How much of the race is running
Every HYROX is the same shape: a run, a station, a run, a station, eight times, in a fixed order. The rulebook sets the running at 8,000 m in eight segments of approximately 1,000 m each. Venues may split a segment into laps, and the first or last lap of a segment can be shorter or longer than the rest; any difference is evened out within that segment, so the total is still 8,000 m.
Then look at the clock. In the first physiological study of the race, 11 recreational athletes raced a simulated course in a median 86.5 minutes, and 51.2 of those minutes were running. A study of 39,696 Pro and Elite results from the first seven seasons points the same way at the front of the field: running took about half of race time. In the top 100 each season, men got about 13 minutes faster between the first and seventh seasons, and about 8 of those minutes came off the runs. Women got about 17 minutes faster, about 10 of them running.
The stations are where the race hurts most, with heart rate and lactate peaking there. The runs are where the biggest share of your time goes. If you come from the gym, they are also the part your training has done least to prepare.
This page is written for that athlete. If you already run regularly, your problem is a different one, and HYROX for runners is written for you. If you cannot run continuously yet, start with running from zero and come back here once you can run without stopping.
Why runs on their own matter more than bricks
A brick puts running straight after a station, or strings runs and stations together. It looks like the race, so it is tempting to make it your running. It cannot carry that job, for three reasons.
- The result follows the engine. In the study above, the faster finishers had a higher VO2max and did more hours of endurance training a week. Weekly hours of resistance training showed no clear link, and neither did grip strength. An engine is built by hours, and most of those hours have to be easy.
- Bricks are hard by design. You can only recover from so much hard running, so a running week made of bricks is a small running week. Nationally or internationally competitive endurance athletes, training 10 to 13 times a week, settle at about 80 percent of their sessions easy and about 20 percent hard. A brick belongs in the 20.
- A brick spends its running on fatigue. The station before it decides how the run feels. You learn to keep moving, which matters, but you get little steady running out of it.
The researchers point the same way. Because athletes spend most of the race running, they wrote, a substantial amount of training volume has to go to running-based sessions. They also called combining running with the race movements an integral part of training, to practise running when already tired. Both belong in a plan, and the order is this page's view: the engine first, the rehearsal on top of it.
Their group leaned towards the gym: the median athlete did 4 hours of resistance training a week and 3 hours of endurance training. In a group that small this is a link, not a rule, but if your week looks like theirs, endurance hours are the gap the study points to.
Easy runs build the engine you race on. Bricks teach that engine to start again after a station. Skip the first and the second has little to work with.
How often and how far: a running week you can repeat
The running that builds an engine is unremarkable: regular, mostly easy, week after week. The common mistake is a big week followed by a sore one, then a week off. Aim for a week you could repeat for a month without dreading it.
- Start from what you run now without pain, not from a plan written for someone else. The right starting week is one you could run again straight away.
- Spread it across separate days. Several shorter runs come round often enough for your legs to get used to running. One big run on a Sunday does not.
- Keep most of it easy, at a pace you could hold while talking. More on finding it in Zone 2 for HYROX.
- Repeat the week until it feels routine, then add a little: a few minutes on one run, not a new hard session.
- When a week goes wrong, repeat the last good one instead of squeezing the missed runs into the next.
Easy runs that feel harder week after week, soreness in a shin, calf or Achilles that is still there the next morning, or pain that changes how you run. Any of these means hold the week or cut it back, not push through. Pain that changes your stride, or does not settle within a few days of easing off, is a reason to see a physiotherapist or doctor.
On how fast to add distance: the 10 percent rule has weak support in trials, so build gradually rather than to a percentage, and grow your longest run in small steps. The running crossover sets out the evidence.
If your legs, not your lungs, are the limit, the authors of the race study note that heavy running mileage raises injury risk, and suggest the rower or the SkiErg can take some of the endurance volume. Both are race stations, so the time is not wasted. If something hurts, see a physiotherapist or a doctor before you add more.
How many days you train in total, and how to order hard and easy days around your other commitments, is in days a week.
Easy, hard and long: the three kinds of run
Every run in your week should be one of three kinds, and you should know which before you lace up. The usual way it goes wrong is easy runs drifting into medium, so the hard runs never get properly hard.
| Run | How it feels | What it builds | An example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Easy | You can talk in full sentences | The aerobic engine, and legs that tolerate running | 30 to 45 minutes at chatting pace |
| Hard: threshold | Comfortably hard, a few words at a time | The pace you can hold for a long time before it falls apart | 3 x 10 minutes with 2 minutes of easy jogging between |
| Hard: intervals | Hard, no talking | Top-end aerobic power | 5 x 3 minutes with 2 minutes of easy jogging between |
| Long | Easy, held for longer | Endurance for the second half of the race | 60 to 90 minutes, built up over weeks |
Easy runs
Most of your running. If you could not hold a conversation, slow down, and walk the hills if you have to. Easy feels too slow to most gym athletes at first. That is the point: it lets you run often enough to build an engine without wrecking the lifting and the station work around it. Zone 2 for HYROX covers how to find easy without a lab test.
A treadmill counts. Set it to a 1 percent incline: in a study of nine trained male runners, that matched the energy cost of running outdoors at speeds from about 10.5 to 18 km/h. Treadmill or road, the run is the same kind of run.
Hard runs
A harder session in a week of mostly easy running is the pattern endurance athletes keep coming back to. Threshold work suits this race in particular, because its running adds up to half an hour or more at a hard but submaximal effort: in a study of 24 Pro men, the running and the transitions averaged about 84 percent of the speed at their second ventilatory threshold. Intervals sharpen the top end and belong nearer the race. Sample sessions, and how to run them on a treadmill, are in threshold runs and intervals.
Long runs
The longest easy run of your week, and the one that builds the endurance runs six, seven and eight ask for. Build it by time, a few minutes at a go, and keep it easy. A long run done fast is a hard day you did not plan.
Running on tired legs
The first few hundred metres off the sled feel nothing like a fresh run. The researchers behind the race study propose the switch itself as part of the reason their athletes ran slower than recreational half-marathon runners: going from upper-body and leg-heavy stations back to running holds running back, and asks for its own adaptations, such as moving blood back to the legs after the arms have done the work.
That switch is a skill, and bricks train it. Add them once your easy running is regular, and add them on top of it, never instead of it. Start with one station and a short run, and work towards longer, race-like sequences as the race gets closer. Count every brick as a hard day, so it never lands the day before your threshold run.
How to build bricks from short ones to race-like ones, and why the first minutes off a station feel worst, is in compromised running.
Running alongside heavy lifting
Gym athletes often worry that running will eat their strength. The evidence is reassuring. A 2022 meta-analysis of 43 studies in healthy adults found that adding aerobic training to strength training did not compromise maximal strength or muscle size. Explosive strength gains were smaller, more so when both were done in the same session than at least 3 hours apart, and running did no more harm than cycling.
The help runs the other way too. A 2024 meta-analysis of strength training in 652 middle- and long-distance runners found that heavy lifting, at 80 percent of one-rep max or more, made running more economical. Lighter submaximal and isometric work did not. Your heavy squats are part of your running.
The real conflict is fatigue, so plan for it:
- Keep heavy leg days away from the day before a hard run. The economy gain comes over weeks, but heavy legs arrive the next morning, so a Monday of squats and lunges leaves a Tuesday threshold session flat.
- Pair easy runs with lifting freely. An easy run the day after legs, or after an upper-body session, costs little.
- On a day with both, leave hours between them. Running and lifting on the same day covers the order and the gap.
Which lifts carry over to which station, and how heavy to go, is in strength for HYROX.
Reading your race runs afterwards
Results go up at results.hyrox.com after each event, with your time broken into runs and stations. The runs tell you more about your training than your finish time does. Line them up and look for three things.
- The fade. Line up Running 2 to Running 7: each is timed from leaving the Roxzone to entering it again, so they compare like with like. Leave out Running 1, which starts on the start line, and Running 8, which carries on to the wall balls. Some slowing is normal: even the 24 Pro men in the HYScience study slowed steadily across the race. A fade that keeps growing says the engine ran out, and the answer is more easy running and threshold work.
- The spikes. A run far slower than the ones either side of it, straight after the sleds or the burpee broad jumps, points at the switch rather than the engine. The fix is bricks off that station.
- The comparison. Compare your runs with each other, not with splits from another race. Segments are approximately 1,000 m and laid out differently at every venue, and researchers analysing seven seasons of results left run splits out of their analysis because segment distances could differ between events.
How to find the station that costs you most and train that gap is in getting faster at HYROX.
Coming from running rather than the gym
Everything above assumes the engine is your gap. If you already run several times a week, it probably is not. Keep your running much as it is, and spend new training time on strength, the stations and bricks, because none of those are built by mileage.
Your risk is different too: a running week and a race block load the same calves and knees. HYROX for runners covers where the two collide and what a week that holds both looks like.
How Smash Coach keeps running in your week
With a HYROX race on your plan, every week holds runs on their own, because the race is eight runs between the stations. Your coach writes and reworks your plan with Pro or during your trial. See Races and events.
At sign-up you are asked your longest run, which starts at I don't run, so move it if you run. Once it is 5 km or more, set your time for it, or tap Don't know. Your coach plans from your answers. See Get your first plan.
If you already run with a club, add running as one of your own sports: on You, under SPORTS STACK, tap + ADD. Your coach then plans around it instead of on top of it. See Add a sport or a class.
Whatever plan you follow, keep the shape this page argues for: runs on their own every week, most of them easy, with harder running and bricks added on top of that base. For how running fits a whole build from base to taper, start at Training for HYROX.