Notes from a HYROX Convert

Me at Mumbai HYROX Mumbai 2026!

Welcome to Truth Be Told, the food and health journalism publication published by The Whole Truth Foods.

Editor’s note: Hello, this is Samarth Bansal, and it’s my essay today on my experience with Mumbai HYROX last week. Truth be told, I was legit wondering whether I was more excited about the race or writing about the race (occupational hazard). It took me a few days to capture the journey, so we are publishing off-schedule, mid-week.

As always, if you have an experience to share, or feedback/questions/comments, I am at samarth@thewholetruthfoods.com.

I. Resistance

Six days before I did my first HYROX, I had no plans to do HYROX.

I had done a few simulations over the preceding year—scaled-down versions of the race, which alternates eight 1 km runs with eight workout stations, from sandbag lunges to burpee broad jumps—and they were fun. But in my head, this was a professional-athlete preoccupation, not for average-fit types like myself.

From whatever little I had heard, it felt like a suffer-fest. I couldn’t find a sane reason to pay Rs 8,000+ to subject myself to something I probably wouldn’t be able to do, and then worse, turn into an additional project.

Project. That’s what all the HYROX chats around me felt like: people modifying workouts, learning sled techniques, lifters suddenly running, runners lifting more, doing simulations on weekends, discussing target times.

Nope, not for me. I deeply value fitness as a key life anchor—my morning workouts are a source of joy—but competitive fitness is not my jam. I have never run a marathon, done a race or competed in sports.

The only fitness projects I really sign up for are some version of lose fat, add muscle. (Mostly for vanity—a man can dream?—with the convenient bonus that it’s also good for my health.) But beyond that, I don’t have any fitness ambitions. All I want to know is: “Am I fit?” (this matters) and then get back to my life of the mind.

And hence, despite all the HYROX excitement around me, it didn’t really pull me in.

Then, enter September.

II. The Switch

Two weeks before HYROX weekend in Mumbai, I started failing at my greatest—and most clichéd—fitness goal: consistency.

I couldn’t make my 6:15 am PT sessions because my sleep schedule had gone for a toss, and I found very convincing “I need to do this for work” excuses to skip Zone-2 cardio my coach had asked me to do.

I would like to believe this wasn’t laziness. This was one of those life happens phases. The emotional weight of an upcoming big change started feeling heavier than my bench press PR, and then you’re sitting with all the Big Feelings that have nowhere to go.

So what do you do?

You eat Paneer Makhani at Khaan-e-Khaas. (Legit temporary solution to most problems in life.)

Which is to say: in the first week of September, my fitness anchor got disrupted. And so did my anchor for routine and normalcy.

For comfort’s sake, I now wanted reassurance: Am I really fit?

If I was, why wasn’t I displaying the behaviours of a fit person which I proudly proclaimed as habits? Why wasn’t I sleeping at 10, waking up at 5, hitting the gym at 6, eating 100 grams of protein, repeat repeat repeat?

It was in this state of mind that I went and did another HYROX simulation. My friends from The Whole Truth were going, and I joined in. To break the rhythm, to distract, and most importantly, to have some fun!

What was different this time was the timing: this was the week leading up to Mumbai HYROX, where some 12,000 athletes would push sleds at the convention centre. Tickets got sold out in less than two hours—proper Himesh Reshammiya concert energy.

Which is nuts, because HYROX had come to India for the first time only in May last year, also in Mumbai, when around 1,500 people showed up. (An 8x jump in a year for a fitness event in India? Who’d have thought?)

I personally knew at least 25 people doing it: folks from office, gym and elsewhere. And those who did the sim with me would say: You should do HYROX yaar. You’re good at this.

And then I thought: “haan bhai, this does feel good. If this is half the intensity of the actual race, and I’m quite comfortably ‘surviving’ it, then why don’t I just do the whole damn thing?”

So I put my intent in the world: if I could get my hands on a ticket, I would do it. Friends started sending leads from those who were cancelling. The first three failed. By the time I reached out—and I reached out fast—the tickets were gone.

Then on Saturday morning, I saw a lead in my gym WhatsApp group. I messaged the guy, he called me, and by noon, I had a Men’s Singles Open ticket for a race five days later.

And just like that, I was now doing HYROX.

III. Race Day

What’s the best thing I could do four days before the race to do well at HYROX?

Nothing. My coaches at The Space had given me the killer last-minute instruction: don’t try to become fitter in four days. Rest and show up fresh, that’s it.

Which was liberating, so I kept telling myself: it’s okay, just finish the race, and have fun.

Wednesday arrives. And I am wondering: do I need to carb-load? Take gels? Will they have electrolytes during the race? What all do I need to do?

There is Ganpati Pooja at office, and at 5:30 pm, I gulp down two ukadiche modaks—is that carb-loading?—and then spend the auto ride home wondering if this was a wise decision. I spend an hour at home on YouTube and ChatGPT to make sure I know the race rules by heart, and then decide to go to bed early to sleep really well, only to learn that forcing yourself to sleep well is a great strategy to not sleep well.

I sleep a little late, wake up a little late, and find my WHOOP extremely happy with my recovery in the morning, making it the first win of race day. I eat my regular overnight oats for breakfast, pack energy bars for pre-race fuel, send off a few Slack messages to keep work things in order, and then, just as I’m packing my duffle bag with essentials, I panic: I COULD NOT FIND MY HAIR BAND!

I obsessively hunt my apartment for ten minutes because I don’t want to give even two seconds of attention to my ruthless, non-cooperative hair while surviving the Burpee Broad Jumps.

I can’t find it, and yet again tell myself: it’s okay, just finish the race, and have fun.

And then, I arrive at NESCO around 9 am for my race at 10:40. I roam around the reception area, then walk through the spectator area to watch the athletes, and momentarily feel out of place, because it feels like all the tall, ripped men in Bandra-Juhu have somehow concentrated in one place to flex with their shirts off, a privilege that before-photo models like myself don’t have.

At bag drop, I see a forty-something finisher with proper army-man vibes—uff, that moustache—wearing a smirky, proud smile, making me wonder: how are you not limping after the 100 wall balls? Reassuring.

I enter the athlete zone, and the little anxiety I was carrying dissipates at the warm-up area, where all the stations are set up for practice. I try them all to get familiar, and feel relieved that the sled push has less friction than the surface at the gym simulation. Ho hi jayega. Let’s goooo!

The time has now come. Some 30 of us in the 10:40 wave are standing inside the high-energy Red Bull Tunnel, which in seconds spikes the adrenaline levels. A strange bond with the strangers around me appears: we had waited for this, our time is now.

In the few minutes I have, I am repeating the only race strategy I had: Pause when you want, then restart. Don’t worry about timing. Just finish. You are your own competition. Have fun!

Then I say it again, then again, and then it’s T-5, the clock hits zero, the smoke jet goes off, and boom, the race starts.

All it took was a few minutes at the first station to discover my hidden, very petty competitive instincts. As I started on the SkiErg, I didn’t want to go too fast (because I didn’t want to gas out early), but I also didn’t want to be slow. I had no idea what speed to aim for, so I let my ego set the pace: I couldn’t bear the idea of finishing slower than the uncle on my left, and I definitely wasn’t going to let the shirtless dude who started 15 seconds after me finish first. I succeeded at this highly scientific pacing strategy, and moved on.

None of the stations felt hard because of skill. I took the Sled Push easy—ten steps forward, a small pause, resume—because I wanted to not die before the last station. But my body was feeling the pressure, and I was realising all that I could do better: “Why are you not using your fucking legs,” I screamed at myself during the Sled Pull. “This is not a leg workout, bhai. Use your upper body strength na,” at the rowing machine, though I am not even sure if that made any sense. “Don’t you dare walk,” at the Farmer’s Carry.

You finish something that felt hard, and then, for recovery—congratulations—you have to go run another kilometre. I was discovering, on the go, just how much of HYROX is really about running, something I knew from the format but hadn’t felt viscerally until you’ve just finished burpee broad jumps and are asked to… run.

The fast lane was strangely empty. It was reserved for the fastest runners, who were aiming at 4 mins per km. But it was the innermost track, meaning the shortest path of all, and I was so tempted to be in there. So whenever it was empty, I sneaked in for a moment and paced up just enough so the official responsible for kicking slow runners out of the fast lane wouldn’t throw me off. (An on-the-run strategy, quite literally.)

By the fifth run, sweat was getting into my eyes. I could see the people through my hazy vision, but they didn’t have my attention. The endorphin rush was all over me, along with signs of early fatigue. A respectable race result, I told myself, was simply to not stop and keep going.

The one thing that felt painfully sucky was reaching the last station—100 Wall Balls—and then doing some ten no-reps, or reps that don’t count because you didn’t do it properly. The judge was weirdly empathetic: he kept cheering me on. “Take a ten-second break and then do five more,” he told me when he saw two back-to-back misses in the middle.

“95 done,” he said. And then 2 more no-reps. Damn. “Keep going,” the judge said. “99,” he screamed. “One more!”

And… done. He said go. I sprinted to the FINISH, collapsed on the stage, and saw the scoreboard, which said:

SAMARTH BANSAL — 1:56:52

FUCK. I DID IT. I FUCKING DID IT. AND I WILL DO IT AGAIN.

IV. 1:56

“I am done,” I posted in my gym and office groups with soon-to-be hybrid rockstars. And there came the cheers.

“1.56 is killer!! 🌟🌟🌟!”

“Legend bro… 1:56 is damn good for solo.”

But I genuinely had no idea what to make of this score. Is this good? What does “good” even mean? What if I’m actually slow for my age? Am I okay-fit or fit-fit? I had no benchmarks. (The only scores I knew before the race were Zerodha/Rainmatter’s Nithin Kamath and Dilip Kumar—both had done it under 1:30, or sub-90, as the lingo goes. DO NOT ASK WHY I KNOW THIS.)

I am now sitting with a dilemma. I was not supposed to care about the timing, because I was not competing. I was only supposed to derive joy from doing a hard thing. I mean, a week ago, even finishing was unknown, and the idea of participation felt insane. Now I am a finisher, and the race handed me the identity of small-a athlete I’d never had. So why this need to know how well I did?

And right then, it hit me why we all got swept up in the cult of HYROX. Because it’s a sport—a sport for gym-goers.

I later learned that this was basically the founders’ thesis from the start.

"Their goal was to give the 270 million worldwide gymgoers a reason to move beyond losing weight and checking themselves out in the mirror. “You always want a competitive element somehow, right?” he says. “No one plays tennis just to burn calories.”

They took a gym circuit, and gave it all the things that make sport feel like sport: a start line, a score, people screaming your name, friends making ridiculously fun banners, matching outfits, photos, merch, post-race stories, and so on. So now, all the repetitive, boring work at the gym had somewhere to go.

Participation broke my assumption that HYROX is for elite athletes. If you can afford the entry fee, you realise just how low the barrier to participation is. There are no qualifying criteria, and there is no minimum pace. You can show up, take as much time as you want, and finish the race.

Excellence, of course, is genuinely hard. But that simply means the person who just wants to play for the sake of playing can race alongside someone chasing a podium finish.

I then discovered that the race-timing data for every athlete, across HYROX races around the world, is publicly available, down to the time spent at each station.

My first reaction was mild outrage: when did I consent to my data being shared like this?

Then, like any everyday hypocrite, I immediately downloaded my own data, followed by the Men’s Singles data for everyone in Mumbai 2026, because now I wanted to know how I had actually done—objectively.

And I felt so, so good discovering that my 1:56 put me roughly in the middle of the field. (Chart is best viewed on desktop.)

Was really missing my data journalism roots. So made this :)

“Yeah man. I am kind of fit!” I told myself over another round of post-race Paneer Makhani, while also wondering how to do better next time: decode my splits with my coaches, finally work on my running, and maybe—just maybe—for a few weeks before the next race, turn HYROX into a mini-project. Because it is such a fabulous feeling to discover what your body is capable of.