How My Wife Dragged Me Into HYROX (And Changed My Life)

Well, who would have thought that me being 103 KG a couple of years back, I would even dare to think about competing in an event like HYROX, let alone standing at the finish line.

Around March or April 2025, I was still overweight. And I had recently gotten into the rhythm of working out thanks to my wife Shubhangini, who has been continuously working out for the last 2 to 3 years, even through pregnancy and postpartum.

And knowing her, she gets bored easily with one specific type of workout. So she follows a lot of people in fitness to try out different styles — Cross Fitness, Plyos, strength, HIIT, functionals. Easy to say she had not found her calling yet!

How We Found HYROX

And one day she saw someone posting a HYROX finish time, and simulations or something. And she had to try it. So for a few weeks she tried HYROX-style workouts in the apartment, where she would run and do some workouts. All was good in my life, until she saw somewhere that HYROX was planning an event in Bangalore in 2025!!!! And so it begins....

Before you even think about doing something like HYROX, you need to know what you're signing up for — the stations, how to train, what the race even looks like. So she found a coaching setup at Stairs Physio that specifically trained people for HYROX. She asked her brother Tezuesh and his "Bandi" Kakul to join in as well. And she dragged me along too. Initially, I went only to show my support and just be there for her. No plans whatsoever to participate at all. I was the designated husband-who-shows-up.

Honestly, without Shubhangini's persistence, I'd probably still be the same 90+ KG, 36+ year old dad sitting on the couch scrolling through reels. She's the only reason I'm writing this blog today.

First Day at Stairs Physio

Warmup hadn't even ended and someone pointed at my watch: "Bro, your HR is 180+, please stop!" :P That was the welcome.

The Saturday sessions at Stairs Physio were proper. Real warmups — like, proper warmups, the kind that already left me gassed before we'd started anything serious. Then a mix of all the stations. Sometimes we'd do a 500m run followed by every station. Sometimes we'd work through them as doubles. Every session looked a little different.

Let me paint the picture of how bad I was:

• Burpee Broad Jumps: First time I saw them, I thought hell no. I couldn't even make one jump. Not one.
• Sled Push / Sled Pull: First time in my life I had ever seen these, let alone pushed or pulled them.
• SkiErg / Rowing: New, challenging, even kind of fun — until someone mentioned the race has 1 KM of each. One kilometre. :P
• Lunges: Always avoided them. Knee pain was my excuse. (It was a good excuse at the time.)
• Farmers Carry: The one station where I actually felt like a human being. (Spoiler: this became our best one on race day.)

Bangalore Off, Mumbai On

A few weeks in, we got the news: HYROX Bangalore wasn't happening in 2025. And here's the thing — we live in Bangalore. For us, the whole reason this felt doable was that the race was in our city. We had never travelled for fitness workouts, never travelled for a run :P. So HYROX Mumbai was never even in the picture. At first, that was it — the plan was dead. But then we found out a few people from our class were heading to Mumbai anyway. That's when we looked at each other and said: okay, we can also go.

Suddenly, HYROX Mumbai was on. About a month before the race, we decided — I'd do men's doubles with Tezuesh, Shubhangini would do women's doubles with Kakul. I was reluctant, because during training I could see my performances :P.

I had never run even a KM before this just for running. I used to play cricket and badminton, but no running. I could hardly run 200 to 300 meters before having to walk. So you can understand my reluctance to participate — but I agreed anyway, for reasons I still don't understand.

Tezuesh was 10 years younger than me and fluent in Burpee Broad Jumps, lunges, well, all the stations. My only job was to just show up and run with him. Although he had to slow down a lot for me — he could run at 4:00 min/KM while I was crawling at 7:30-8:00 min/KM.

And when we started training as doubles partners, the split was brutal. On burpees and lunges, Tezuesh would do 2 lanes while I did 1. Then he'd do another 2 while I did 1. And so on until we finished. That was the pace I could sustain. And every single session, as soon as we hit the running + stations combo, the same thought would creep in: I'm going to let him down. I'm going to drag him back. This is not my cup of tea.

But I kept showing up. That's all I did. I just kept showing up. Week by week, after endless struggles with burpees and especially running, I was finally able to run 500 meters straight without stopping. We did a lot of simulations. We held each other accountable.

The Training Mistake Nobody Warned Us About

We were learning new words every day: Z2 run, threshold runs, tempo runs, long runs, things we had never even heard, let alone trained for. "Build your aerobic base." All of it sounded like mumbo jumbo to us.

And here's where we really screwed up: everything outside of Saturdays was on us. The coach would say "do a Z2 run on Tuesday, threshold on Thursday, long run on the weekend." We'd nod like we understood. We did not. So what did we do? We just ran. Same pace, same effort, every single time. And "every time" meant maybe twice a week if we were feeling motivated. Weekly running volume? Less than 10 KM. For context, a HYROX race has 8 KM of running in it alone. But we had no idea we were undercooking it.

It wasn't until race day in Mumbai, cramping through the last run at 9:00 min/KM, that we finally understood what "aerobic base" actually meant. Or rather, what the lack of it meant :P

So all in all, we were a bunch of out-of-place people taking on a challenge we weren't sure we could finish. But race day was coming whether we were ready or not.

Race Day

Race day weight: 77 KGs. Hey, at least weight loss happened! Well, we did make a lot of strategy around planning our finish time. On race-day eve, we sat down and came up with a plan:

• Every run at 6:30 min/KM
• SkiErg — under 4 minutes
• Sled Push — 2 minutes
• Sled Pull — 3 minutes
• Burpee Broad Jumps — 4 minutes (most of it done by Tezuesh in my case :P)
• Rowing — under 4 minutes
• Farmers Carry — 2 minutes
• Sandbag Lunges — 3 minutes
• Wall Balls — 5 minutes

Based on this very well-flaunted, very well-planned (:P) strategy, plus the simulations we had done in the 2 months leading up to the race, we thought we could hit a 1:20 sub-80 finish. We were so sure of it.

What we completely forgot to plan: ROXZONE. ROXZONE is the transition area — the space between every station where you're not running and not at a station. Walking from the SkiErg to the next run lane. Grabbing water. Catching your breath. We planned every single station down to the second. We planned zero seconds for ROXZONE. By the end of the race, it had silently eaten 10+ minutes of our time. Walking, drinking, stretching, "just a quick water sip" that turned into 30 seconds. Nobody told us. We had never even heard the word. If this is your first HYROX, plan your ROXZONE. It's the hidden time killer.

And then came the actual race!!

All the pre-race jitters, the sleepless night before, all the planning — it all went down the drain as soon as the four of us reached the venue. The music. The people. I mean, we might have seen this many fit people for the first time in our lives. The doubts, the fear: are we good enough to even be on this stage with these people? We tried to soak in the venue, the atmosphere, kept drinking water, kept sipping coffee — not too much, not too little. Honestly, looking back, we had no idea what we were doing.

And then race time was getting closer. Warmup area. Corrals. And before we knew it, we were standing in the Start Tunnel for the very first time.

That's when it hit.

One minute. One minute between me and doing this. The music pounding, the announcer shouting, the lights, the whole pack of people around us locked in, jumping, shaking out their legs. My heart rate was already through the roof and we hadn't even moved. What the hell are we doing here?????

But then the race started. We ran our first km, well jogged (read: me). My partner had to walk/stroll :P. Reached SkiErg, and well, all the strategy went down the drain. Our strategy there was 500 m, 500 m... Well, that's a really shitty one looking back, and we didn't even follow it. We ended up splitting and switching multiple times. Second run, second station: the Sled Push! Well, I had good strength and given it was a double, it felt easy! But things that look easy aren't really easy. Another run, then another station, Sled Pull! Great, but at that moment the race felt a bit longer. I mean we had done so much, HR was spiking off the roof, and yet we had only completed 3 runs and 3 stations?

But things eased up. My partner did the bulk of the burpees — 70-80% of them, maybe even more. We had decided that I would start the ROWING. But as soon as I took the handle and pulled, I felt my legs go. First cramp of my life. I never knew a cramp could be this mean!!!! My partner had to do almost all the rowing after already carrying us through the burpees.

After rowing, we slowed down a lot because of my cramps. We got slower and slower, and the last run was 9:00 min/KM. But to our surprise, our station performance was much better than we had expected. And there were a few proper moments of glory too. I picked up the kettlebells and hobbled through the Farmers Carry even with cramps. We both did. And we finished it in 1 minute 31 seconds — top 20 on the day!

And actual finish time was 1:37:23! Not bad, but nowhere near our planning.

And then we ate. Four months of clean eating, measured meals, no sweets, no pizza, no "I shouldn't but I will" moments. Four months. All gone in about thirty minutes after crossing the finish line. We hit every junk food craving we'd been suppressing — pizza, ice cream, whatever the venue had, whatever we could find on the way back to the hotel. No guilt, no counting. We had earned it and we knew it.

Have a look at the station breakdown if you want:

Station Breakdown

Watching Shubhangini Finish

And for Shubhangini and Kakul, it was every bit as challenging. Shubhangini was also new to the whole running scene — she had done a couple of 5K runs before this, but HYROX was on a whole other level.

And it wasn't just the physical side. This was her first race ever, and that too during postpartum — our second kid Tithi was just 1 year old, and this was the first time Shubhangini was leaving her behind for a whole day. So the race was as much mental as it was physical for her. On top of all that, she picked up a nasty cough in the days before the race (while other athletes were stressing over which energy gels to carry, she was carrying Kantika throat relief pills :P). They finished their race at 1 hour 49 minutes.

Our races were on the same day, and I finished mine before hers — so I got to be there at the finish line for her. And let me tell you, seeing her cross that line was more surreal than finishing my own. This was the woman who had trained through postpartum, raced with a cough from hell, and left our 1-year-old for the first time — and she had just done the same HYROX Mumbai that all the athletes she'd been following online had done. She was now in their league. She even got to meet a few of them in person at the venue. The joy on her face at the finish line, the relief, the pride — I'll remember that moment longer than I'll remember my own finish.

Shubhangini and Kakul celebrating at the HYROX Mumbai 2025 women's doubles finish line

What Comes Next

Race taught us we both had a long way to go. We had already decided to sign up for HYROX Bangalore, but SOLO (Don't ask me why)! We just did, that too without flexi! So there is no way to take a U-turn and not do it now!

Well post Mumbai, we did Yoddha as Mixed Doubles in January 2026, then ended up doing HYROX Bangkok in March 2026! Story about these later.

Now in a couple of days, we are both running our first SOLO events at HYROX Bangalore — Shubhangini on the 11th, me on the 12th.

And at the time of writing this, I'm 72+ KG — normal BMI for the first time in my life. I know BMI is overrated, but for a guy who has always been obese, not just overweight, this is a big deal. From 103 KG to here, from not being able to run 300 meters to signing up for a solo HYROX — none of this was on my bingo card for 2025.

Wish us luck!