Wishing You a Speedy Recovery

I’m sure my Instagram algorithm is just doing what an algorithm does, but I can’t seem to go a few days without seeing HYROX content. So many of my followers have signed up for the new fitness competition, making this craze feel like the half marathon of 2025. There’s a collective excitement and a shared eagerness to test physical limits in a competition that’s quietly taken over the world.

I got to experience my first HYROX event here in Washington, DC, as a spectator to the America’s Championship.

Coming into 2026, my husband and I both had plans of signing up for the race but unfortunately only he was able to lock in tickets for the DC event this March. He secured a slot in the men’s doubles division with one of his close friends and what once felt so far off, quickly became race weekend.

The Championship

Watching them complete 8 kilometers of running, broken up by 8 functional workout stations, was way more fun than I had anticipated. I found myself zigzagging between each station and the track, cheering them and the other competing athletes on. The energy in the room was so charged, but beyond the excitement, what stood out to me the most was how their bodies responded to each activity: where fatigue set in, where they pushed through, and how they managed to keep going.

I joked that I had more fun watching than my husband did competing, but as a girlie who’s signed up for HYROX in June, it left me a little shook up.

At first glance, HYROX looks like a test of strength. Athletes push and pull heavy weights, complete high-rep movements, and finish with 100 wall balls after over five miles of running and 7 prior stations.

But after watching the race closely, and now training for it myself, I’ve realized something else:

You win in recovery.

Not just the ability to perform at each station, but the ability to recover quickly and transition efforts while maintaining pace.

The athletes who do well aren’t uniquely the strongest at each station or the fastest runners necessarily. They’re the ones who can regulate, reset, and keep moving, station after station.

Connecting it Back

This idea brought me back to the early parts of this year after reading Atomic Habits and immersing myself in content about building good habits and strong systems.

Beyond showing up, what resonated with me is it’s not just about how well you do something, it’s about how quickly you can recover from less than ideal situations.

Missing one day at the gym doesn’t define you. But missing three, four, five days sets a different narrative.

Or think about coming back from a trip. Sometimes it’s not the time away that disrupts you, it’s how long it takes to return to your rhythm.

Let’s not forget about the emotional recovery we inevitably have to face as well.

I think back to the early days of my marriage. When my husband and I disagreed, we could sit in that tension for days. Everything felt off: communication, connection, even how we showed up for each other. And we ultimately paid the price because we weren’t yet fully back on track.

Prepare to Recover

So in March, I thought about how important recovery is. And that is not to say we rush through the work that needs to be done—we’re not moving passed conversations that need to be had or cutting corners on the physical therapy our body requires—but we are prepped and primed to do the hard work that gets us to the next step.

In the HYROX competition, those who fared well were steady; they were conditioned to keep pace, even when they had so little left to give.

And I think that represents how our bodies operate as machines. It is quite easy to perform well in a silo with no disruptions or derailments, but our lives are often uncontrolled environments, where we’ve been put off course and have to find our way back.

• Can you have a bad morning and turn your day around by lunch?

• Can you miss one workout without letting it become a week?

• Can you navigate a hard conversation without letting it linger longer than it needs to?

There’s something powerful about people who know how to recover well. Who train for it. Who expect disruption, fatigue, and unforeseen circumstances and have built the muscle to come back from it. Quickly.

Because in the end, it’s not just about how well you perform at your peak.

It’s about how quickly you can get back on track.

Thank you so much for reading.

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