HYROX World Championships
The Hyrox athletes are part of a growing population within running. They call themselves hybrid athletes. They lift heavy weights and they run. With HYROX they have found a race they can train for. For those that don't know Hyrox, the race goes like this:
Run 1K
Ski Erg 1000m
Run 1K
Sled Push 50m
Run 1K
Sled Pull 50M
Run 1K
Burpee Broad Jumps 80m
Run 1K
Row Erg 1000m
Run 1K
Farmers Carry 200M
Run 1K
Sand Bag Lunge 100M
Run 1K
Wall Balls 100 count
Finish
That's 8K of running and 8 challenging fitness movements.
I had the chance to talk to many of the athletes in Chicago at the World Championships. What was interesting to me:
They all speak like a Puma sales rep. I use the Deviate Nitro for training and the Deviate Nitro Elite for racing. Each athlete would add their own talking points but essentially every talking point would come out of a Puma clinic.
What this says is their running shoe IQ is on the lower end. I'm not suggesting the Puma shoes aren't good, in fact they are rather impressive. I'm more suggesting that these runners don't know that everyone is in the game and makes quality running shoes.
BAA 10K
It's 10K season around the world. For our team it started in Paris in early June and will round out in Berlin in late July. In between we had the BAA 10K and will attend the Peachtree Road Race on the 4th of July. The highlight of the 10K in Boston was watching Sharon Lokedi running for the win down Boylston where she took victory in the Marathon this past April. I have this same picture from April. At the 10 mile mark Sharon and two other athletes pulled away from the rest of the pack. They were running single file in full flight mode. Sharon as you can see above is in flight mode again.
Western States Endurance Run
The Western States Endurance run was this past weekend. As always there were great champions crowned and at the same time some epic collapses. That is going to happen in this race more often as athletes learn to push boundries in this and every ultra running event around the world. What was interesting to me was the top 10 overall. Yes the athletes but also the brands supporting those athletes. adidas for the women and Nike for the men were on the top step of the podium. On the men's side 4 of the big road shoe brands were in the top 5 overall. On the women's side 4 of the top 10 including the champion, Abby Hall were wearing adidas Terrex. You can read all about the race over at I Run Far.
Ironman Triathlon European Championships Frankfurt
Also over the weekend was the Ironman European Championships in Frankfurt Germany. This was a men's championship. The women's championship was held in Hamburg a couple weeks ago. The field in Frankfurt was a preview of the Ironman World Championship in Nice this fall. The only top tier athletes not in the race may or may not race in Nice this year. Most of those athetes either need to still qualify or need to recover from injury. The marathon times are what stand out. Kristsian Blummenfelt ran 2:30:59 for the win. All of the top 10 ran under 2:50 on the day. Kristian races for On which is becoming a popular brand in Triathlon. It's also not lost on me the number of men in the top 10 racing in the Puma Fast-R Nitro Elite 3. Any "advantage" they can get!
