I rolled my eyes when I first heard about Hyrox.
To my pragmatic Singaporean brain, Hyrox was the perfect midlife crisis scam. You pay $200 for the privilege of pushing your body to the limit for 90 minutes, yet you receive no race pack, no running singlet, and nothing but a measly patch and the right to brag on Instagram. Everyone was posting about it on social media. It was so damn… basic. By any economic metric, it’s a terrible deal. It was the fitness equivalent of $26 avocado toast.
Most fitness marketing tries to sell you a transformation. They’ll promise you a ripped body or a six-pack. Hyrox is different because it doesn’t sell you a result; it sells you a struggle. It promises that the race will be hard, monotonous, and painful.
And weirdly enough, that is exactly why I – a tired new dad – signed up for it.
The Dad Quest
“Let’s be blunt. Men need to bark at the moon. Men need to blow something up… Men need to go in pursuit. They need a quest.”
Stephen Mansfield
I’d been in the same big tech role for several years, where my days were filled with client meetings, spreadsheets, in an air-conditioned office. I spent my working hours optimizing marketing campaigns, and my free time optimizing my calendar.
Back home, life was equally managed. We had just had a baby, and while parenthood is an adventure, we were settling into a predictable, domestic rhythm: Wake up, feed, take baby for a walk, work, bathe, bedtime story, baby sleeps, watch Netflix, repeat.
It was paradise, a kind of domestic bliss. But as I sat there binging my third Netflix episode for the night and prodding my growing belly, that nagging voice at the back of my head grew louder: “Is that a dad bod? Are you growing soft?”
Raising a baby is tough and my job is hard work, but there was something missing: a certain craziness that I missed. I needed a different kind of challenge. I needed to do something for myself. I needed a Quest.
So, I mustered up the courage to do the bravest thing I’d done in months: I asked my wife, “Can I sign up for Hyrox?“
My wife narrowed her eyes. She is wonderful and supportive, but she also knows me well enough to know that when I commit to a challenge, I don’t just “participate.” I get obsessed. I spend every moment reading Reddit, watching YouTube videos, and asking Gemini for nutrition advice.
“Okay,” she said, giving me the green light with a caveat. “But make sure you don’t sacrifice time with the baby or me.”
With her blessing, I signed up for the Men’s Open race. I had my Quest; now I just had to figure out how to conquer it.
The Humbling Hot Mess Moment
The good news: I wasn’t starting from zero.
I’d been attending a Hyrox / CrossFit gym called Mobilus for close to a year. Before that, I’d spent years doing HIIT at another gym called Ritual (which sadly closed down). But I quickly learned there is a vast difference between being “Gym Fit” and “Hyrox Fit.” “Gym Fit” means being able to run 5km comfortably; “Hyrox Fit” means exerting intense effort for 90 minutes and then finishing with 100 wall balls while your legs are screaming bloody murder.
I had 16 weeks to close that gap.
My first Hyrox class at Mobilus looked deceptively easy: 45 minutes alternating between the Ski, Row, and Bike at a “Zone 2” heart rate. I’d done these machines dozens of times before, and since Zone 2 implies a 3/10 effort, I thought it would be easy-peasy.
I started strong on the skis, hitting a good pace and smiling to myself, thinking, “Hey, this is doable!” I was already fantasising about qualifying for a podium finish and signing up for the Pro division.
And then, about 15 minutes into the workout, I hit a wall. Hard. My breath grew shallow, my forehead was dripping, and the terrifying realisation dawned on me that I still had 30 minutes of continuous skiing, rowing and biking left.
By the final 10-minute block, I wasn’t trying to get better; I was surviving, taking 1-2 minute breaks just to catch my breath in what felt like total humiliation.
In that misery, I learned the first fundamental lesson of Hyrox: Do. Not. Gas. Out
In my old HIIT classes, the culture was to “SEND IT”, or go all out and leave it all on the floor. Because each class was only 30 minutes, I could redline my heart rate and survive because the end was always near. But Hyrox is an entirely different beast. It is a 90-minute grind requiring you to switch modalities constantly between power, cardio, and heavy weights, without crashing.
Burning out in the first 15 minutes is the rookie mistake that destroys all beginners, myself included, both physically and mentally.
So, I had to relearn how to exercise. My coaches at Mobilus taught me the concept of the “negative split” where the goal isn’t to start fast, but to finish strong. If you are running six laps, aim to have your fifth and sixth laps be at the same pace, or even faster, than laps one and two.
It takes immense restraint to hold back when your adrenaline is kicking in at the starting line, but that restraint is the only way you survive.
Strategy over raw effort. Discipline over intensity.
The “Regular Person” Training Plan
After that first humbling class, I dismissed all fantasies of qualifying for a podium finish and stripped down my goal to the basics: Complete the race, do not die, and ideally, finish with a smile.
I resisted the urge to set a target time because I knew that chasing a specific number would add unnecessary pressure to the demands of a full-time job and a newborn baby. I couldn’t train like a pro athlete, and I certainly couldn’t recover like one either.
So, I designed a schedule that respected my reality called the “3+1 Routine”: three gym sessions to build the hardware, and one run to build the engine.
The “3” (Weekly Hyrox Classes at Mobilus)
- Tuesdays (Power): This class focused on raw strength. Stations like the sled push/pull, burpees, and farmers carry require short bursts of intense power, and building a higher strength ceiling meant that moving the heavy weights on race day would tax my system less.
- Thursdays (Engine): This was pure conditioning, involving intervals on the Skis, Rows, and Bikes designed to push my lactate threshold. In simple terms, it trained me to see how long I could tahan the burn before my body shut down.
- Sundays (The “Mini Sim”): These “Hyrox Complete” classes were extended 60-minute workouts that were crucial for getting me used to the sucky sensation of exerting non-stop effort for over an hour.
The “+1” (The Secret Weapon: The Long Run)
Most people forget that Hyrox is effectively a running race interrupted by stations. Running accounts for over 50% of most athletes’ total time on the course. If you can’t run with heavy legs, you won’t survive.
And so every Saturday morning was a “Zone 2” easy run for 60-90 minutes, which meant running at a pace slow enough to hold a conversation. Why? Because Zone 2 the the magical threshold that builds more capacity in your cells, allowing you to produce energy more efficiently for longer durations.
The goal isn’t to hit the fastest pace; it’s to stay as long as possible in this magical zone.
I had a little fun logging those workouts in Strava:
The Verdict
After four months of training, Race Day finally arrived on 29 Nov.
Despite my initial skepticism about the Hyrox Scam, I had to admit that the organisers did a fantastic job with the event atmosphere. DJs were blasting Pitbull and Flo Rida. Sponsors like BYD had interactive stations where you could pull a car with a rope, Crowds of supporters stood inches from the action, holding massive placards (one of them said:“Remember: you paid money for this.”)
While I expected the race to feel like a slog, to my surprise, it was actually… fun. Sticking to my “Do Not Gas Out” mantra, I maintained a manageable pace on the runs to ensure I had enough fuel to attack the stations. My wife was there at every zone, screaming her lungs out and giving me that extra push whenever I started to waver.
When I finally crossed the finish line, there was no thunderous applause or dramatic crescendo of music. It was so anticlimactic that I had to double-check if I was in the right place. It was only when I took the official photo and received my patch that it hit me: “Oh dang, I just finished a Hyrox race.“
I wasn’t aiming for a podium finish, but seeing my time come in under the 90-minute mark felt surprisingly good.
But the timing was never the point.
I had paid $200. I received no race pack. I walked away with a piece of velcro worth maybe fifty cents. By any rational economic metric, I had been ripped off.
But I realised I didn’t pay for the patch. I paid for the Quest. I paid to prove to myself that I could still do hard things.
You could say I’m just another middle-aged guy dealing with a midlife crisis in the most basic way possible. But if this is a crisis, I’ll take it. It’s cheaper than a Rolex, safer than a Harley, and for a few glorious seconds at the finish line, it felt so damn good.