What My First Hyrox Taught Me About Pushing Through

I've always loved fitness — but especially the kind you do with other people. Group workouts, outdoor activities, anything where you get to push yourself alongside others rather than alone in a corner. There's something about it that brings out the best in me. I'm competitive by nature, and nothing sharpens that edge like a bit of shared suffering and a friend next to you refusing to quit.

So Hyrox was always going to appeal to me. If you haven't come across it yet, you will soon — it's one of the fastest-growing fitness events in the world right now, and here in Hong Kong it's exploding. It feels like half my gym is suddenly training for one. The format is simple and brutal: eight 1km runs, each followed by a functional workout station, for eight rounds straight. Same stations, same order, anywhere in the world, which is part of the appeal — your time in Hong Kong means the same thing as someone's time in London or Chicago.

For a long time I watched it from the sidelines without much thought. What changed was my longevity journey. Once I started taking my healthspan seriously — actually training for the years ahead rather than just staying vaguely fit — Hyrox stopped looking like someone else's hobby and started looking like a test worth taking. Something concrete to train for, that would push me toward exactly the kind of strength and endurance I want to keep for decades. So I signed up.

Booking the wrong race

Hyrox has two main individual categories: Open, the standard division, and Pro, which uses heavier weights for more experienced athletes. Demand is so high that races sell out fast — and when I went to book the Open, it was gone.

What was left was Doubles Pro — the heavier division, done as a pair. A very good friend of mine, who happens to be a personal trainer, was up for it, so we booked it together. As someone who's reasonably into fitness, I figured it would be fine.

There was just one problem. I'm not a runner. I'm quite heavy, and long-distance running has never been my thing. Give me 5km and I'll get round in a respectable 28 to 35 minutes depending on how I'm feeling — but Hyrox is 8km of running broken up by stations that leave your legs like jelly. That was going to be the challenge.

Training, and a plan

We started training together, and honestly it felt good. Hyrox splits into the running and the workout stations, and we found the stations fairly manageable between the two of us. The running was the thing that would decide our race.

So we built a strategy around it. Take it easy on the runs — steady pace, don't blow up — and move fast and efficient through the stations to bank time. Our goal was 90 minutes. Reasonable, we thought, for two fit guys with a plan.

Then we flew out to Indonesia, where our event was being held.

Race day

The atmosphere was extraordinary. People of every age, gender, and size, all pushing their limits, with the crowd roaring them on. From the outside it looked almost easy — even though you could see plenty of people genuinely suffering out there. That should have been my first clue.

Our race was at 7:30pm, so we headed to the warm-up area around 6:45 to get the body moving. That's when the nerves kicked in. All around us were men, topless and ripped, bouncing on their toes, fully pumped. We had no idea what was waiting for us.

Then our time came. The horn went, and boom — we were off.

The wheels (nearly) come off

The first run and the SkiErg were fine. Lap two was okay too, but by then we'd already run 2km and the reality was setting in.

Then came the Sled Push — around 200kg to drive down the track. My partner went first, I went second — and afterwards I was completely gassed. The problem was, he kept setting off on the next run far too fast. That got me irritated, so I had to tell him, nicely, to slow down.

Next was the Sled Pull — this time around 150kg, dragging it hand over hand back toward me. Manageable in itself, but again I went second, and again I was blowing hard, and again he shot off on the run ahead of me. This time I was properly upset. After another word (less nicely this time), he eased off.

Then came the Burpee Broad Jumps, which spike your heart rate higher than anything else in the race — and after that, the Row. I said I'd go first this time. And that row was the single biggest break I got all race — two full minutes to catch my breath while he worked. It changed everything. After that, I actually started enjoying myself.

And here's the part I won't pretend I'm proud of: now he was the one gassed. Watching my partner get a taste of his own medicine gave me a certain quiet satisfaction. But from that point on, something clicked between us. We stopped racing each other and started pacing together — properly, as a team.

Finishing

The back half went far better. The Farmers Carry, the Sandbag Lunges, and finally the Wall Balls — the attrition stations that come when you've already got 6 or 7km in your legs — we ground through them side by side.

We crossed the line at 94 minutes. Four minutes over our target. And it felt absolutely amazing.

What it actually taught me

Looking back, the four minutes don't matter at all. What stayed with me was one lesson, and it's bigger than fitness.

Laps three and four were genuinely brutal for me. In the moment, gassed and irritated and watching my partner disappear up the track, it felt like the whole thing was falling apart. But it wasn't. All it took was one station — the row — to catch my breath, reset, and come back to it completely differently. The race that felt impossible at 2km felt enjoyable at 5km. Nothing about the course had changed. Only my state had.

That's the thing I keep coming back to. When you're in the thick of adversity, everything feels worse than it is. The instinct is to conclude that it's not working, that you've misjudged it, that you should stop. But so often, if you can just push through the bad patch — take a breath, step back, recollect yourself — the very same situation looks entirely different a few minutes later. The struggle wasn't permanent. It was just a lap.

It's a lesson that maps onto far more than a race. Hard patches at work, in a venture, in life — they have the same shape. They feel catastrophic from inside them and manageable the moment you get a little air.

We'll definitely be doing it again — with a better running base and, ideally, in the right division this time. And if Hyrox is something you've been thinking about, I'd say stop thinking and go for it. Whatever your size, your age, or your pace, you'll learn something out there about yourself that's hard to find anywhere else.