2025 was a year of novelty for me. i was constantly chasing the next new or crazy thing i could do. i wanted to experience everything. however, working full time has since dissuaded some of that spontaneity. but i’d like it back.
day one: selling the idea
on 2026.03.29, i gathered with a couple friends at blue bottle to brainstorm some of the fun new things we could do over the next year. amongst the list of ideas was competing in an international HYROX: a fitness race composed of a 1 km run followed by a functional workout station, repeated 8 times.
the group is not sold on the idea. but i am.
day two: committing to the bit
it’s been a few weeks (the idea has been marinating), and we’ve reconvened at blue bottle1. with a bit of persuasion, i’m able to get mason as excited about this endeavor as i am.
why are we doing this?
i’m especially excited for a few factors:
- challenging - we’re both out of shape. in our current state, i don’t know if we’ll even complete the workout. this will be a goal we are required to put in the work for.
- binary goal - we either compete or don’t. there isn’t an easier compromise or fallback if we don’t put in the work2. i also think there’s value in having a goal that is not performance based. if we do terribly, we can still have fun and celebrate making it to the starting line to begin with.
- data collection - it’s very tech-y of us, but the data collection and visualization is a major draw. the training period up to the competition can give us a LOT of data points that we plan to do cool stuff with!
- travel - i promise this whole thing is not just an excuse to visit a new country! doing this in a foreign country is not really essential. but i think it lowers some of the pressure on performing and increases the ‘crazy story’ factor.
- absurdity - how many people fly halfway across the world to compete in something they have absolutely no business doing?
devising a baseline
we were so hyped that we ended up designing a HYROX-like workout (which i’m dubbing as our monthly mini) as a benchmark for our fitness levels. it’s slightly shorter than the full HYROX, and should give us a taste of what the real thing will feel like.
we’ve scheduled our baseline run for 2026.04.25 — a mere two weeks from the date of planning. i’m excited to see how it goes… (i have very low hopes).
more on data collection
the data aspect of this is the most exciting part of this experiment for us. we plan to collect biometric data over the next several months as we train for our HYROX; the monthly mini is just one aspect.
we’re going to be pulling data from our apple watches (hr, hrv, sleep cycles) and manual logging (perceived exertion, mood, energy levels). this will be used to build out fun, interactive visualizations. specifics still to be determined, but everything will be hosted on our hyrox visualization site!
day three: finalizing our baseline
while we had originally planned for 2026.04.25 to be a baseline run of our monthly mini, our plan to run through a full mini are pushed back due to medical reasons3. since we still wanted to do something on this day, we decided to test just half of our monthly mini. this would give us a better feel for the actual exercise stimulus and timing.
with some last minute iteration to our monthly mini, we set up our equipment, took a few vlog clips, and set off on our half mini! we all finished in about ~30 minutes to completion, with none of us feeling too horribly about it (moderate effort attempt). the worst part for me, by far, was the run (especially after the lunges). 400m feels much longer than it sounds.
half mini retro
shortly after finished, we (as expected) relocated to blue bottle to debrief.
- our main takeaway is to optimize (train) for the run. we have decided to add a small monetary incentive to our training. for now, we’re committing to running twice a week, with any missed workouts incurring a $10 fee4. i’ll be updating the hyrox ii - iteration page over the next few months with updates!
- we made a few tweaks to our half to have our selected workout stations better align with the full hyrox and our limited equipment availability. notably: we got rid of the original ski swings (these felt stupid) and thrusters (a bit odd with a single db only) which were replaced with planks and goblet squats instead. we also were a bit more flexible with the workout ordering due to needing to split 2 db between 3 people; if something wasn’t available, we would just skip to a non-db workout station.
- we will begin experimenting with our data collected from our first half (and thinking of better ways to collect performance data)! for this half, we ended up simply tracking our times with via phone stopwatch (which did not work perfectly for me — i forgot to lap the timer twice) and our biometrics via the apple watch ‘cross training’ workout.
Footnotes
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blue bottle appears to be the planning location of choice. recently i’ve been a fan of their iced cherry blossom latte. ↩
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the only real loophole is moving the date; to prevent this, we’ve hard-committed to compete in q1 2027. ↩
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i had unfortunately reinjured my back about a week and a half prior. since it hasn’t fully healed, we decided to play it save and cut back on the workout. ↩
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this fee will either go to the other participants or towards our hyrox participation ticket costs. ↩