PODCAST - You’re Losing Minutes at HYROX Without Realizing It
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[00:00:00] Welcome to The Athlete with Asthma Show. I'm your host, Johnny Havie, an ultra runner, 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 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'm gonna share with you why I believe you and I are losing minutes at HYROX without even realizing it. It really all started a couple months ago when I did my first HYROX simulation. I, full disclosure, have not [00:01:00] competed in an official HYROX event yet. However, I am an ultra-marathon runner, and I have even won 100 kilometer ultra-marathon, completing it in less than 12 hours in the blazing 95-plus degree heat on trails, no trees, 4,300 feet of elevation gain.
So I know a little bit about what it means to compete at a high level and win a race. Well, when I did my HYROX simulation, I did it with a partner and I did it with zero training, and even so, we completed the HYROX simulation in 58 minutes. This is an extremely fast pace, and my partner, he shared with me that he had done multiple races and he is a high-performing HYROX athlete.
And even so, this 58-minute pace was a PR for him. So I looked at this [00:02:00] and I was like, hmm, I wonder how much better I could become as a HYROX athlete with a partner, solo, and doing a relay, and what would that look like? Well, when I first went to the drawing board, I thought through, okay, well, I'm a runner, and I'm a very good runner at that, so if I get better at the actual events, I should be able to go even faster than we did in this simulation.
And even, like, after the simulation, I went and ran more with friends of mine who hadn't completed the simulation yet. So I know my running is there. So for me, I was like, what if I can get faster at all the other stations? So that's the path I initially took, and I think it's a path that a lot of us take when looking at HYROX, remembering that HYROX is what we call a [00:03:00] hybrid-
Fitness race. HYROX itself doesn't actually mean anything, but this is the concept. HYROX, high hybrid fitness race, combining eight kilometers of running, which is literally right under five miles. It's 4.9 miles. But as you rack up the miles that it takes you to transition between functional fitness stations, getting to stations, et cetera, you're probably looking somewhere around the six to seven mile range.
So what this tells me is that even though my head went to, how can I do the eight stations? 'Cause we, eight kilometers, one kilometer, then a station, there's eight stations. It seems that if [00:04:00] we equally train for running and our eight stations, we'll be able to increase our pace. Well, here's what actually happens when you approach training for HYROX incorrectly.
First of all, you may be wasting energy cutting seconds. Let me give you an example. If we look at the rower or the row erg, which is the fifth event, or if we look at the ski erg, which is the first event Each of these should probably take somewhere in the four to five-minute range. And if you are already in this range, I invite you to stay there.
For me, I race around the four-minute mark, and I actually can even cut it to about three and a half. So for a while, my thought [00:05:00] was, "What if I could cut it to a three-minute row erg?" And the ski erg is harder for me. So as long as I keep it around a four-minute ski erg, I feel pretty good about it. But both of these, I'm like, "I could probably gain 30 seconds here on each of these if I push really hard and I train both of these really hard.
I'm gonna gain a minute total." So in my head, I'm like, "Wow, I'm gonna gain a minute here. That's great." Well, I'm gonna show you later on in this episode why this is the wrong way to go about this. The second thing is you may be resting at the wrong time. Now, this is really interesting because it's, this is an hour-long race, maybe an hour 20, hour 30, depending on how you feel that day, your fitness level, et cetera.
But this is essentially a 60- to 90-minute race. And, [00:06:00] yeah, if you're on the elite side of things, then you're still looking at this being a 50- to 55-minute race. This is a short race. So what do I even mean by resting? Well, you know when during HYROX or a workout or whatever, and your heart rate spikes and you're out of breath, and you have to take a beat Well, Hyrox punishes you for having to do that, but it doesn't necessarily punish you for keeping your heart rate lower than what we think we need to push to cut time.
I'm gonna go into that a little more in a bit. But resting, what we really need to do is think when should we rest? Because when I did my simulation, my thought process was, if I need rest, I'm gonna do it at the beginning and the end of the run, which I still [00:07:00] think may be a good way to do it, but it's not the only way and it's not the best way.
Obviously, if you're doing this with a partner, you're gonna be able to rest while your partner is working, and you need to take advantage of that. If you're doing this as a relay, you need to rest in between pushing extremely hard at whatever event you're doing. And really what I'm talking about today, you need to look at it a little differently with your relay, 'cause you really should go all out with your relay.
You're really only running two kilometers and you're doing two events, and they should be spaced out. If they're not spaced out, then you need to optimize your relay slots much better, 'cause the whole point of the relay is getting the most out of each person, setting each person up to sprint through the event.
Talk about that a little bit more later. And number three You may be training for the wrong part of the race. And I don't want any of this for you, which is why I'm gonna share with you as an ultra endurance athlete, one [00:08:00] who's won ultra marathons, and has learned how to live and thrive with asthma since the age of four years old.
I've been doing this for 30 years, and I've been performing at a high level, and I've been competing with people who have asthma, who don't have asthma, and I've been winning events. And I plan on competing at a very high level at HYROX later this year. So here's what you should be doing. Number one, you and I, we need to train to trim minutes, not seconds.
Well, Johnny, that's obvious. I know. It's very obvious, but how we do it is a lot easier than you think. Now, remember, I did my HYROX simulation with zero training. Zero. I didn't even know how the events worked. Yes, I've done all of them. Well, to be fair, I'd never done burpee broad jumps, never done sled push and pull.
But everything else I had done in some way or another. I hadn't done so many weighted [00:09:00] sandbag lunges before, and I had never done this format of run a kilometer, do an event. And even so, me and my partner were able to put up an elite time. And I would say that we even lost a lot of time on transitions because I didn't know what I was doing.
So there were times when my partner would be like, "What are you doing? You need to do this." I'm like, "Oh," and we lost time there. So in reality, if we did this again, we'd probably cut a minute, minute and a half just from me knowing and understanding what we should be doing, which puts us in the 56 to 57-minute range.
The reason why we were able to go so fast, and my partner said it, was because we ran faster. That's it. He had been looking for a partner that could really push him on the runs, and that's why this worked out so well, because he's very strong, very good at all the events. [00:10:00] Elite, I would say, at all the events.
And myself, I'm definitely above average But from a Hyrox running perspective, I'm an elite runner, and we were able to cut his time because I was pushing him on the runs. It's the fastest he had ever ran on the runs because I kept his pace up. And the same thing for you. If you wanna trim minutes, not seconds, off your Hyrox time, you need to put the miles in.
You need to get comfortable running, and the more comfortable you get running, the faster you're gonna get at running. Because when we really break it down, we're looking at six to seven miles of running for the solo and partner races. When you're looking at the relay, you're really only doing, what, a mile and a half, maybe two miles for a relay?
But when you're solo or with a partner and you're doing doubles, this is [00:11:00] the mileage you're doing. The more comfortable we can get you at this higher mileage, not just the eight kilometers, but just in general, the more comfortable you feel running six to seven miles, or I invite you to get comfortable running 10 miles, and you get that comfort, you're gonna cut minutes upon minutes off of your time.
Number two, rest during the stations. Don't rest on the run. Don't rest in between things. This is one thing I learned when I was podiuming on duathlons 10 years ago, is that you lose the most time transitioning. When you sit, when you stand, when you stop moving, you are exponentially losing time. That's just a reality.
As long as you keep moving, when I climb 14ers, when I do [00:12:00] anything, as long as I keep moving, forward is a pace. Even when I won my 100K ultramarathon, at mile 37, my hamstring seized up really bad, but I told myself, "I need to keep moving. Forward is a pace. I can't just stop." And that is the key here, because the margin for error is so low because of how long this race is.
So what we need to do is use the stations to rest. Hit it hard on the runs. Run fast. Get to the station. Bring your heart rate down. Instead of on the SkiErg at the beginning and the RowErg in the middle, trying to hit that PR, trying to cut 15 seconds, 30 seconds total, let's do it slower. Let's let our heart rate come down, and then we hit the run hard.
So instead of shooting for that three minute or 3:30, let's bring this to a [00:13:00] four to five minute and four to five minute. Or whatever this is for you. Push it harder on the runs. Rest during the stations. Take advantage of the farmer carries. Let yourself rest. Take advantage of the sled push and the sled pull.
Use it as an opportunity to bring your heart rate down. You need to keep moving, but take it slow. Let's not go for peaks when we're on the stations. Let's hit it hard when we're running because there's a big difference between running a six-minute mile and running a 10-minute mile. Let's break down the math.
If we're doing six to seven miles, let's say we're only doing six. If you're doing six miles and we do six miles at a six-minute pace, we're looking at 36 minutes. Now, if we're doing the same thing at a 10-minute pace We're looking at 60 minutes. That's 24 minutes. And I'm not saying that [00:14:00] 10 and 6 is pretty far apart, but even a minute, even if you were able to run 30 seconds faster per mile, you take 30 seconds times 6, that's 3 minutes.
You just cut 3 minutes by focusing on running instead of 30 seconds by focusing on getting better at the ski erg or row erg. Rest. Bring your heart rate down so you can hit the miles hard. Number three, run way more than you think you should. This is huge. And this is how I'm working to contribute at the gym that I teach at, is my goal is to equip these amazing high rocks athletes who are already great at all the functional fitness stations at becoming faster and more confident runners by teaching a class all about increasing our running mileage, increasing our speed [00:15:00] as we run, getting comfortable with the run followed by utilizing these events to bring our heart rate down, to still perform, but to focus on the run.
Now, I will say you need to get confident at each fitness station and you need to experience the distances of each fitness station. For burpee broad jumps, you need to be comfortable doing 50 to 70 burpee broad jumps in a row. For wall balls, you need to be comfortable doing 100 wall balls at a higher weight than you're going to do on race day.
For ski erg and row erg, you need to feel comfortable doing 1,000 meters at a specific pace that doesn't spike your heart rate. These are really important things to consider leading up to race day. You need to feel comfortable with your grip with farmer carries and using that as a station to really bring your heart rate down.
So there's still some comfort you need in these areas. As [00:16:00] humans, we can only train so many things and running is what you need to be training. So feel comfortable and confident at the functional fitness stations and then spend your training on running. Now, if this episode was helpful, I invite you to grab my three pillars of healthy living guide.
Movement, tracking, and accountability are three pillars that have changed my life, empowered me to lose 40 pounds in 90 days and become an elite ultra runner winning 100K ultra marathons. I invite you to grab your copy at www.athletewithasthma.com forward slash healthy dash living dash guide or click on the link in the show notes and in the YouTube description.
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 perceived limitations you may have. Remember, your health and wellness journey isn't about perfection, it's about progress. So I [00:17:00] 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
