An Interview with Dena Hogan

Dena Hogan is 40 and lives in Ireland with Tom, her husband, and her 4 children.  She has competed in HYROX for several years.  In 2022, she was part of the women’s elite race at the World Championships in Las Vegas. 

Let’s start by talking about how your experience was in Las Vegas? 

I found Vegas exactly how I thought it was going to be.  For anyone that doesn’t know, I scraped into the elite race from a roll down.  I knew it was going to be close.   I had just missed out an automatic qualification but then another athlete couldn’t make it so they brought me in.

I was preparing myself for a very different kind of race (and a very different kind of outcome) to normal. You definitely have to be positive and believe in yourself, but at the same time you are where you are. There’s a gap between me and some of the other girls – understandably, I think one of them is the same age as my son! But I’m also quite a competitive person and I really, really do love to win. 

I wanted to give it my all, but I also wanted to be in appreciation that making the elite race and being on the start line was an accomplishment in itself. Everyone does sport for a different reason, and I applaud anyone that stands on the start line. But to me, usually that’s not enough, it’s not enough just to be there. That’s just me. So that’s something I had to make peace with and really not let it ruin the experience for me because the chances of it happening again are very, very slim. HYROX is growing, the athletes are just phenomenal and getting faster and better. And unfortunately, I’m getting older and older. 

So, were you pleased with how your race went? 

Hmmm let me think. I was pleased with it because in one sense I had less pressure going into it on the day than I would’ve had going in as an age group, because I had won the championships in my age group last year. I think I’d won five age group races in the pro division in the season so there was an expectation for me to win then.  Whereas no one expected me to do anything in the elites this year and rightly so. So I was happy, but in reality I had a bad lead up to the race. I had a really good race in HYROX Bremen but I actually caught COVID out there and I was quite poorly which meant I missed 3/ 4 weeks of training.  Then I tried to come back and at that stage I hadn’t made the elites so I wanted to give it one last shot in London. And that just went terrible, as I hadn’t fully recovered.  So then it affected my Vegas preparation as I missed that week going into London because I was tapering. And then I would miss the week coming out of London as I was recovering. So I ended up missing about five or six weeks training in total, which is a lot, and I just didn’t have the capacity to do the race to my full potential. I don’t think it would’ve got me anywhere further in terms of results. It would’ve got me a little faster time maybe but probably wouldn’t have changed the position.  But it would’ve been nice to have been able to say yes, that was my all-out effort, that was my full race. I think, because of that, towards the end of the race, which has never happened to me before, I really sat back and started to enjoy it. That’s not typically me but in my mind it was like, am I going to go eyeballs out and deep, deep, deep to earn nothing more and miss this whole experience? I mean the atmosphere and the crowds was amazing, you can’t describe it to people that weren’t there. So that’s my take on it. 

How was the experience itself in the elites?  Was it different from other races? 

Yeah, it was very different. I’ve raced competitively for 20 years now. I’ve raced for my country. I would be used to pressure, but I have to say, I did feel it.  Especially with all the pre-race build-up. There were elite briefings, interviews, headshots and so on.  We’d also been doing some filming, prior to Vegas, for an ESPN documentary about the HYROX World Championships.  Then, in Vegas, 90% of the athletes were all in the same hotel, so you were constantly seeing everybody. Tom and I couldn’t walk five metres without bumping into people wanting to say hi, introducing themselves, telling us how we inspire them and so on. Then there were all the messages I was getting on social media.  It was crazy, but also so lovely. There was so much support. It really hit me, like even talking about it now makes me a bit emotional because it was so different to just your normal race, where you turn up and just worry about your time and finishing position.  To be able to experience that alongside Tom (who was in the men’s elite race) was amazing – I don’t know how we can ever get that feeling back again to be honest. 

I’ve seen you mention in the past about the commitment it takes to get to the level you’re at.  Can you talk about that a bit more? 

In my opinion, as long as you’re moving and you’re doing something, that’s great. But to get to that next level, you do have to be prepared to sacrifice. It does take commitment.  I won’t say my kids ever miss out on anything because we ensure that doesn’t happen, but you have to be a little bit selfish as well. I know how much time and effort and takes to do this, and I sometimes wonder if I am taking away from hours that should be spent in other areas.  I think, probably, my relationship with my friends and family have suffered a bit because of it, having to turn down social engagements, for example.  

Tom and I try to do as much together as we can, but it can get lonely.  There’s plenty of sessions where you’re up at five, to have it done by seven, so that you can take the kids on the school run, before going to work.  But the commitment has been worth it for me to be able to show my kids (and hopefully others) that you can essentially do whatever you want if you’re prepared to work hard for it. I wouldn’t say I was naturally talented by any means. You don’t have to be sponsored. You don’t have to be a full-time athlete.  You don’t have to be youngish! I’m a working mum, with 4 kids, and I’ve worked really hard for what I’ve achieved. 

That said, for Tom and I, it’s not our income, it’s not our livelihood. So you have to justify it another way. If anything, it costs money to do what we’re doing.  If we were taking home lots of prize money you might be able to justify it and say that you need to spend hours training on Saturday because if you don’t you won’t win the next race. Whereas we don’t have that. But I think it’s good for the kids to see how committed we are. To be honest, they don’t know another life. We have done this since they were babies. We’ve been together since we were 16 and we were only 19 having Josh so this is all our lives. 

Tell me about how you discovered HYROX?

To be honest, we had got to the stage where we were thinking that our competitive era in sport might be coming to an end.  I think people think it’s hard to do stuff when the kids are babies, but actually it’s not. We found when they started getting older and they wanted to do their own things, that our time was just like totally being swallowed up. And we were doing Ironman’s and stuff at the time which takes a huge amount of training volume. We were working too – Tom still to this day works about 60 hours a week. The 4 kids were all doing their own sports.  We just didn’t have time.  But then Tom came across HYROX and he actually bought it as a Christmas present for me. He gave me this present of a trip to Germany and told me we were doing a race when we were out there!  And I was like, well, what is it? He didn’t really know but he said it looked fun! We’d never done a wall ball. We’d never pushed a sled. Anyway, we did it as a double and the second we did it we loved it and knew we could get good at this. And yes, it really just snowballed from there. 

What’s been your HYROX highlight to date?

I love that me and Tom do it together and are both part of it. There are very few things that you can do like that. We can train together, obviously he’s miles ahead of me, but we can still manage to train together and race together. And I suppose the ultimate was us both being in the elite races in Vegas. It was very special. 

I can imagine! How about the low point? 

I’ve had a couple of bad races and I suppose that can be hard to come back from as it not like a little local 10km, where if you have a bad race, you can just go and do one next week. It takes a lot of involvement and planning and commitment. So, when you give up so much to just race it’s hard to take when it doesn’t go to plan. But I suppose, as I tell the kids, it’s how you come back from them that matters, asking yourself what needs changing, what needs sorting out, so you are better next time. 

But to be honest, with HYROX, it’s all very positive which definitely helps as it’s not as cutthroat as triathlon, for example. We raced in triathlon for 10 years and I’d say maybe made friends with a handful of people.  Within two years of HYROX, I couldn’t even tell you how many friends we’ve made.  We’ve had people come and stay with us and train with us. It’s a very different community, and long may it continue.

I completely agree!  Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?

Hmmm I think that’s everything. It’s just the story of a mum of four, that still working, who has worked really hard for what she’s achieved in sport.  And I’m just trying to keep it up for as long as I can.  For a fleeting moment, before the World Championships, I kidded myself that once Vegas was out the way I was going to relax a little and maybe just aim to compete at the age group level.  But, of course, that all went out the window the second the race was over!

A few months after Dena and I had the above discussion, I got to sit down with her again and talk about her transition into HYROX from Triathlon, and how she now trains for the sport.  Give it a watch below…

Dena can be found on Instagram (@denahogan1).  Both her and Tom are partnered with MyZone, the community based, heart rate monitor partner to HYROX.  They will both be participating at the first Irish HYROX event in Dublin.

Photo credit to sportograf.com