PODCAST - i tried my first hyrox simulation…here’s what happened
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[00:00:00] Welcome to The Athlete with Asthma Show. I'm your host, Johnny Havey, an ultrarunner, endurance athlete, and yes, a guy who's had an inhaler prescribed since birth. Despite doctors telling me I could never play soccer nor run a marathon, let alone a 100K ultra, I proved them all wrong. This show is where I share everything I've learned, from breathing techniques to mindset shifts, to help you become the athlete and the person you truly want to be.
So if you're ready to achieve your goals despite limitations, let's get started.
I recently tried my first HYROX simulation as an athlete with asthma, and today on the show, I'm gonna unpack with you exactly what happened. To start, what is HYROX? Well, if you're listening to this as a podcast, I have written on the board [00:01:00] H-Y-R-O-X, HYROX. And what it is, 'cause I didn't know what it was even when I went and did my simulation, I just thought as a ultra endurance athlete with asthma, this seemed real fun to me.
It's a race that takes one to two hours to complete that mixes running with various workout stations. And as a runner, I've been told that HYROX could be something that'd be really fun for me. Now, HYROX is very different from ultra running. It specifically is made up of eight one-kilometer runs. You run a kilometer, and then you complete a workout station.
So it also has eight workout stations, and you complete these stations in a very specific order, and you really follow a very specific pattern. You run one kilometer on a track, and then you complete one workout station, and you repeat, run a kilometer, workout station, run a kilometer, workout station, until you have completed eight kilometers and eight workout stations.
Well, this is a very interesting and powerful [00:02:00] event for any athlete, and if you're an athlete with asthma like me, this is a very powerful race that can really push you to develop and build your lungs and become a more powerful athlete with asthma. So that's about all I knew going into my HYROX simulation.
What is a simulation? Well, it's basically doing all of HYROX in a controlled space, in a space where you're not actually racing. It was... I did it with a bunch of the fitness instructors and gym members at the gym that I teach and go to to train my high-intensity interval training- lifting and conditioning.
And it was a really fun experience. Well, after I finished the simulation, I looked up what HYROX actually means, and really what it is is hybrid fitness racing. This is all it is, HYROX, hybrid fitness racing, which is really what I've been looking for in the past year or so while I've kind of taken a break, a little sabbatical from ultra-running.
I'm still running about 25 to 30 miles a week, but I'm also incorporating high intensity interval training a couple days a [00:03:00] week, tennis one to two days a week, and heavy lifting one to two days a week. So really HYROX is what I've been searching for, and maybe it's what you've been searching for as well, blending all of these things, especially if you've been following my content for a long time.
I talk about how, as an athlete with asthma, we really need to have a holistic workout regimen that includes walking, running, or some form of cardio, high intensity interval training, and lifting. Well, HYROX is the right race for you if you are looking for these things. Now in another episode, I am breaking down my exact training routine for the HYROX event that I am signed up for this year.
I'm excited to share it with you because I have crafted it myself based on my ultra-running experience, my experience as a Yoga Sculpt teacher, and based on multiple friends of mine, their experience with competing in multiple HYROX races. Now for the rest of today's episode, I'm gonna share with you exactly what happened in my HYROX simulation.
I'm gonna share with you how I went about the simulation, 'cause there are multiple ways that you can compete in HYROX. [00:04:00] I'm gonna share with you my rankings of every single workout station for me, how my body felt during the simulation. I'm gonna share with you my finishing time, which I'm extremely excited about, and I'm gonna share with you what I learned that has really helped me come up with my training routine that I will share with you in another episode.
Well, to start, there are multiple ways that you can compete in HYROX. You can do it solo, you can do it with a partner, and you can do it as a relay. Within these are other different ways you can compete. Just like curling in the Olympics, you can have a partner of the same gender, you can have a partner of a different gender.
For the relay, same thing. You have different makeup of relay groups. There are also different competition levels. You have the women's, the men's, and then you have the pro of each women's and men's. And depending on which competition level you choose, there are different weight requirements for each level.
For me, I thought I was going into the simulation solo, but [00:05:00] I'm glad that I didn't because even though I looked up online and there are all these different things that say, "Hey, so you start with a kilometer run, and then you're gonna go into the SkiErg. Then you're gonna do another kilometer run. Then you're gonna do sled push.
Then you're gonna do another kilometer run. Then you do sled pull. Then you're gonna do another kilometer run. And then you do farmer carries. Then you do another kilometer run, and so forth, and so forth, and so forth," I didn't really have a idea of the distances, the best techniques, et cetera, which is why I'm grateful for my high-intensity interval training and strength coach, Scott, partnering me with a very powerful HYROX athlete.
So I did my first HYROX with a partner, and we were somewhere in the men's to the pro weight category. I say this because at the gym that I work out at, Endorphin, which if you are in Colorado and you want a gym to join to help you get ready for HYROX, I highly recommend that you check out Endorphin, spelled like endorphins.
Well, we [00:06:00] like to train a little higher than what is actually used in the races, and this is how I train for every ultra. Everything I ever train for, I try and train a little bit higher, a little bit harder than the actual race. Well, same thing here. So we were using men's weights and even closer to the pro, which is really cool.
This really set up the experience very well. So I haven't done a solo yet, and I haven't done a relay yet. The relay is really cool 'cause you have four people, and I am actually planning on doing a solo and a relay for my first HYROX event that is coming to Denver in later 2026. But my first experience was with a partner, and I 100% want to compete in HYROX with a partner in the future because it was so fun.
I just really like to challenge myself, and that's why I'm really looking forward to solo, and then I have some friends that I really want to do the relay with. And my expectation is that that is even more fun than the partner version of HYROX. So now I'm gonna [00:07:00] rank the stations from easiest to hardest for me as an ultra runner and an athlete with asthma.
Now, there are eight stations- Plus running. So I've taken all nine of these events and ranked them. Well, it's probably pretty obvious, running was the easiest for me, and if you're a runner, it will most likely be the easiest for you. For a lot of people, though, running is what holds them back from decreasing their time.
My partner during the HYROX simulation explained to me that, that once you start really optimizing how you show up for each station, there really isn't that much time that you can cut on your stations other than having better transitions. But from the running perspective, this is where when you increase your pace and you're able to run at a faster pace with a lower heart rate, this is where you start stealing minutes back.
If you find yourself doing high-intensity interval training and lifting all the time and you're not a runner, running may be the cheat [00:08:00] code for you cutting minutes off of your HYROX time. Running is a huge competitive advantage that I have because I'm used to running 100-kilometer ultra races and holding a pace for hours and hours and hours, where with HYROX, it's set to run eight kilometers.
The interesting thing about this, though, is I didn't know how my- Endurance training was going to cross over to HYROX because while I'm an endurance runner typically, I don't look at myself as a fast runner. So I didn't know how doing these one kilometer sprints was gonna feel on my body, and it was actually really hard for me to calculate how fast I was running after the first kilometer split because even though I was using my Apple Watch, as far as I know, there isn't an option for HYROX.
So I had it set for running, but really I only got my pace for the first kilometer. I was running about a six to 6:20 minute mile. Now, when you're doing HYROX with a partner, you have to stay a certain amount of distance away from your partner in the running, otherwise you have to slow down or you're disqualified.
So my [00:09:00] partner did really well staying up with me for the first four or five kilometers, but after that, I did find that I had to slow down my pace, which is really interesting to me, 'cause I actually thought that even though I'm an endurance athlete and I have all the running miles, I didn't know how I was gonna compete on the running piece.
But now I'm extremely excited because I think that I can cut my time even more and, and probably run a six-minute mile average pace throughout HYROX, if not faster. And really, my biggest takeaway with the running piece is since my body and my mind is trained to do so many miles, my mind is at ease knowing that it only has to run eight kilometers, which is just under five miles.
Well, five miles to me at this time in my life seems like a very short run. So running was definitely the easiest for me. Does that mean that it'll be the easiest for you, especially if you have asthma? Not necessarily. One of my good friends, she has asthma, and she's competed in HYROX once with a partner.
She did the simulation on Saturday. [00:10:00] She did the simulation as well with her husband, and now we're gonna have a four-person relay where we're working together in this Denver HYROX event. Well, she has said that the running is the hardest part for her, and I don't blame her. I feel like if you aren't used to doing the type of mileage that I'm used to doing, then yeah, running is gonna be a lot tougher, especially if you have asthma.
But I do think leaning into progressive overload, you can even get really good at running, and she actually in this simulation beat her time by seven minutes in her last HYROX event, which is really, really cool. The next thing, burpee broad jumps were very doable, and this is probably one of the most popular events of the entire HYROX competition, 'cause really you're doing a burpee- And then you're jumping as far forward as you can.
Then you do another burpee, then you jump as far forward as you can. Well, I've always loved doing burpees, so I have a lot of time doing burpees over the years. So my partner was actually extremely [00:11:00] impressed by how fast I was doing the burpee broad jumps. Keeping in mind that when you compete in HYROX with a partner, while you and your partner both have to run all the mileage, you both don't have to do all the workout stations.
What do I mean? I mean that you can split it up. So instead of you having to do all the burpee broad jumps, you can do half of them, or less than half. You can lean on your partner as much as you want, as long as they're willing to do it. Well, me and my partner split everything about 50/50, so while the burpee broad jump seemed extremely doable and on the easier side to me, I did get to do a bunch of burpee broad jumps, take a break, and then my partner did some, and then I did some, and then he did some.
We switched back and forth, and it was really easy to switch back and forth with how the layout was without losing time. So burpee broad jumps was definitely the easiest workout station for me. Next, farmer carries. I was actually really surprised about farmer carries and how easy they were. I remember about six, [00:12:00] seven months ago, I was tasked with carrying 50-pound dumbbells in each of my hands at Endorphin, where the culture is HYROX now.
Everyone's training for HYROX, everyone's excited about HYROX. And we were tasked to carry the weights out of the gym, down the street, turn around and bring it back, and I had to put them down so many times because of my grip. Well, I have been working on this, and I've been doing it with weights in the pro weight range for HYROX.
Well, when I showed up for the event, we were using kettlebells, and kettlebells are way easier to hold than dumbbells for farmer carries. Also, I only had to do half of the farmer carries. This was really quick. We were basically jogging with the farmer carry weights. We probably completed this workout station faster than any other workout station.
Next, the rower erg. The rower erg, or ergometer, the indoor row machine. The rower- Is why I wanted to do HYROX in the first [00:13:00] place. I got really excited when I heard that there was a fitness race that combined running and rowing. And then when I heard there were burpees, oh man, I got really excited for HYROX.
The row machine is what inspired me to actually do HYROX. I love pushing really hard for 100 to 200 meters. When I heard, though, that you had to do 1,000 meters, I got a little intimidated and I started thinking through how I would train for the rower from an ultra-marathon perspective. So what I did is, leading up to the simulation, is I trained with 2,000 meters and 3,000 meters, really pushing at the end, but really figuring out the pace that I could hold for more meters than what were required.
So when I showed up for the HYROX simulation, I was expecting that I was gonna be doing 1,000 meters. But then when I heard that I was being partnered up with someone and I only had to do 500 meters, I was pushing really hard, and I was able to row what I usually do when I do 100 to 200 meters at a time.
I was [00:14:00] pushing a 1:28 to 1:30 pace for 500 meters, which is about 30 seconds per 500 meters faster than what I was planning on doing if I had to do the full 1,000 meters. So with a partner, the row machine became very, very doable. This really concludes the workouts that were easy for me for HYROX. The next five are progressively harder for me, starting with the SkiErg.
The SkiErg is the first event after the first run, so I was a little nervous. I didn't really know what was going on, and I haven't spent much time on the SkiErg because the rec center by my house doesn't have one, and the only place I know where to do one is at the gym that I do my HIIT classes at. But when I go, I'm usually doing a class, and I haven't made the time to train on the SkiErg very much.
The one thing that I've been really thinking about with the SkiErg, 'cause basically how it works is you grab the cables and you pull them down like you're skiing. In the past, in order to go faster, I've used [00:15:00] my quads a lot, but now I'm realizing that if I crush my quads the first event to just finish a couple seconds faster, that isn't the best thing for the holistic view of the race.
So the SkiErg, while it wasn't the hardest thing that I did, I'm still wrapping my head around the most efficient way to do it without crushing my body at the beginning of the HYROX race. Next, the sled. Pull. Now, the sled pull was really interesting. The sled pull, I was extremely worried about going in, ended up being significantly easier than I thought it was gonna be, and it was different than what I thought it was gonna be.
I was grabbing a rope and pulling using my lats, little bit of core, and a little bit of lower body, and I was moving really fast. Now, while it was significantly easier than the last three that I'm gonna share with you, I'm still trying to wrap my head around doing this solo. The great thing was I could pull really quick, but then I was getting a break, 'cause my partner jumped in and we were able to split the [00:16:00] duties, and we were able to split the role.
I thought going into this that the sled pull was gonna be the hardest or the second hardest event, and it wasn't. It was one, two, three, four, five... It was in the middle of difficulty. Next, wall balls. Now, wall balls, I've been told, is one of the two workout stations that becomes the key to winning a HYROX race, and it's really because wall balls are the last thing that you do, and you have to do 100 of them.
Now, I do think that if I was doing it solo, wall balls may have been the hardest. I don't know. I mean, these last three are pretty equally hard in my head, but if I was to rank them, wall balls are probably easier than the other two, but it was just because I only had to do 50, and I was cranking through the 50.
But wall balls, you have to do 100 of them. You have to hit a spot. If you don't hit the spot, if you go too low or too high, it doesn't count. If you don't squat low enough, it doesn't count. I hear wall balls are even harder when you actually go out to a HYROX event. Next- Sled push. Sled [00:17:00] push and sled pull, I thought these were gonna be the two hardest events.
Sled push was close to the hardest event. It threw me off. It got my quads going. My partner actually came up to me and was like, "Hey, do you need help?" It was the one time in the whole race where he asked me if I needed help. The sled push was tough. It was heavy. It was tough. I was advised that as a runner, as an ultra-endurance athlete, this would probably be one of my weaknesses in the race.
Maybe I got in my head a little bit with that, but really, it was tough, and this is one of the biggest things that I'm gonna be focusing on in my training is just getting more explosive power, working on my heart rate, staying low while doing this, and not crushing my legs, 'cause this happened super early on in the event.
This is, I believe, the second event, so you gotta be really careful with how hard you push. So I was grateful that I was able to do this with a partner this time around. And the last one, I didn't realize that this was the hardest event until I tried it again yesterday and realized that the reason why my quads have been killing me since the simulation is lunges.
What you do is you take a sandbag, I'm [00:18:00] pretty sure we had a 70-pound sandbag, on our backs. You lunge, you bring your knee to the floor, and this is what crushed my quads. In the moment, I felt like it wasn't too bad. It was a lot, and even switching back and forth, I could tell this would be brutal doing this solo.
I didn't realize how brutal it was until I felt like a knife was was lodged into my left quad the day after the event. And I honestly thought that that was because of the sled push, and maybe it was. Maybe it was the combination of the sled push and lunges, and really, it could also be a combination of wall balls, 'cause wall balls are quads as well, going into that squat.
So these three things really crushed- My quads. Well, when it was all said and done, my endurance from being an ultra runner, all the progressive overload training I've done, strengthening my lungs and my body over the years, my competitive nature, and my amazing partner and guide, John, resulted in us finishing [00:19:00] 58 minutes and 25 seconds.
He shared that this was a PR for him in his HYROX career. And he shared the reason why it felt so good is because he really appreciated me pushing him on the runs. Well, I'll tell you this, John, I learned so much from all of the events and how strong you are of an athlete, that I am pumped to get even better and better, to continue to push not only John, I wanna push the entire gym community, and you to get better and better on your HYROX journey.
I think that I can break a 60-minute HYROX pace doing it solo. It's gonna take a lot of training. It's gonna take a lot of working on my transitions. It's gonna take a lot of building my quads. It's gonna take more heart rate training. It's gonna take more asthma training, being okay with how intense it can get when you push even harder.
Now, what I did throughout the race is I was checking my heart rate and trying to keep it under 165 beats per minute. I know, though, [00:20:00] that solo I'd be running a faster pace, which means I'd probably be in the 170 to 175 beats per minute range. I don't really wanna go any higher than that. Because I have a hole in my heart, I like to keep things under 185, and I don't like to tempt getting even close to that.
So 170, 175 is about as high as I wanna go. I also know that those extra five to 10 beats per minute burn even more calories, put even more pressure on my body. So here are the three biggest differences that I see if I did the simulation solo. First of all, I do believe- I would've had faster runs, burpees, and farmer carries.
Really, it's because running and burpees was my best event. The farmer carries, I do think that the transition of passing the weights to the other person slowed us down, 'cause we were both extremely quick on farmer carries. We lost the most time in that transition. Running and burpees, I just think that those are my best two events, and I would've done it faster solo.
I [00:21:00] think that I would've been slower ... Well, I know I would've been slower on the row, even though rowing is my favorite. I was not gonna be pushing a 1:28 pace per 500 meters. I would be more on the 1:45 to 1:50 range, and I'd be pretty tired after that. So I would've had a slower row, definitely a slower sled Pull a sled, push and lunges.
Thank God I didn't have to do lunges by myself in my first HYROX simulation. The same, I do believe that my SkiErg would have been the same. SkiErg and wall balls. I feel really good about wall balls. I've done a lot of training with wall balls already. I take a 20-pound ball, throw it up at a target, do that 100 times, and take a 15-pound ball, throw it up at a target, do that 100 times.
I'm gonna keep building that up. So my wall balls I do think would have been the same. So overall, I do think that I'm somewhere in the sub-60 minute range for a solo [00:22:00] HYROX time. So here's my two biggest takeaways, what I learned from this experience, and this really leads into how I've crafted my training program for HYROX for me for my first HYROX event.
First thing I learned is endurance matters, even if we're only out there for an hour and not 12 hours. The biggest reason why endurance matters is because for me, the mental part of endurance was more important than the physical. And that's the thing. With endurance, there's mental and there's physical, and I think you need both for HYROX.
But the more important is the mental. Well, since I have completed 12 hour, 100 kilometer ultra marathons and I've won them, my mental piece where my brain i- is conceptualizing how long HYROX takes is not scared. It feels very confident. I felt very confident throughout the whole thing. I knew that I could keep pushing.
I knew that I could do more. My brain felt very calm the entire time. Physically, this is how I felt with the run. [00:23:00] I felt this with burpees. I felt this with the row machine. Now, I felt this with burpees and the row machine because I've put a lot of effort and emphasis on those leading up to the simulation.
Endurance matters. What does this mean from a training perspective? This means for me, how I am approaching my training for HYROX is I'm gonna be doing more reps, more weight for longer for each event to get it to a place where 1,000 meters on the rower seems very short. So the first workout I did since the HYROX simulation, I did 5,000 meters on the rower.
It took 20 minutes, and I was doing about a 1:58 pace for 500 meters. But I really believe that showing my body, showing my brain that these shorter distances, these lighter weights, even though they're very long distances and heavy weights, but they're shorter than when I'm training, I am getting a mental and a physical edge.
And that really brings me to what the most [00:24:00] important things for me to train for HYROX are. Training my run, getting even faster. The rower, doing more meters. And really the rower I'm so thrilled about because I felt like when I was doing the sled- pull, I was using a lot of the same muscles that I use on the row machine.
And I feel like just in general, doing more meters on the row machine helps out with so many things. It helps out with the SkiErg, because it's a similar motion. It's a similar all-body cardiovascular workout. So that's why I think the rower is extremely important, but not just doing 200 meters, not just doing 1,000 meters, doing a lot of meters.
For me, 5,000 or more meters is gonna be a distance that I hit regularly. Lunges and wall balls. These are the last two events. So getting extremely good at these, getting to a place where lunges don't wreck my quads, getting to a place where 100 wall balls feels easy is gonna be so important, because this is the end of the race.
These are the last [00:25:00] two, and people dread it. I didn't know what to dread. Now I know what to dread, because I did the race. What I learned, endurance matters, training these things... Now, training everything is important. But filtering the training through mental and physical endurance, doing more meters, doing heavier weights, doing these things longer, same with the run.
Run more miles. Running more than five miles per week, running more than five miles in a single training session really starts to change how our minds perceive the difficulty of HYROX. Now, thanks for hanging out with me today. I would love to hear about your HYROX journey, any HYROX simulations you've done.
Please share in a comment what is the easiest and the hardest event for you. And if you want to work together, I have links to how we can work together in the YouTube description and in the podcast show notes. I'll see you in the next episode.
Thanks for tuning in to The Athlete With Asthma Show. I hope today's episode inspired you to overcome any [00:26:00] perceived limitations you may have. Remember, your health and wellness journey isn't about perfection, it's about progress. So I invite you to take a small step right now towards your goals. And if you found something helpful here, make sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share the podcast with others on a similar path.
Until next time, keep challenging yourself and redefining what's possible.
