My HYROX Vancouver Experience
HYROX came to town and did it ever impress! What started off as curiosity when one of my clients signed up, became a personal challenge in its most basic of forms:”If he can do it, why can’t I’?
I had roughly 10 weeks to prepare. How hard could it be?
What exactly is a HYROX race event? It’s eight, 1000 meter (1 kilometre) runs sandwiched between eight intimidating-looking stations that challenge explosive strength and power. Participants –people like me– assembled on the starting line thinking “WTF have I gotten myself into” run a kilometre, then abruptly transition to a station where you work very hard to accomplish some functional fitness task. It’s a lot of pressure to bear without succumbing to absolute fatigue. Go out too fast, too hard, and you can find yourself with no energy with much more work remaining. Also bearing down on each of us, the time clock, running the entire event so you don’t want to waste any time to do important things like catch your breathe! Pacing is key to success in an event like this. But so is training. As a personal trainer, I perform a lot of work over the course of a week. I ride bikes to train and commute and I’ve even overcome some foot issues to get back into running once or twice each week. I considered myself to be a well-rounded athlete with an excellent work capacity. This event was a training test and testament.
I had roughly 10 weeks to prepare. How hard could it be? I’ve been a diligent weight trainer almost my entire adult life. But soon after signing-up, I realized that I needed to be more specific with how I approach the gym to prepare for this event, an endurance test that by all the research I’d done online, did not appear to be a cake walk. I started planning ‘HYROX’ type workouts 1-2 days/week. Thankfully, I had all the equipment at Executive Lifestyles Fitness, the pros-only studio where I train my clients.
Immediately, I noticed was how gassed I was trying to simulate the HYROX experience, because it’s the fastest athlete across the finish line who wins. I’d run 4min on the treadmill fast then get on the sled for about 50m…My heart rate would skyrocket during those training sessions. Despite all my successes as a triathlete and the hundreds of hours spent in a gym training, I realized that this was not in my performance wheelhouse.
And to make my prep more complicated, I was battling a few injuries along the way: medial epicondylitis (golfers elbow), patellar tendonitis (knee pain), and my always troubling lumbar spine (2 herniated discs on L4 &L5).
How'd I do?
Despite the obstacles, I had expectations of finishing under 1hr 20min, which I felt would get me a podium spot for the 60+ Age Group given my observation of previous results from other HYROX events held world-wide.
Well, I hit the tape in 1:25 which got me 4th. I was on pace to break 1:20 when I literally HIT THE WALL on the last station, aptly named WallBalls. It took me more than 12min to complete this last station! All other stations took anywhere from 2-5min which is what I expected. I no-repped this station 26 times which meant that it took me 126 attempts to hit 100 Wallballs. I kept missing the target 10 feet up by no more than an inch or 2. It was soooo frustrating! Had I hit he target and done 6min (as planned), that would’ve got me 2nd place. But I try to keep in mind that the no would’ves, should’ves and could’ves in sport translate after the hand-wringing into experience guided training. After spending a bit of time berating myself and having my own personal pity party, I turned that frown upside down and looked at the positives in this amazing event. Will I do this again? Absolutely, unequivocally YES! I seek redemption through a win in my age group next time!
To your best efforts everyday,
HYROX Vancouver Details
Founded in Germany in 2017, the first event had a scant 657 participants. These days, there are organized and professionally-run HYROX events all over the world. Hydro Vancouver had over 8,000 participants –yes you read that right!– and took place indoors in the Vancouver Trade and Convention Centre, a huge facility in which we ran twice around a 500 meter track for each 1 km run, and were then directed to the 8 stations inside the track.
The order of stations went like this:
- 1000m Ski Erg
- 50m Sled Push 335lb
- 50m Sled Pull 225lb
- 80m of Burpee Broad Jumps
- 1000m Rowing Erg
- 200m Farmers Carry @ 55lb per arm
- 100m Walk Lunge w a 50lb Sandbag
- 100 WallBalls with a 14lb Med Ball
