to hold out a little bit longer.
How we act in the face of adversity tells us a lot about who we are. So let’s keep doing what we do best, and grind our way through.
