Meet Nicole - Tuesday, June 23rd, 2026

Meet Nicole

Every benchmark workout in CrossFit has a personality.

Some are heavy.
Some are fast.
Some are technical.
Some are painful.

Nicole is one of those workouts that looks simple enough when you read it on the whiteboard, but quickly reminds you that simple and easy are not the same thing.

The workout consists of a 20 min AMRAP of a 400 metre run followed by a max effort set of pull ups.

At first glance, most athletes immediately focus on the pull ups. After all, that's where the score comes from. Every pull up counts, every rep gets added to the total.

But for about 95% of us, Nicole is actually a running workout.

The pull ups are important, but the run is what dictates the pace, the recovery, and ultimately the outcome of the workout. Twenty minutes is a long time to be repeatedly running 400 metres. The athletes who perform well in Nicole are often not the athletes with the biggest pull up sets. They're the athletes who can consistently manage their effort and keep moving on the run.

The workout has a way of teaching athletes a lesson about pacing.

Go out too fast on the first few runs and you'll feel it later. Empty the tank on every set of pull ups and you'll quickly discover that recovery becomes harder and harder as the workout progresses.

Nicole rewards consistency.

It rewards athletes who understand that fitness isn't just about what happens on the pull up bar. It's also about what happens between the pull up bars.

For many athletes, the biggest challenge isn't the gymnastics, it's maintaining their running pace when their heart rate is elevated and their arms are fatigued.

That's what makes Nicole such a valuable benchmark.

It gives us an opportunity to assess more than just pull up capacity. It allows us to evaluate our aerobic fitness, our recovery, our pacing strategy, and our ability to perform repeated efforts over an extended period of time.

Benchmark workouts aren't designed to tell us whether we're good or bad at CrossFit. They're designed to provide a snapshot of our current fitness.

Maybe your pull up numbers have improved.
Maybe your running has improved.
Maybe you've learned how to pace the workout more effectively than you did the last time.

All of those things matter.

One of the beautiful things about CrossFit is that a workout with only two movements can still expose a wide range of strengths and weaknesses. Nicole is a perfect example of that. The simplicity removes excuses. There are no complicated movements to hide behind and no elaborate strategy sessions required.

Just run.
Just do pull ups.
Then repeat.

The workout is named after Nicole Carroll, one of the earliest and most influential figures in CrossFit. Nicole a longtime member of the CrossFit Seminar Staff, serves as Director of Certification and Training, and has played a significant role in developing the coaching and educational standards that have helped shape CrossFit around the world. She was one of the original CrossFit athletes and coaches and has been part of the methodology since the early days.

Unlike many of the original Girl workouts, which were simply given female names, Nicole was actually named after a real person. It's fitting, too, as she’s known for her impressive combination of endurance and gymnastics capacity, two qualities that are put to the test in this workout.

So don't be fooled by the simplicity of the workout description.

For most of us, this isn't a pull up workout.
It's a running workout disguised as a pull up workout.

And like all good benchmark workouts, it has a lot to teach if you're willing to listen.

Tuesday, June 23rd, 2026

Focus:

Running drills

WOD:

Nicole
20 min AMRAP
400m Run
Max Pull Ups

Check back each night at 8pm for the next days WOD .
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