HYROX Perth 2026: Another One Done
Friday at HYROX Perth 2026 was a bit of a different one for me.
I completed my third HYROX Doubles event and, earlier in the day, had my first crack at the Relay. Add in my Solo from 2024 and I feel like I've now experienced HYROX in enough different ways to say this:
It continues to be the best organised fitness event I've ever been involved in.
It runs on time. The event itself runs incredibly smoothly. And the judges and volunteers are an enormous group of absolute legends who somehow manage to keep thousands of increasingly tired and confused people moving in the right direction.
And yes — I'm sure they'd love a few more people putting their hands up to help out!
But beyond how well the event is run, I think the thing HYROX continues to get right is the challenge itself.
Because HYROX is hard.
Really hard if you want it to be.
But it's also something that pretty much EVERYONE can train for.
Every station requires some technique. There's definitely a better and worse way to push a sled, do a burpee broad jump, throw a wall ball or use a SkiErg. And judging by a few things I saw on Friday, there are still plenty of people who could use a little help with their rowing technique!
But the barrier to entry is relatively low.
Learning to push a sled or row effectively is a lot easier than learning to perform a technically proficient barbell snatch. You don't need years of experience with complex movements before you can even contemplate entering.
You can learn the movements.
You can get fitter.
You can get stronger.
And you can progressively build your running until you're ready to have a crack.
That's probably the part of HYROX that I think gets overlooked.
For most people, the event is going to be done somewhere around that 90-minute mark. That makes preparing for it very different from deciding you're going to run a half marathon, marathon or take on a triathlon.
You don't necessarily need hours and hours of continuous endurance training every week.
For a lot of recreational athletes, three or four well-structured HYROX-style training sessions each week, combined with getting outside for a regular 5km run, can put you in a pretty good position to get yourself to the start line.
From there, how fast you want to go is entirely up to you.
And that's where the challenge becomes whatever you want it to be.
You can enter your first Doubles simply wanting to finish. You can come back trying to beat your previous time. You can step up to Solo. You can race Relay with some mates. Or you can start obsessing over run splits, RoxZone times and exactly how much time you lost at the wall balls.
There's always another challenge available.
The New Perth Course
The new Perth course probably deserves a mention as well.
Was it confusing when it was first explained?
Absolutely.
The instructions about how many times you needed to pass the IN arch and where you needed to be on each lap weren't exactly easy to visualise beforehand.
But once you were actually racing, it became much simpler.
Go past the wall balls twice each run.
Or:
Go under the bridge twice each run.
Once you understood that, you were pretty much sorted.
More importantly, I thought the restructured course was a significant improvement on what we raced in Perth in 2024 and 2025.
The longer running track was much better and the reduction in all of the twisting, turning and doubling back made the running feel considerably more natural.
For an event built around eight 1km runs, that's a pretty important improvement.
See You in 2027
So that's another HYROX Perth done.
Another extremely well-run event. Another reminder of just how challenging this thing can be. And another weekend watching people of completely different ages, abilities and training backgrounds take on exactly the same course.
We're incredibly lucky to have an event like this on the Perth fitness calendar every year.
I finished Friday tired, pretty cooked and very happy to have been part of it again.
And apparently I haven't learned my lesson yet.
HYROX Perth 2027 — here we come.
