Post Olympia, Gdansk and Milan...

13 - May 2024 - Post-Olympia

My injury did not recover quickly. I continued to limp around the house for nearly 2 weeks and I continued to feel discomfort in that area. I had a bit of a go on the treadmill, slowly ramping up my speed to 16km/h and held it there and while I could run, it hurt. At this point I cannot but think I have wrecked Gdansk but all I can do is rest, hope for the best and ice, ice, ice. I have never put ice on injuries before so I felt pretty ridiculous but being determined to actually achieve something in Poland, I was willing to give anything a go! This along with an old shoulder giving me grief, I felt like a mess. How do the pros do it??

So I am 9 days out and needing to limit my exposure to running I had to improvise. I did my usual strength training then did 3 rounds of 1km row, 60m sandbag lunges and 50 wall balls. I had the Friday off then Saturday morning did 3 rounds of 1km SkiERG, 30m sled push and 30m sled pull at 165kg then 80m of farmers carry. This currently leaves me on the final straight to Gdansk where I plan to have the same run in as Olympia with a full workstation run through on the Monday then a strength workout on Wednesday followed by 3 solid days of rest before the race on Sunday.

Saturday came round quickly as anticipated. I had my journey to Stansted airport all planned out but then, engineering works and rail replacement buses. Arrgghh. I managed to negotiate with the Mrs though and she and the kids got out of bed early and kindly drove me part of the way so I could get to the airport in good time. I found a nice spot in Wetherspoons overlooking the runway for eggs benedict and tea. No pint and a massive fry up for me. I had a race the next day.

14 - May 2024 – Gdansk Part 1

Well I thought Olympia came with a drop of disappointment, Gdańsk came with an ocean! I am still trying to work out where I went wrong. It was certainly hot in AmberExpo plus some injuries came back with a vengeance but I hate making excuses. 1:26:26. I definitely missed the Centr sleds from Olympia. That felt like pushing my 2 year old on her bike compared to the sleds in Gdansk but my run times were a joke. Slowly getting worse throughout the event ending up at 7 minutes on run 8. 7 minutes! It definitely did not feel that slow at the time I cannot help but wonder if I ran 3 laps.

The Mrs did not show much enthusiasm at my invitation so I went alone landing in the beautiful city at 2pm. After checking into my accommodation right in the city centre I had like 20 hours to kill. I walked about for an hour but then headed back wanting to rest as much as possible with an early night. Come the morning I had a repeat of not really knowing the best way to fuel for the event. I had porridge around 4 hours before my start time at 1.20pm then a banana and energy gel with half hour or so to go. Certainly felt weird being far from home and by myself!

There were no running machines in the warm up area so outside I went into the strong sunshine to warm my legs up and with plenty of stretches. Then 10-15 minutes doing the rounds in the warm up area and into the starting zone I went once more right at the back. My plan for my Gdansk race was to push slightly harder throughout all the runs and stations with hopes to take 10-20 seconds off of more or less every section and maybe 90 off the wall balls. This I felt was wholly within my ability and yet again felt a slight air of confidence.

15 - May 2024 – Gdansk Part 2

I could have throttled someone at the finish while doing wall balls. No rep. No rep. No rep. Mate that was almost dead centre! Followed by a bit of flimsy card. Where are the finisher’s patches we all found ourselves asking? All that effort for a bit of card. Anyway, I pushed as planned with a sub 4 minute opening lap, then looking down my list of times everything is ok. Took a minute off the farmers which I was pleased with. I changed my view of it from holding the kettlebells for 200m to holding them for a minute and a half so hurried up before my grip went!

My row was a bit slow but after this my runs were awful. Maybe the heat got to me. It’s strange as I felt I was overtaking people a lot and felt as if I was running a decent pace. Obviously not. Oh and my roxtime was an extra 30 seconds compared to Olympia. Strangely afterwards I recovered very quickly and felt absolutely fine. I sat around for a bit and watched some of the women’s doubles before kicking myself with a reminder there was Polish craft beer waiting for me and sunny terrace bars.

Another amazing HYROX experience under my belt and plenty learned. Going to have to start running more regardless of my dodgy Achilles and really practice wall balls. Planning on using the 9kg ball more. If I can do 100 wall balls with a 9kg ball then come the mens open I should be able to trim off some time off the last and most demanding part of the event. I have already started looking for my next HYROX. I think I could fly somewhere on the morning then come home that evening. Poznan, Stockholm and Stuttgart are all the European ones that currently have spaces but need the ballot result first. Can’t be doing back to back HYROX events (well sort of).

16 - June 2024 – What next?

I was kind of forced into a 2 week break. From landing back from Poland I made my way straight to the Kent coast for a family holiday before returning to London for my sister’s wedding on the Wednesday, back to the Kent Coast then directly to a set of shifts at work on Friday. I felt I recovered very quickly from Gdansk which surprised me. Once again I found myself repeatedly searching the ‘HYROX – find my race’ section of the website. Nearly all sold out but could see there is a few European cities with places. I was not ready to commit to another but ended throwing myself into the F45 London Excel ballot – the first HYROX ballot.

I had low expectations but the application window was narrow so I just thought why not. It is not until December so best part of 6 months away. It said the results would be delivered week commencing 3rd June and I must have refreshed my emails hundreds of times through the week and… nothing! My fellow HYROXers kept saying ‘What did you expect? It’s the week of the Worlds’ in response to my complaints but that is what they said! 3rd June. I was desperate to know the outcome so I could really focus on my decision on where to next.

After two weeks away from the gym I was pleased to get back to it. I do not necessary love the gym but there is an element where you feel previous hard work is being undone and I cannot be dealing with that. As time has gone by and my thirst for improvement carries on, my knowledge of how to train for this type of race is growing. I would love to have visually documented the journey I am on but I am way too private for that so this typing will have to do for now. There is a lot of technicalities about my racing I want to address and I have considered personal training but like hell am I going to pay for a coach.

17 - June 2024 – Impatience strikes again

So the London ballot. I have been posting so much about this ballot on Facebook I think people are genuinely getting sick of my name appearing on their screens. I had arranged to meet a mate on the Friday evening and watch the Hyrox World Championships together in a pub which was a great laugh and was fascinating to watch the event unfold with Hunter McIntyre not winning for a change. Where did he go?? I watch him a bit on social media and he has been slimming down a touch which might explain it. Alexander Roncevic produced something incredible and well-deserved the win. Naturally the Hyrox bug had doubled in size while watching and I found myself scrolling through the ‘Find my race’ section once again.

Hmmm… Milan in October. Even if I were successful in the London ballot the two events would be over a month apart. And… I booked it. Then and there sat in the pub with a pint on the go. 4 months of training available. Plenty of time to address some of the glaring deficiencies in my performances. I decided the family would join me again in a similar format to Barcelona but with an added car hire and a short trip up to Lake Como. I have heard good things! Like most Hyrox addicts, I think about the event all the time. How to improve, what I can do differently, training, advice, technique etc

With this in mind I decided to fork out for some adjustable dumbbells for strength training at home. They were not cheap by any stretch of the imagination but thanks to klarna (interest free monthly payments), it has made it more palatable. I have beginning to think improving my overall strength certainly would not harm my future races plus it is relatively quick way of popping in a training session at home. Also burns off a few extra calories which I am currently trying to tackle. Cannot seem to shift any of this midriff…

18 - July – A Change in Tactics

If I have not mentioned this before, I wish I was 10 years younger. Who doesn’t of course but from a purely being able to train – recover – train principle, being in my 40s is just annoying. No matter how much a warm up and down and stretch, recovery is slow. I have been slowly coming round to the idea that I should shift my training towards more strength and running rather than practising the workstations. I can put aside maybe 6-8 hours a week for training so I need to really hone in on where I am going to get maximum benefit.

That being said though I just had a surprising session at the gym. I did a little bit of strength work then did 20 minutes on the bike, 1km SkiERG, 1km row, 60m sled push at 175kg followed by 50 wall balls. Firstly I did my fastest ever SkiERG at 3:57. Despite multiple previous attempts to break 4 minutes. And secondly the 50 wall balls was with a 9kg ball and I did not find it overly challenging. Maybe an anomaly or maybe my shift in focus to more strength work has started to bear fruit. Interesting regardless. I plan on a full sim soon. Will be my first since Gdansk so will be good to see where I have improved if at all! My GDN finisher’s patch mysteriously arrived in the post. Was not expecting that. I was growing fond of that piece of flimsy card.

I also found out today that my ballot entry to F45 London HYROX was unsuccessful. It was fully expected particularly as talk on social media was rife that all the places had gone to HYROX-affiliated gyms. So Milan it is. Mid October. Three months to go. Maybe a good idea to start ramping up the training both at home and at the gym. I have worked out 24 different dumbbell exercises and split them into two sets. I hope to get each set done 1-2 times a week. A big mix of different exercises but I guess critically including core workouts.