If you passed the Walter E. Washington Convention Center this past Labor Day weekend, you may have wondered why hundreds of athletes in matching outfits were flooding the streets from Thursday through Monday.
From Sept. 3 to 7, one of the fastest-growing fitness races in the world took over the convention center, right here in our neighborhood. Shaw residents saw it, heard it and felt it. And if you haven’t heard of HYROX yet, now’s the time, because this thing is only going to get bigger, and DC is firmly on the map.
What Is HYROX?
If you’ve been in a gym lately and heard someone say they’re “training for HYROX,” you might have nodded like you knew what that meant. No shame. Let me break it down.
HYROX is a fitness race ‒ part running, part functional fitness ‒ and it’s moving fast. It launched in Hamburg, Germany, in 2017, built by Christian Toetzke, one of the most experienced mass-participation race organizers in the world, alongside three-time Olympic medalist and world champion Moritz Fuerste and marketing expert Michael Trautmann. Since that first race, it’s expanded to over 11 countries and 30 cities. Some events have drawn over 50,000 athletes and 35,000 spectators. In the 2022-23 season alone, 90,000 athletes competed. That’s not a niche thing. That’s a sport.
What sets HYROX apart from CrossFit competitions or Tough Mudders is that it’s genuinely accessible. The work is hard ‒ don’t get me wrong ‒ but it’s not out of reach. And here’s what really makes it different: it’s the same race every single time. Same course, same stations, same order, everywhere in the world. There’s no mystery. You know exactly what you’re training for, and that makes the preparation feel purposeful.
The Race
Here’s how it works. You run one kilometer, then you hit a fitness station. Run another kilometer, hit another station. You do that eight times. The runs don’t get shorter. The stations don’t get easier.
A 1K run precedes each of the eight stations:
1. SkiErg ‒ 1 km
2. Sled push ‒ 50 m
3. Sled pull ‒ 50 m
4. Burpee broad jump ‒ 80 m
5. Row (erg) ‒ 1 km
6. Farmer’s carry ‒ 200 m
7. Sandbag lunge ‒ 100 m
8. Wall balls ‒ 100 reps
8 kilometers of running. 8 stations of work. Most people finish somewhere in the 60-90 minute range, depending on division and fitness level.
There’s an open division and a pro division, with different weights for each. Open is where most people start, and it’s built for real athletes, not just competitive ones. You can race as an individual, as a doubles team or as a relay. That flexibility is part of what makes HYROX work for such a wide range of people.
What also makes the DC event special is the layout. The runs happen on the outside loop. Every station is inside the convention center except wall balls, which lands right near the finish. Spectators can park themselves in one spot and watch their people hit every station. The noise is incredible. It doesn’t feel like a race. It feels like an event.
Why I’m Even Writing This
Honestly? I’m not a race person.
I got into training to improve my strength and size so I could play basketball better. Added strength and muscle meant more rebounds, improved defense and added durability. It worked, but that was just the start. As I aged, I found myself enjoying the training as much as playing sports. Now I train for longevity, to move well and feel great. Hey, looking good in a bathing suit is a nice bonus!
I’ve done 5Ks, a triathlon, 100-mile bike rides. They were great. But they weren’t my motivation. I totally get and support that for a lot of people, signing up for something is exactly the push they need. “I’m registered, now I have to train.” I see it at Urban Athletic Club (UAC) all the time, and it works. It’s just not how I’m wired.
That said, I watched HYROX for years before I did anything about it. Then this past March, my friend Doug finally got me off the sideline. We did it together as a doubles team, and it was one of the best athletic experiences I’ve had in years.
What That Day Actually Looked Like
Doug’s a better runner than I am, so we had a plan. After every 1K run, I would start the fitness element. That gave me about two minutes to recover before we had to run again.
The farmer’s carry was something else. I did the first 100 meters, and then Doug grabbed those 53-pound kettlebells, one in each hand, and just took off. Flying. I was relieved!
The sandbag lunges were brutal. By that point you’ve run seven kilometers and hit six stations. Your legs have very little interest in lunging anywhere.
And then we got to wall balls, the final station, and they felt easy. We’d been training with 20-pound medicine balls. Open division is 14 pounds. After everything we’d just done, that ball felt like nothing. We finished strong, which I didn’t see coming.
Ninety-ish minutes after we started, we were done and at brunch with our friends and families. That’s the part people don’t talk about enough with HYROX ‒ it ends. You’re not out there all day. You show up, you get after it and then you go live your life.
I also ran into friends I hadn’t seen in years. And seeing our UAC members out there competing, people I coach every week, grinding through burpees and lunges at a real race ‒ that hit different. We cheered each other on, suffered together, celebrated together. The energy in that building was positive from the first heat to the last. There’s something about a room full of people who all chose to show up and work, all cheering for each other, including your own people, that you really can’t manufacture anywhere else.
If You’re Thinking about It
Start with doubles or a relay. Half the work, all the experience. It’s the right entry point.
Find a partner who runs at your pace. In doubles, you must run together. A big gap can lead to penalties.
Match on strength too. The sled work and farmer’s carry quickly expose any imbalance between partners. Ideally, you want someone in your range, not someone who ends up carrying the load while you recover.
If you’re doing mixed doubles, the weights go to the men’s standard. Women in mixed are working at higher loads than in the women’s open division. Know that before you sign up.
Train for it specifically. General fitness gets you to the start line. HYROX-specific training gets you through it. Running hard and immediately transitioning to a station is a different kind of hard than most people are used to. You have to practice that.
Urban Athletic Club and Cut Seven both have HYROX programming. Either one is a solid place to start building toward it.
I spent years on the outside looking at HYROX, thinking it wasn’t really my thing. I was wrong. It was exactly my thing ‒ hard, organized, community-driven and done in time for brunch or dinner!
