Week 1 of 20. Tampa Pro division. October 23rd. Sub-70 minutes.
That’s the goal. This is what the first week actually looked like.
The Plan Going In
After my 1:20:20 Open finish in New York — where I spent 61% of the race in Zone 5 and averaged 168 bpm for 80 minutes — I knew exactly what the problem was. No aerobic base. No pacing discipline. Racing on adrenaline and fitness instead of a trained engine.
The 20-week plan is built around fixing that. The weekly structure:
- Monday — Interval runs
- Tuesday — Hyrox station work AM, Zone 2 bike erg PM
- Wednesday — Zone 2 run + burpee broad jumps + optional Sofit class
- Thursday — Lower body lift + Zone 2 bike erg PM
- Friday — Tempo run (odd weeks) or long run (even weeks)
- Saturday — Full rest
- Sunday — BFT full Hyrox simulation
Simple on paper. Week 1 was a good reminder that training plans meet real life the moment you start executing them.
What Actually Happened
Monday kicked off with hip thrusts at Titan Up Fitness followed by a tempo run — 3×1km averaging 4:35/km, then 4×200m sprints. Best sprint: 3:17/km. The speed is there. The question is whether I can hold anything close to that pace when I’m on Run 6 of a Hyrox race.
Tuesday I was supposed to hit morning station work and an evening Zone 2 bike session. Got the stations in at noon — 4×1000m rows averaging 3:50/km at 19-20 strokes per minute. Then took the kids to a baseball game and missed the evening session entirely. Week 1, Day 2 and I already learned that the evening sessions require more planning than the morning ones.
Wednesday was a brutal Sofit class — 15 minutes of pull-ups, weighted pull-ups, and Pendlay rows, then 4.5 minute stations including 315lb sled push, sandbag lunges, burpee broad jumps, rowing, SkiErg, and a near-death group bike erg finisher. I almost didn’t survive the bike. I’m not exaggerating. Full 15 minutes to recover after. Zone 2 standalone run never happened.
Sunday BFT was the anchor session — 12 Hyrox movement stations, 90 seconds per set, 3 rounds each. Duration 1:19:05. Average HR 148, max 173. Zone 4 time: 42 minutes. HR recovery: -74 bpm in one minute (elite rating according to my watch). Row splits hit 300m in 90 seconds at 1:43/500m pace.
The Honest Assessment
The week had almost no structured running in it. The Zone 2 base run that’s supposed to anchor Wednesday never happened. I went to a baseball game, attended group classes, and ran intervals buried inside Sofit workouts — but the standalone Zone 2 session that builds the aerobic floor I need for Tampa? Never touched it.
High intensity stacked on high intensity all week. My body handled it. But that’s not the same as training correctly for sub-70.
What Week 1 showed me:
- The speed is there (3:17/km sprint, 3:50/km rows)
- The aerobic base is not built yet
- Group classes count as conditioning, not as aerobic base building
- The Zone 2 run has to be protected or it gets crowded out every single week
Week 2 starts Monday. The Zone 2 run is non-negotiable.
— Austin