At my gym, the workouts have names. "Today is Fran," the coach said. I did not ask who Fran was. A samurai does not ask. Fran takes about nine minutes. Fran is thrusters and pull-ups, which is a polite way of saying Fran does not believe you need a spine. Then I met Helen. Helen makes you run, swing a kettlebell, do pull-ups, then run again. Three times. Helen is patient. That is the worst kind. Grace is thirty barbell lifts and nothing else. Grace is quick. Grace does not explain. Annie is a jump rope. I thought, a jump rope. Children use these. Annie took my calves and did not give them back. Diane is deadlifts and handstand push-ups. Diane turned me upside down and left me there to think about my life. My private theory: these are the coach's former girlfriends. He has known many women. All of them hurt him. Now he hires them to hurt us. Then one day, the board said MURPH. A man. I revised my theory. Not lovers. Enemies. The coach has been keeping a list. That day there was no music. I assumed the speaker was broken. Some people wore weighted vests. To make it harder. Voluntarily. I began to respect the coach's taste in enemies. Murph is this: run one mile. Then 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, 300 squats. Then run one more mile. This is not exercise. This is a grudge. At pull-up 60, I began to negotiate with Murph. At push-up 150, I apologized to him. Somewhere in the squats I stopped counting and started praying. These are different activities. They were using the same voice. By the final mile I considered him a worthy rival. I did not know him. But he would know me. I finished. I lay on the floor. I had beaten Murph. Then I saw everyone gathered at the wall. A photo. A young man in uniform, grinning like the camera had just said something funny. Lieutenant Michael P. Murphy. United States Navy SEAL. Killed in Afghanistan, 2005. He was twenty-nine. This was his favorite workout. He called it Body Armor. Every Memorial Day, gyms around the world do it. The vests are twenty pounds. That is what the armor weighed. That is why there was no music. I bowed to the photo. Deeply. In a gym, this looks strange. I did not care. I did not beat Murph. He has been gone twenty-one years and he is still undefeated. Next Memorial Day, I will wear the vest.