I’ll be competing in Hyrox in 8 weeks. By then I’d have celebrated my 65th birthday. It will soon be here. And I’ve done next to nothing to prepare for it.

Firstly, how did I ever become a 65 year old? It was a few minutes ago that I was 35 yet here I am feeling exactly the same but being treated very differently by our ageist society. Age is something that creeps up on you. Suddenly  it’s all about chair yoga and carpet bowls, fun activities becoming ‘suitable for 16 to 65’. Whatever happens in our 66th year? I’m soon to find out. But that is a subject for another time. 

But back to Hyrox. This will be my fourth one. I’ve raced two as a solo competitor and one as a double with my daughter. The last one was a solo outing. And it was hard. I managed to shave nearly a minute off my time but it was a bit of a struggle. So why am I doing it again? 

I want to enjoy it. I didn’t enjoy the last one. When I did it with my daughter it was challenging but just getting that respite when you swap over in the workstations makes it so much easier. Particularly the burpee broad jumps and the wall balls.

I’m teaming up with a friend from the gym. She had a similar time as me on her solo outing so it feels like a good match. We’ll support each other on the way round and hopefully find it fun. And we can play to our strengths. I’ll probably do more burpee broad jumps and she’ll do more wall balls. How I hate wall balls.

But back to the preparation. Doing the last race at the end of November, just as we enter the dark Winter months was not a good move for me in terms of sustaining my fitness . I slid into a period of hibernation. I maintained my strength training but running outdoors (my primary endurance training) just dropped away. It hasn’t helped that we’ve had a particularly wet Winter. Running on a cold, crisp, sunny morning is enjoyable. Grey and wet just doesn’t do it for me. 

As a consequence my VO2 max has deteriorated and I’m carrying more fat than is healthy. 

My VO2 max is a challenge. In September last year it was approaching 32. It is now 29.5. That is a huge drop. Is it due to taking my foot of the accelerator where my endurance training is concerned, is it my age or is it my ‘not completely normal heart’?

Googling only gets you so far. Plenty of information on improving/maintaining your VO2 max as you age but I couldn’t find anything on doing so with a heart condition.

So I asked my cardiologist. His response: ‘that’s a question for an athlete not a doctor’. I think he meant it was a question for a sports scientist. But his advice was to do everything I could to slow down the deterioration of age. The advice remained the same even when I reminded him that I compete in Hyrox. I do love cardiologists. My GP would have told me to slow down to a glacial pace.

My Hyrox partner and I did a Hyrox simulation a couple of weeks ago at our gym. We decided not to do the 8 km of running (we did 5km) but we did the 8 work stations. And it felt ok. It felt good. I can still push a 100kg sled with relative ease and even the wall balls felt fairly comfortable. 

The focus now is to improve my VO2 max. To get back to the endurance training.