A marathon runner and Beth Skwarecki finished their first Hyrox race in New York on May 29 in 1:36:48, good for the 65.6th percentile in the Women's Doubles division. They covered the course in a mix of running and workout stations, then went back through the splits to see where the time went.

Hyrox has the feel of a CrossFit-style challenge, but the event is built around running. Racers run 1 km, hit a station, run another 1 km, and keep that pattern going eight times. In New York, that meant a course built around SkiErg work, sled push and sled pull efforts, burpee broad jumps, rowing, a farmers carry, sandbag lunges and wall balls. For the pair, the running took 1:00:03. The stations took 29:42. Getting in and out of the Roxzone added another 7:12.

That balance is why the race pulls in people from different training backgrounds. Skwarecki is a weightlifter. The other writer is a marathon runner, and this was their first Hyrox event. A few weeks before May 29, the two decided they could probably make one reasonably competent Hyrox athlete between them. By race day, they had found out what that really meant: pacing mattered, but so did the ability to switch from running to lifting and back again without losing time.

The comparison to CrossFit only goes so far, and that is where Hyrox gets interesting. “A marathon is harder,” the runner said, while also noting that “the majority of this event is running.” That is the friction at the center of the sport: it looks like a strength-and-conditioning test, but the clock is won and lost mostly on the road between stations. As Skwarecki put it, “In a workout class, you want to eliminate momentum.” In a race, she said, you want the opposite — to use every bit of momentum you can because speed matters more than hypertrophy.

That is what makes a 1:36:48 finish worth reading twice. It is not just a result from a first attempt; it is a snapshot of how Hyrox rewards runners who can tolerate the stations and lifters who can keep moving at race pace. The pair have one clear benchmark now, and the unanswered question is not whether Hyrox is hard. It is whether their next race, if they choose one, will feel more like a marathon or more like a gym workout gone long.