HYROX DIARIES 2: The Biggest Challenge

This is the biggest challenge I know I’m going to face with HYROX… and I’m now having to eat my words!

It’s always been a running joke that you’d never catch me dead running (see what I did there 😏).
I mean let’s face it, I’ve never been a runner.

One time as part of my high school PE we were all out for a run as part of our coursework and I can still remember the shock on everyone’s faces when I was the last person in the class struggling to run up the hill.

I may have looked like I was fit, but I absolutely was not.

I was a dancer, very different kind of fitness and I’d only just started venturing into the gym to lift weights. So this project where we had to run a 10km and I was the slowest in a class full of athletes was low-key embarrassing!

Which I’m laughing at myself about now, because it has been one of the biggest things in this whole training journey.

For a long time, I told myself I couldn’t do the athletic things because of my knee injury. Running was part of that. It was one of the things that sat in the “I can’t do that” category.

But over the last three years, I’ve been building back my athleticism.

That has been the whole point of these last 3 years with my training: not just being strong, but learning to train athletically. Learning what my body is capable of. Building something that can handle more (thank you Robbie + nervous system work).

This was one of the things that made me want to commit to HYROX in the first place. The level of athleticism it was going to require.

I’ve been training for HYROX since April, and now we’re in September. Whilst it hasn’t taken me this long to build my athleticism, it’s only now am I starting my running training and conditioning properly.

This week and last week were the first weeks I got my two runs in, alongside interval training.
And the first time I tried to run for longer than five minutes, I ended up in Zone 5 cardio 😂(hilarious right!?)

Levelling up my training these past two weeks has made me realise just how much volume this is going to be, and how different it is going to be on my body. These 30-something year old knees are gonna need some extra support and recovery.

This is already so different to putting myself through a 45-minute HIIT class.

It requires a whole different mentality, and I can already feel the resistance I have… so it’s going to be an interesting journey, but we will get it done! Watch this space (I’ll be running circles around the old me soon enough) xo