I wrote about how I decided to do Hyrox here. So it happened!

Thursday

I went down to Boston and checked into my hotel across the street from the venue. Several amazing ladies from my gym were competing in Women’s Doubles in the afternoon. I got my Spectator wrist band and went to cheer them on. Holy hell spectating is a lot of work. I had 7,000 steps at the end of just spectating! I was trying to make sure I got photos and videos and cheered for two duos. A third doubles team was competing, but they were a bit later and our coach was covering them. So I would watch a station, try to see both teams, then run off to the next station. It’s a lot of walking and standing. And the entire place is LOUD. So many people, a DJ playing music, people screaming for their friends and family.

On the one hand, it was great to be able to see the course, how it all works, where check-in is, etc. before my own race. On the other hand, I was probably doing too much. My knees were killing me and I was overstimulated beyond belief.

It was so great to see my friends compete though! They did amazing! I loved cheering them on. Unfortunately, I had to go back to my hotel room and wasn’t able to make it back for another duo from my gym that competed at 8PM. Fortunately, there is an app where you can track people and see how they’re doing. Also, another friend from the gym was there and texting updates on how they did.

Friday

My start time wasn’t until 4:30. I knew I didn’t want to go over too early as I would just get tired and overstimulated. I went down to a boulangerie in the hotel and got myself coffee and avocado toast and a croissant. Carb loading! I hydrated throughout the morning including electrolytes. I regularly forced myself to eat food I had brought. Even though I wasn’t hungry, I knew I needed to fuel up. At 2:15 I headed over since I was starting to freak out alone in my hotel room. You can’t get your wristband until 90 minutes before. So I walked down to a semi-quiet spot to chill. At 2:30, my boyfriend arrived and my kids were on their way. At 3, my alarm to check in went off. (I had set several alarms, “eat”, “check in”, “warm up”, etc.) Kids arrived at 3:20. A friend from the gym who competed on Thursday came back to cheer me on, too.

Around 3:50, I went in to the warm up area. They have everything there: treadmills, bikes, skierg, rowerg, kettlebells, sleds. All the equipment for the race, and whatever you’d need to warm up. It’s a delicate balance, you want to warm up, but not wear yourself out. And there’s LOTS of nervous energy. At 4:20 they call everyone set to start at 4:30 into the tunnel (there’s a new wave every 10 minutes). As we were about to go in, I see the kettlebells. I hadn’t memorized my weights because as Women’s Open, it’s always just the smallest. I was 90% sure I would be using the 16kg kettlebells. But then I saw some 12kgs in the warm up area. I panicked and asked the woman next to me. She panicked and pointed at another woman and said “ask her, she looks fit” hahaha.

We were all inside the Red Bull Start Tunnel, where a person is on a microphone. Partly to tell you about the course (like how many run laps) and partly to hype you up. The woman we had was AWESOME. She said something about all these badass women and I got choked up. Like not now, ma’am, I have a competition to do, I can’t be crying.

3-2-1 and we were off! Two laps around and in the “IN” tunnel. Over to the skiergs. This was fine. I’ve heard not to go crazy here and blow up your whole race. I completed the SkiErg in 5m 49s. At our gym sim, I did it in 5m 42s. However, at the gym, I counted just the time on the SkiErg. In a competition, your time starts as soon as you cross the barrier into the SkiErg AREA and doesn’t end until you exit the SkiErg area. SO, I’m pretty happy with that 5m 49s if you take into account it included time for me to get to the skierg and leave the skierg.

Please enjoy the ONLY acceptable photo of me at the SkiErg. My friends and family were behind me, so they couldn’t get a good photo. And the pro photographers managed to get the most unflattering angles. And I apparently let my mouth hang open a lot when exercising. haha

Two laps and onto the sled push. I really like sled push. We’ve trained with much heavier weights than race weights. I expected to do pretty well here. That said, I was about 1m 15s slower than our sim. I saw many people complain about the carpets under the sleds, but it’s so hard to know if they just didn’t train hard enough or if the carpets were actually bad. It definitely felt harder than it did in our sim, but it could have just been me. I also almost ran over a photographer. I get they need to get close to get in the shot, but I’m not slowing down a sled just because your foot is in the way.

I will say I felt REALLY good the day of our sim. Like everything leading up to it was perfect. My sleep, my training, my nutrition, my hydration. Everything. I can’t say the same of this week before Hyrox. My sleep was terrible, spectating the day before wrecked my knees. Blah blah, not trying to give excuses, just saying some days are good days and some days are bad days. You train so your bad days now are better than your bad days 4 weeks ago, but still a bad day is a bad day. This wasn’t a bad day, exactly, but it definitely didn’t feel as good as it could have. (Anyway, excuses rant over)

Two laps and sled pull. Very similar to sled push, I love this station, we trained really heavy. I thought I’d be able to just pull it a lot, not have to squat down and use my legs. I was wrong. Again, just me? Bad carpets? Who knows. Almost 3 minutes slower than the sim. 😦

Two laps and burpee broad jumps. Not a favorite station by any means, but I’m learning to hate it less. I apparently learned to hate it 1m and 46s less, and again, that includes time to enter the station and exit the station. I’m seeing this as a huge win. I still need to improve, but I’m so pleased with an almost 2 minute improvement.

Just as I exited the burpee station, I went to grab a water. After drinking the water, I almost went OUT the IN arch. At a minimum, it would have been a penalty. At worst, I could have been disqualified. Thankfully at the last moment, I realized what was happening and turned around to go out the correct arch.

Two lap and on to the row. As this is the halfway point, it was somewhere around here that I realized I was not going to make my goal time of 2 hours. I could have let this upset me. I did not. Instead I decided I was going to enjoy this (even if it killed me). Since you get to sit down on the rower, and it’s my best station, AND my friends and family were RIGHT in front of me. I definitely enjoyed the rower. 18s longer than the sim, which as I’ve already said means I actually took less time than at the sim. Happy with this one.

Two laps and farmers carry. Another one that I like. And again, we trained heavier. I was 16s faster than our sim. I ran and even passed some people, so I felt pretty good about that. Unforunately, from a photography perspective, most of the photos from farmers carry are taken by a motion sensor camera. I didn’t know to look for them or when they’d take the photo, so all of my pro photos here my eyes are closed. At least my mouth was shut.

Two laps and my worst station. The lunges kill me every time. At the Rochester sim, the heat killed me and I blamed that. At our gym sim, the sun had started to come out and we were outside on pavement, so I blamed that. But really, these just aren’t my strong suit. I’m still proud I can do them at all, given that I’ve had knee and hip issues in the past. 10 minutes faster than the Rochester sim, but 2 minutes slower than gym sim. I was standing there during the lunges, not far from the end, and a judge came up, saying stuff to cheer me on, encourage me. Me: “I’m disassociating and you’re ruining it”. Judge: “I’m really annoying, aren’t I?”.

As I left the lunge area, a judge said “last run!” and I started to cry. I think they were tears of joy. Who knows. Two laps and the last station, wall balls! Another one that’s not my favorite. Until fairly recently, my knees prevented me from getting to correct squat depth. I have been slightly worried that I would either get a lot of no reps, or they’d pull out the box (a box that you have to squat to since you aren’t hitting the right depth). While it took me a very long time to complete this station (almost 2 minutes longer than our sim), I’m very happy that I had very few no reps and the judge didn’t give me the box. There’s a tablet that shows you how many you’ve done. I was so focused on that tablet that I almost threw the ball at the tablet rather than the target. Think I would have been disqualified?

100 wallballs done and you run to the finish. I did start to cry, not going to lie, but managed to (sort of?) hide it for the finish photo.

Fun side note, another woman at the gym had a start time 50 minutes AFTER mine. I joked that she’d finish before me. Guess who finished literally seconds after I did? Too funny.

My total time 2 hours, 27 minutes, and 7 seconds. 69th in my age group. 95th percentile. Lots of room for improvement, I guess.

Overall, happy I did it. I would have loved two hours, but it just didn’t happen. I’ve joked that the pro photos were so bad, I’ll have to do another one. But we all know, I would have wanted to do another one anyway, because I want that two hours.

Current plan is: keep losing weight, work on running over the winter, work on lunges and burpees, Hyrox in the spring.

Friday night, I was able to cheer on more ladies from my gym while they competed in a relay! Again, so much fun to cheer for your friends, but also so exhausting. Once again, I didn’t make it back for more gym competitors, but I watched them in the app and got updates and cheered from bed. 🙂