Tuesday, February 4, 2025

2025 Hyrox Las Vegas









2025 Hyrox Las Vegas is done and dusted.  I signed up for this destination race in September 2024 and have been steadily chipping away at training for the past 5 months with a focus on more running, burpee broad jumps, walking lunges and wall ball shots.  My friend Dave and I signed up.  He finished in 1:41 and I was a mere 35 minutes behind.

Prep went well.  I showed up on race day reasonably well rested.  I had a cup of tea at 7 AM when we walked over and a Larabar at 8 AM prior to a 8:40 start.  I did my hip hammy flow, pushed/pulled the sleds, took a couple of steps with the sandbag and finally a couple hundred meters on the ski erg and row erg.  

Out of the gate, I waited for the field to take off and then settled into an easy run.  My plan was 7:30 splits and I ended up averaging 8:20

7:46
7:02
7:13
7:30
9:15 (stopped to pee ~2 min)
7:58
8:28
11:16 (post sandbag lunges, walked)

Ski Erg plan - plan 6, finished in 5:47
Sled Push - plan 8, finished in 3:39 (this felt great)
Sled Pull - plan 8, finished in 6:11 (not bad)
Burpee Broad Jumps - planned 15, finished in 10:44
Row - plan 6, finished in 6:30
Farmers Carry - planned 4, finished in 3:09
Lunges - planned 12, finished in 11:14
Wall Balls - planned 10, finished in 10:11

Rox Zone - Plan 8:00 (actual 11:33)

It was actually an amazingly well executed race plan.  Aside from some early spikes in the 150s-160's, my heart rate stayed safely in the 140's or lower.  The stations went incredibly smoothly until the sandbag lunges.  My right hamstring started to lock up and the left hamstring was not far behind.  I would take a step, take a few breaths and repeat.  I walked the last run and was fortunate to get through the wall balls as planned as a 10 minute EMOM.


Final data, I was 94th out of 102 50-54 year old open men.  1100th out of 1153 open men.

Post race, my legs were absolutely shot.  I tried walking, stretching, holding them in the air against a wall and nothing was helping.  I did some serious damage to my hamstrings.  Swimming on Monday helped a little and by the time I flew home Tuesday, they were just normal sore.  I did have mild nipple chafe (from all of the running and stations) and a decent bruise on my right arm that I assume is from the sled.

I am not sure what I would do different in a future event.  To be successful, I would have to up my mileage to 10-15 miles per week with speed work, tempo run and long run approaching 8 miles.  I would also overload train with a 70 pound sandbag and 20 pound med ball.  Finally, I would train with electrolyte replacement and make sure I had some training sessions in the 90 minute time domain.



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