HYROX DIARIES: Entry Three

I’m gonna be honest, I’ve been having a lot of trouble getting my running up and going. Obviously last week I mentioned that this was going to be the biggest challenge for me. But every time I got on the treadmill to run, after about a minute I’d feel like my right knee (the one that has had the two surgeries) was going to play up.

I could literally feel the fear enter my body… I’ve worked through so much of this when it comes to strength training, but I wasn’t surprised to hear the familiar voice pop up when the running started.

It wasn’t even like it was the knee hurting directly, there was just discomfort from the knee down… I wasn’t sure if I was going to get pain, or shin splints, if it was the way I was running or even if it was the shoes.

I was fine doing interval training, and it’s all good and well to be able to sprint for a minute, but I’m very quickly learning, that’s not what HYROX is about. My conditioning and cardio is going to need to be DIALED! So the endurance training is a must!

So I had a chat to Robbie about it on Monday, and he was like, “Why don’t you just do your proper warm-up, turn your right glute on, because we know that’s your problem area and see how you go?”

So on Tuesday, when it was time for my run (which was only 20 minutes), I was like, yep. Let’s get this done.

I also remembered when I was doing my 24 hour step challenge adding the incline just to 1.0 made a significant difference in impact, so I layered that in and started running!

At that first minute, I could already feel that same niggle. I was worried. Freaking out a little bit. Then I was like, you know what? Let’s just see. You can always stop, let’s just keep going.

Within 3 minutes, it had started to ease. I was like, okay… Then I could feel my calf really firing up (as in muscle activation) and again, I was like, is this pain? Is this going to turn into something? What’s this going to do?

The fear started to creep in… AGAIN!

If you’re someone who has suffered with a long-term injury, you’ll know it really can plague you. But I just kept reminding myself, take it gently and see…

And you know what, 5 minutes, it was completely fine. By 7 minutes, I was just in this flow state. I was running, steady with my energy and breathing, the music was hitting just right, cruising at a speed of 8.5 (km/hr)... And then I just gently breezed through the rest of the 20 minutes.

Nice, gentle Zone 2 cardio (well more like zone 4-5 atm because I’m so unfit, but we will get there hahaha)

Even Yannik, who has been helping with my HYROX training, came over and commented that my running form was looking really good which was a massive relief… honestly my gait pattern is a running joke at the gym so I thought he was being sarcastic at first.

All this to say, mindset is everything… Because you can always put blocks in front of yourself, you can always choose which voice to turn louder, and until decide to step into what I like to call ‘the athlete mindset’, you’re always going to hold yourself back.

But, I want to be really clear: this isn’t about pushing through an injury. This is about knowing when the mind is the thing that is stopping you.

Sometimes you need to listen to your body, and sometimes you need to give yourself enough time to see what your body can actually do.

This week, I stepped out of my comfort zone, and I ran for 20 minutes (no matter how ridiculous I feel typing this), and I did it again on Thursday after my functional circuit training, even if that 20 minutes felt about 20x harder, I knew my body was capable of doing it, so I pushed through.

It also definitely helped that it was ovulation week, which despite the science being behind on, is definitely the time I feel my fittest and most resilient in my training!

Stay tuned for next week xo