Practical guide 4 min read
How to pace a HYROX race
Set a pace for all eight runs and a target for every station, allow for tired legs, and work backward from your goal time with a worked example.
Why HYROX pacing is different
A HYROX race is eight 1 km runs, each followed by a workout station, with the Roxzone in between. Pacing it like a 10 km run doesn't work: every run after the first starts on legs that have just pushed a sled or carried kettlebells, and the stations take about as long as the running. A good plan sets a pace for every run and a target for every station, then checks they add up to your goal.
Open the HYROX Pace Calculator to follow along. LabAnvil is not affiliated with or endorsed by HYROX.
Start from your own times
Pacing starts with what you can do today, not with the goal.
- Enter your base run pace: the pace you'd hold for the first 1 km if you were being sensible.
- Set a slow-down per run. Runs 2 to 8 follow a station, so most people get a few seconds per km slower each time. Three seconds per km per run is a reasonable starting point.
- Enter how long each of the eight stations takes you. Times from a full simulation are better than fresh times from a single station in training.
- Enter your Roxzone time per transition. There are 15 in a race, one between each pair of legs.
The planner adds it up and shows the clock after every leg.
A worked example
The planner's example athlete runs 4:55 per km for the first run and slows by 3 seconds per km each run, so run 8 is at 5:16. Their stations take 35:30 between them, and 25 seconds per Roxzone transition adds 6:15. That's a predicted finish of 1:22:29:
| Part of the race | Time |
|---|---|
| Running (8 km, average 5:06 per km) | 40:44 |
| Stations | 35:30 |
| Roxzone (15 × 0:25) | 6:15 |
| Finish | 1:22:29 |
Running is about half the race. That's why a faster 1 km time alone rarely moves a HYROX result as much as people expect.
Work backward from a goal
Now switch to Plan a goal and type 1:15:00. The planner scales every leg by the same percentage until the race adds up to the goal. For this athlete, every leg and transition needs to be 9.1% faster:
- the average run pace drops from 5:06 to 4:38 per km
- Wall Balls go from 6:30 to 5:55, the biggest single saving
- the Roxzone goes from 25 to 23 seconds per transition, 34 seconds over the race
Where to find the time lists the legs with the largest gaps. Scaling evenly means the longest legs give the most time back, which is usually where training pays off too.
Lock what won't change
An even split is a starting point. You probably know that the sled push won't get much faster before race day, or that your Roxzone time is already tight.
Tick Lock on those legs, and Lock Roxzone time, and the rest take up the difference. In the example, locking the Sled Push, the Sled Pull and the Roxzone means everything else must be 11% faster, and the average run pace has to come down to 4:32 per km. If that looks unrealistic, the goal is too ambitious for this race, and the plan has told you before race day rather than at run 6.
Race-day rules of thumb
- Hold back on run 1. Fresh legs and a crowd make 1 km feel easy. Your plan's run 1 pace is the ceiling, not the floor.
- Watch the clock, not the pace. Copy your splits (Copy splits) and check the clock time after each station. Being a minute behind after the sleds is normal if you planned to make it up on the row, and a problem if you didn't.
- Don't bank time on the stations. Going out too hard on the SkiErg or sled push costs more on the next run than it saves.