The most recent HYROX Stuttgart race took place on 4th February 2023 at the Messe Stuttgart.
Stuttgart is the 6th largest city in Germany, and is home to many big car companies, including Mercedes Benz and Porsche. It is far from being the biggest event in the HYROX calendar – HYROX Manchester, the previous week, saw, I believe, more than 3 times the number of competitors. But Germany has a large number of impressive athletes coming off the assembly line right now, many of whom were revving their engines in Stuttgart this weekend, and putting the pedal to the metal in a true showcase of horsepower…
Men’s Pro
There were some big names competing in the Men’s Pro race, including Dieter Schwarzkopf – the world record holder in the Men’s Open, and 11th placed finished in the Elite race at the European Championships in Maastricht just 2 weeks prior.
Ultimately though Dieter ended up in 2nd place (in a time of 01:01:06), being beaten by Beau Wills, who finished in a time of 59:32. Beau’s time is a PB for him, makes him the 11th fastest athlete of the season so far, and puts him firmly inside the Elite 15 qualifying spaces for the HYROX World Championships.
Beau sent us these comments the day after the race:
Future Elite?
3rd in the Men’s Pro race was HYROX debutant Sebastian Conrad Hakansson (01:01:07). It was an impressive first race from Hakansson who comes from a running background, with some notable performances to his name (a 01:08 half marathon time when weighing 90kg+, a 100km race completed at an average pace of 03:47mins/km, etc!).
He started the race in Stuttgart out very well and was leading in the early stages. Prior to reaching the burpee broad jumps, he was moving faster than the World Record pace set in Dallas by Hunter McIntyre in 2022. However, inexperience eventually played a part, and saw him get a time of 03:34 on the burpee broad jump station. That is, of course, not a time to be ashamed of but to put in context, McIntyre completed the burpees in 01:58 when he broke the record. The lunges and wall balls were also not relatively strong stations for Hakansson (by all accounts he’d never even done a wall ball before the race), but he showed enough here to suggest he is a future potential Elite 15 athlete in HYROX. He definitely has the pedigree to go quicker now he has race experience under his belt, and if he chooses to give HYROX some focus in the coming months. I’ve actually interviewed him for the podcast – you can check it out here.
Women’s Pro
The Women’s Pro race was dominated by another athlete who had featured in the Elite races at the European championships – Mirjam Von Rohr. Her time of 01:02:00 was a personal best and the 4th fastest Women’s Pro time ever.
Mirjam is obviously a good runner, but certainly not the strongest runner of the elite HYROX competitors. But she makes up for it on the stations. Of particular note in this performance in Stuttgart were her lunges, wall ball, and rowing. Her lunge time was an incredible 2:22m, the fastest Women’s Pro lunge time we’ve seen in HYROX. In case you aren’t aware that’s 100meters of walking lunges, with a 20kg sandbag on her back – in 144 seconds! Her ever-impressive wall balls were 2.55m (100 reps of wall balls with a 6kg ball, in 175 seconds). And her row time of 04:09 was also the best we’ve ever seen from a Female Pro in HYROX. They are simply astonishing times for those stations.
Mirjam unfortunately won’t be racing at the North American championships in Chicago next week – her next race will be on her 21st birthday in Vienna.
Second in the race was Jezabel Kremer in 01:09:50, and third was Caroline Vreden (01:09:55).
Muscular Endurance
I personally find Mirjam very interesting when thinking about how to best approach training for HYROX. I recently surveyed the 30 athletes who auto qualified for the Elites races at the European and North American championships, asking them questions around their running ability, speed on the ergs, and their strength. You can read that article here. When designing the survey, I think I probably should have also asked questions around muscular endurance (20 rep max back squat, for example). Mirjam isn’t the best runner of the elites, and whilst she is strong, her pure strength numbers aren’t significantly better than many in the elite field. But her muscular endurance stands out and helps separate her from many other athletes. In that survey she told me:
“My 1 rep max back squat is 130kg. In training I’ve done 100kg for 25reps, and 69 reps with 85kgs. My maximal strength is not so good, but my strength endurance very good. For the 69 backsquats I failed not because of my legs but because the barbell was rolling down from the back rack”.
I plan to write more about this in a future article, but I do think it’s worth considering this when planning your training for HYROX. Is it better to be a good runner and very strong, or a good runner with great strength endurance? I appreciate those 2 things aren’t mutually exclusive by any means (better strength normally means better strength endurance!), but many people might benefit from less pure strength work, and more strength endurance work. Of course, everyone is different and need different training programmes (check out our personalised programmes here) but, as a thought for the day, it is worth considering if your training should possibly have a greater strength endurance component than it does right now.
World Record
There was one World Record broken in Stuttgart, with Elita Amato’s time of 01:14:52 being the best we’ve ever seen in the Women’s Pro division, 45-49 age group. That was her HYROX debut and beats the previous best time in this age group time by nearly 2 minutes!
Men’s Open
The Men’s Open was won by Jaafar Moumen, in a time of 01:00:16. Second was Benjamin Adriani in 01:01:54, and 3rd was Roman Kadyrbajew in 01:02:06.
Women’s Open
Fastest in the Women’s Open in Stuttgart was Jana Lebenstedt in a time of 01:03:29. Diane Luthi was second in 01:06:29, and Rebebbca Anderheggen was shortly behind in 01:06:58.
Doubles
The fastest women’s doubles pairing of the day were Joanna Harez and Leonie Louisa Bauer, who won in a time of 01:03:16.
The Men’s doubles was won by Markus Frison and Clemens Reinhardt in 54:22. You can watch an interview with Markus on our YouTube channel here, where he talks about training for HYROX, and his experience winning the HYROX VCF.
Mixed doubles were won by Carina Bungard and Clemens Scherbel in an impressive 56:58.
Well done to everyone who competed and chose to do a hard thing at the weekend – it’s something to be proud of!
If you were there, let us know in the comments how you found it, how your race went, and / or any other comments you have about the day!
Here are some photos of the 2023 event:
