My first HYROX: 1:13:38, every split, and what I'd change

My first HYROX was Bangkok, on 14 August 2026, in the men's Open division. I finished in 1:13:38, 197th of 3,254 men, under the sub-1:15 I'd been aiming at.¹ My runs ranked 127th in the field and my stations 406th. The runs carried the race, and the sleds and wall balls cost me most of what I lost.

Here's every split, where the time went, and what I'm doing about it.

Every split#

Two different percentages float around for any HYROX result, and it's easy to mix them up. Your rank in your race is one. HYRESULT also shows a "top X%" figure, and that one compares you against its results from every season, not against the people you raced.¹ Bangkok's field was slower than that wider set, so my field ranks look better than my HYRESULT percentiles. Both are below, kept apart.

And the eight runs, from the timing mats: 4:35, 4:00, 3:55, 3:55, 4:05, 3:56, 3:55, 4:54.¹ HYRESULT's run cards round runs 3, 4, 6 and 7 a second slower; the mat times are used here because they're measured the same way as the comparison groups further down. Run 8 has no Roxzone mat before the wall balls, so its 4:54 includes the walk to the target. I was 21st of the 16 to 24 age group. HYRESULT also flags debuts, a first finish in that division in its records, and 2,273 of the Bangkok men were on one. Seventy of them finished ahead of me.²

Ken's HYROX Bangkok 2026, segment by segment

	Type	Start (min)	End (min)	Duration (min)
Run 1	Run	0	4.58	4.58
Roxzone	Roxzone	4.58	4.63	0.05
SkiErg	Station	4.63	9.23	4.6
Roxzone	Roxzone	9.23	10.12	0.89
Run 2	Run	10.12	14.12	4
Roxzone	Roxzone	14.12	14.18	0.06
Sled push	Station	14.18	17.35	3.17
Roxzone	Roxzone	17.35	18	0.65
Run 3	Run	18	21.92	3.92
Roxzone	Roxzone	21.92	22.35	0.43
Sled pull	Station	22.35	26.87	4.52
Roxzone	Roxzone	26.87	27.55	0.68
Run 4	Run	27.55	31.47	3.92
Roxzone	Roxzone	31.47	31.95	0.48
Burpee broad jumps	Station	31.95	35.87	3.92
Roxzone	Roxzone	35.87	36.28	0.41
Run 5	Run	36.28	40.37	4.09
Roxzone	Roxzone	40.37	40.9	0.53
Row	Station	40.9	45.38	4.48
Roxzone	Roxzone	45.38	45.92	0.54
Run 6	Run	45.92	49.85	3.93
Roxzone	Roxzone	49.85	50.6	0.75
Farmers carry	Station	50.6	52.58	1.98
Roxzone	Roxzone	52.58	52.78	0.2
Run 7	Run	52.78	56.7	3.92
Roxzone	Roxzone	56.7	57.67	0.97
Sandbag lunges	Station	57.67	62.08	4.41
Roxzone	Roxzone	62.08	62.23	0.15
Run 8	Run	62.23	67.13	4.9
Wall balls	Station	67.13	73.7	6.57

Runs and Roxzone from HYRESULT's timing table, stations from the station cards (screenshots of 2026-08-19). The mats round to the second, so the blocks add up to 1:13:42, four seconds over the official 1:13:38. Source: HYRESULT.

The runs and stations came out almost level, 33:14 against 33:39, with 6:45 of Roxzone on top. Runs plus stations plus Roxzone is exactly 1:13:38.

How the race actually went#

The overall time hides the shape. HYRESULT tracks where you sat in the field after every segment, and mine went like this:¹

• 288th after run 1, then 354th after the SkiErg. My worst stretch of the race, and it came in the first ten minutes.
• 341st after the sled push, 297th after the sled pull. I was gaining on the runs and giving a lot of it back on the sleds.
• From run 4 on, I moved up on almost every segment: 252nd, 220th after the burpee broad jumps, 194th after the row, 193rd after the carry, 176th after the lunges, 169th after run 8. Run 6 was the one blip, one place lost.
• Then the wall balls. 169th going in, 197th at the finish. Twenty-eight places in one station.

Ken's place in the field after each segment

segment (1 = run 1, 16 = wall balls)	Place (place)
1	288
2	354
3	297
4	341
5	254
6	297
7	252
8	220
9	207
10	194
11	195
12	193
13	178
14	176
15	169
16	197

Overall position after each run and station, HYROX Bangkok 2026, Men. Lower is better. Source: HYRESULT race position data, read 2026-10-22.

That chart is basically the whole race. The runs moved me up. The SkiErg, both sleds and the wall balls moved me down, and those four cost me 181 places between them. The burpees and the row gained the most of any station, and the carry and lunges gained a couple each.

Why the SkiErg cost so many places#

My SkiErg was 4:36, six seconds off the median of the men who finished near me, and it still ranked 705th. That looks odd until you see how bunched the ergs are. Among the 62 men who finished within a minute of 1:15, the middle half of SkiErg times sat inside 14 seconds (4:22 to 4:36) and the row inside 16 (4:32 to 4:48). The wall balls spread across 92 seconds (5:08 to 6:40).²

So on the ergs, a few seconds move you dozens of places, and on the wall balls you can lose a minute without dropping as far. Rank tells you how crowded a station is. Time tells you what it cost. For deciding what to train, time is the one to look at, and by time the SkiErg barely mattered.

Compared with the men who ran 1:15#

Ranks tell you where you stood. They don't tell you what a race like yours normally looks like. So we pulled the result pages of all 62 men who finished within a minute of 1:15 in the same Bangkok race and took the median of every segment.² Same venue and the same sleds, so it's a fair comparison. Here's mine against theirs.

Ken vs the median 1:15 finisher, Bangkok 2026

	Value (s)
Runs	-132
SkiErg	6
Sled push	22
Sled pull	31
Burpee broad jumps	-17
Row	-12
Farmers carry	3
Sandbag lunges	-1
Wall balls	54
Roxzone	-3

Ken's time minus the median of the 62 men who finished between 1:14:00 and 1:16:00 at HYROX Bangkok 2026. Positive = slower than the median. Source: HYRESULT result pages, medians computed by hybridAF, 2026-10-22.

So a typical 1:15 in that field ran about two minutes slower than I did and made it back on the stations. Three stations account for nearly all my deficit: wall balls 54 seconds, sled pull 31, sled push 22. That's 1:47 between them. The SkiErg and the carry were close to the median, the lunges were dead level, and the burpees, row and running were all in front.

That's also where my margin under 1:15 came from. I had 1:22 to spare, and the running alone was 2:12 ahead of the group median. Swap in the group's median running and keep everything else, and I'd have finished 1:15:50, 50 seconds over.

Medians don't add up to a race, so don't read the table as "a 1:15 is these numbers". The point is the direction. Against people who finished in the same place, my running was well ahead and my heavy stations well behind.

What the score said before the race#

The day before the race, my Hybrid Score was 77, with a Strength Index of 74 and an Engine Index of 80. The engine side came from my VO2max estimate and the strength side from three logged lifts. It had read 77 on most days since 10 July. Those numbers are from the scoring model in use before 8 October 2026; the model has changed since.

I didn't have a coach for this race. I had that number, and it said engine ahead of strength.

The race had the same shape. Runs ranked 127th, stations 406th. Inside the stations, the row and the burpee broad jumps went well, and the heavily loaded ones, the sleds and the wall balls, didn't. The SkiErg doesn't fit the story neatly: it's as much an engine station as the row, and it ranked 705th. By time, though, it was only six seconds off the men who finished near me. The SkiErg section above explains why six seconds cost so many places.

I want to keep this claim narrow, because it'd be easy to oversell. The score didn't predict 1:13:38, and it isn't a HYROX predictor. It said which side was behind, and the race agreed. That's one athlete and one race. It does fit Brandt's lab simulation, where VO2max tracked finish time and run time but not station time, in 11 athletes,³ and the season-by-season results data, where the strength-heavy stations reshuffled the rankings more than the running did.⁴

One more piece of arithmetic. The Hybrid Score combines the two sides with a harmonic mean, which pulls toward the weaker side. At 74 and 80, one extra strength point was worth 0.54 score points and one extra engine point 0.46. The formula was already pointing at the same place the sleds did.

What I trained#

I've been lifting and running for three-plus years, but this was my first HYROX, built around being a student. There's no full race simulation in my log for the eight weeks before Bangkok. What's there is station work and bricks, all logged between 6 July and 4 August:

• run and wall ball circuits: mostly 800 m to 1 km runs with 25 to 30 wall balls and 22 to 33 m of burpee broad jumps, five times;
• row and SkiErg circuits: 1,000 m of each, back to back, three times, plus one SkiErg-only session;
• short repeats on the sled push, sandbag lunges and farmers carry, two sessions each, and one on the sled pull;
• one longer circuit on 11 July, logged at 54 minutes: four 500 m runs with 80 m of burpee broad jumps, a 38 m sled push at 159 kg, a 38 m sled pull at 115 kg and 35 wall balls between them.

My running was thin by most HYROX standards: around 15 km a week across those weeks, with a lot of indoor cycling on top. The week-by-week log is in how much running you need for HYROX, along with the bigger running base from the months before.

Put that list next to the results and the stations I practised most (row, SkiErg, wall balls, burpees) aren't simply the ones that went well. The row and burpees did. The SkiErg and the wall balls didn't, even with five run and wall ball sessions in four weeks. Doing a station often in training clearly isn't the same as being strong enough for it late in a race.

What I'm changing#

My plan coming out of Bangkok was one line: next block, the barbell gets the hours.

The numbers above are why. My running was already ahead of the people who finished near me. The time was in the sleds and the wall balls, and those are loaded stations where more general strength should help. The sled push and pull guide has my sled numbers in more detail and the arithmetic behind that call.

If it's your first HYROX#

None of this is a study, so take it as one race read honestly. These are the things the data and the rulebook point at.

Your run 1 isn't a fair test of anything. In Bangkok, run 1 was slow for nearly everyone near me: the median for the 1:15 group was 4:40, against about 4:02 to 4:18 for their runs 2 to 7.² Whether that's the start crowd or the run 1 course, the timing can't say. Don't panic about it, and don't chase it. The run pacing guide goes through this with three levels of finisher.

The wall balls come after 8 km of running and seven stations. In Brandt's lab simulation they produced the highest lactate and effort of the whole race,³ and in my race they were the most expensive station by a distance. If you practise them fresh, you're practising a different station. The wall ball guide covers pacing the 100.

The Roxzone is real time. Mine was 6:45, longer than any single station, wall balls included. Most of it is walking between the mats and the stations. The Roxzone explainer breaks down what counts and what's normal.

Know the race-day rules that cost minutes. You count your own laps, and the lap screens are only an aid.⁵ A missed lap costs 3 to 7 minutes, depending on how many laps the venue uses, and on a one-lap course it's a disqualification. If you're running 4:00/km or faster, you're required to use the inside Fast Lane. Be in the start tunnel 10 minutes before your start. Water is available on every pass through the Roxzone. And you're allowed to take your shoes off at the wall ball target, though you then carry them to the finish.

Look at your split shape as well as the time. My total looked like a good first race. The split showed a strong runner with weak sleds, and that's the part you can train. Paste your eight runs, finish time and station total into the HYROX splits analyzer and it gives you your Roxzone and how much your runs faded. Then compare your stations with the split targets for sub 90, sub 75 and sub 60, which come from real finishers too.

The rest of the series, in reading order, is on the HYROX hub. HYROX is a brand of HYROX World GmbH. hybridAF is not affiliated with HYROX.