A respectable race time is about 90 minutes; the fittest strive to finish in under an hour. INside Strawberry Arena, a cavernous stadium in Stockholm, thousands of chiselled men and women are puffing and slick with sweat. A few are the colour of the fruit. And little wonder: they have run a kilometre, covered the same distance on a ski-training machine, then run again. Between laps of the stadium they have also rowed , lunged, done burpees, carried kettlebells, pushed and pulled a sled and lobbed a medicine ball.
Later this year a four-day European cruise will allow athletes to train at sea, with tickets for a cabin starting at a bracing £2,200 ($3,000). Some grumble that tickets are scarce and cost upwards of £150—even without accounting for travel, hotels and months of gym fees. But Moritz Fürste, the co-founder of Hyrox (and an Olympic-medal-winning hockey player), believes the format has room to grow, and hopes it will be included in the Olympics in 2032.
The format has certainly set pulses racing. The hashtag #hyrox has been viewed more than 500m times on Instagram and TikTok. Peloton, a home-exercise firm, offers Hyrox training classes. There is a Hyrox dating app and bank card. “Hyrox is a lifestyle. Participants often turn races into mini-holidays. As the format spreads, there is no shortage of new destinations to visit. Will Hyrox run out of breath? He concedes that it is expensive, but that demand is still far exceeding supply.
“Hyrox is not just a race or an event,” one acolyte proclaims online. Danny and Zoe Rae are British influencers who, like a number of couples, combine races with recreation and doing “something nice”. “It’s a great way to travel,” Mr Rae avers. “It’s like tennis and golf ,” he observes: “Once it becomes your sport, you’ll keep coming back.”
