WITNESS THE FITNESS

It’s 2:45pm in late April. One of the hottest days of the year to date, and I’m doing laps of a windowless exhibition hall in East London’s sprawling ExCeL Centre, desperately trying to keep panicked lungs from exploding out of my chest. The obvious question being, ‘Why?’

I’m putting my body through some grade A punishment in the name of HYROX, the new event on the functional fitness block. You may have read our introductory feature last year, but if you missed it, here’s a quick recap. Billing itself as the ‘World Series of Fitness’, HYROX events all follow the same formula: eight x 1km of running, interspersed with eight different exercise stations, designed to test every facet of fitness.

Unlike CrossFit, there are few highly technical movements or specialist kit, the idea being that the formula can be easily replicated – and trained for – in commercial gyms with standard equipment. The greater emphasis on running means the conditioning demands are different, too. Beef cakes might make light work of the sled push and sled