What actually slows people down in HYROX? A look at the splits from singles finishers at HYROX Bengaluru 2026 (Season 8)
HYROX is the newest format that Indian endurance junkies are in love with. It is 8 km of running broken up by 8 functional stations, in a fixed order. So when one athlete finishes in 1:30 and the next in 2:30, the hour between them has to come from somewhere specific.
We pulled the full split data of every singles finisher at HYROX Bengaluru 2026 (Season 8) from hyresult.com. A total of 2,768 athletes across the four singles divisions, and we broke each further down run-by-run, station-by-station, and through the Roxzone (the transition between the track and the next station).
| Division | Athletes | Top 25% (median) | Middle 50% | Bottom 25% | Top→Bottom gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HYROX Men (Open) | 1,802 | 1:33:28 | 1:56:26 | 2:32:24 | 58:56 |
| HYROX Women (Open) | 624 | 1:47:17 | 2:12:04 | 2:45:27 | 58:10 |
| HYROX Pro Men | 279 | 1:24:45 | 1:54:00 | 2:30:18 | 65:34 |
| HYROX Pro Women | 63 | 1:32:47 | 2:00:13 | 2:40:56 | 68:09 |
A total of 2,768 singles finishers were analysed. Doubles, relays and adaptive categories are excluded. Tiers are by finish-time quartile within each division. All numbers in the rest of the article use medians (more robust to outliers than means).
The shape of the data is the same in all four divisions. So for clarity we’ll use Open Men (n=1,799 valid results) as the worked example and call out the others where they differ meaningfully.
The race has three time components: 8 runs (8 km in total), 8 stations, and the Roxzone. Splitting the 58:56 top-to-bottom gap in the men’s race across those three:
| Bucket | Share of the gap (Open Men) |
|---|---|
| Running (8 × 1 km) | 48% |
| Workouts (8 stations) | 43% |
| Roxzone (transitions) | 11% |
The popular framing of HYROX as a “running race with some exercises” doesn’t hold up. The eight strength stations cost the slower athletes almost as much time as the running does. In the women’s and Pro divisions, workouts actually overtake running as the bigger bucket (Open Women: 49% workouts vs 46% running; Pro Women: 52% vs 46%).
And 11% of the gap — close to 7 minutes for the men — is lost just standing around in transition.
If you rank every station by the raw time difference between the top quartile and the bottom quartile, the same movement wins in every division:
| Rank | Station | Top 25% | Bottom 25% | Gap | % of total gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Wall Balls | 6:54 | 13:50 | +6:56 | 11.8% |
| 2 | Roxzone (cumulative) | 7:36 | 14:16 | +6:40 | 11.3% |
| 3 | Run 8 (final km) | 6:01 | 12:20 | +6:19 | 10.7% |
| 4 | Sandbag Lunges | 5:40 | 10:16 | +4:36 | 7.8% |
| 5 | Burpee Broad Jump | 5:28 | 9:58 | +4:30 | 7.6% |
| 6 | Sled Pull | 5:46 | 9:43 | +3:57 | 6.7% |
| 15 | Sled Push | 3:36 | 5:51 | +2:15 | 3.8% |
| 16 | Farmers Carry | 2:19 | 3:34 | +1:15 | 2.1% |
| 17 | Row | 5:07 | 6:13 | +1:06 | 1.9% |
| 18 | SkiErg | 4:51 | 5:42 | +0:51 | 1.4% |
The Wall Balls multiplier is striking and consistent — the bottom quartile takes roughly twice as long as the top in every division:
| Division | Wall Balls: Top | Bottom | Multiplier |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Men | 6:54 | 13:50 | 2.00× |
| Open Women | 7:29 | 15:54 | 2.12× |
| Pro Men | 6:46 | 15:20 | 2.27× |
| Pro Women | 7:24 | 16:10 | 2.18× |
Our hypothesis: 100 wall balls (squat + throw to a high target) lands dead last in the race, after the legs have already taken 8 km of running plus lunges, sleds and burpees. For a well-prepared athlete it is a steady 7-minute grind. For a fatigued athlete it turns into 14–16 minutes of single reps, missed targets (which are not counted), and long pauses between sets. No other movement in the race punishes accumulated leg fatigue and target accuracy at the same time.
Interestingly the two pure-machine stations — SkiErg and Row — barely separate anyone (CoV under 11%). They are metabolically hard but technically forgiving, and physically you cannot slow a rower down by much. The stations that pull the field apart are the ones that demand leg strength-endurance and shooting the target under deep fatigue.
Because the 16 stations always come in the same order, each one sits at a fixed point on the fatigue timeline. Reading them in the order athletes move through them shows the bottom-quartile multiplier rising as the race goes on:
| # | Station | Top 25% | Bottom 25% | Bottom/Top |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Run 1 | 5:00 | 7:03 | 1.41× |
| 2 | SkiErg | 4:51 | 5:42 | 1.17× |
| 3 | Run 2 | 5:06 | 7:40 | 1.50× |
| 4 | Sled Push | 3:36 | 5:51 | 1.63× |
| 5 | Run 3 | 5:34 | 8:55 | 1.60× |
| 6 | Sled Pull | 5:46 | 9:43 | 1.68× |
| 7 | Run 4 | 5:28 | 8:37 | 1.57× |
| 8 | Burpee Broad Jump | 5:28 | 9:58 | 1.82× |
| 9 | Run 5 | 5:35 | 8:54 | 1.59× |
| 10 | Row | 5:07 | 6:13 | 1.21× |
| 11 | Run 6 | 5:26 | 8:38 | 1.59× |
| 12 | Farmers Carry | 2:19 | 3:34 | 1.54× |
| 13 | Run 7 | 5:26 | 8:55 | 1.64× |
| 14 | Sandbag Lunges | 5:40 | 10:16 | 1.81× |
| 15 | Run 8 | 6:01 | 12:20 | 2.05× |
| 16 | Wall Balls | 6:54 | 13:50 | 2.00× |
Two patterns are worth noting.
More than half of the hour-long gap is manufactured in the final third of the race. That single fact reframes the format: HYROX is not won by who is fastest when fresh, it is won by who slows down least when it counts.
Run 8, the final kilometre, is the 3rd biggest differentiator in the men’s field. Reading the eight runs side by side shows the gap opening up over the race:
| Run 1 | Run 2 | Run 3 | Run 4 | Run 5 | Run 6 | Run 7 | Run 8 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Top 25% | 5:00 | 5:06 | 5:34 | 5:28 | 5:35 | 5:26 | 5:26 | 6:01 |
| Middle 50% | 6:00 | 6:11 | 6:54 | 6:42 | 6:53 | 6:39 | 6:44 | 7:55 |
| Bottom 25% | 7:03 | 7:40 | 8:55 | 8:37 | 8:54 | 8:38 | 8:55 | 12:20 |
| Bottom − Top | +2:03 | +2:34 | +3:21 | +3:09 | +3:19 | +3:12 | +3:29 | +6:19 |
The bottom row in the table is the interesting one. On Run 1 the slow quartile is only ~2 minutes behind per km. The gap creeps up through the middle of the race, then nearly doubles on the final run to +6:19.
The average run pace across all eight runs is: Top 5:30/km, Middle 6:51/km, Bottom 9:04/km. The slowest group is running (or walking) nearly 3.5 minutes per km slower than the fastest, and almost all of that difference is built in the second half. The same shape holds in every division.
The Roxzone is the cumulative time between finishing a run and starting the next station, plus the jog back to the track. It is not trained, and very few athletes track it. And it grows with the rest of the race:
| Tier (Open Men) | Roxzone time | as % of total race |
|---|---|---|
| Top 25% | 7:36 | 8.1% |
| Middle 50% | 10:19 | 8.9% |
| Bottom 25% | 14:16 | 9.4% |
The fast athletes treat the Roxzone as part of the race, while the slower group treats it as a rest. The slowest men spend over 14 minutes. In the Pro divisions the gap is wider still, from ~6.5% of the race for the top tier to ~9.4% for the bottom.
Everything above, the Wall Balls multiplier, the Run-8 blow-up, the slowing Roxzone, all indicate one underlying quality: durability, or fatigue resistance. Four ways to look at it:
1. Run pace decay. Average pace over the first four runs vs the last four:
| Tier (Open Men) | First 4 runs | Last 4 runs | Decay |
|---|---|---|---|
| Top 25% | 5:19 /km | 5:38 /km | +6% |
| Middle 50% | 6:30 /km | 7:07 /km | +9% |
| Bottom 25% | 8:08 /km | 9:57 /km | +20% |
The top quartile gives up ~19 seconds per km. The bottom quartile gives up almost two minutes per km — they lose a fifth of their running speed to fatigue. Pro Men bottom quartile is at +25%.
2. Each round costs more than the last. Group the race into 8 rounds (run i + station i) and compare the last round to the first:
| Division | Top: R8/R1 | Bottom: R8/R1 |
|---|---|---|
| Open Men | 1.33× | 2.10× |
| Open Women | 1.25× | 1.89× |
| Pro Men | 1.40× | 2.36× |
| Pro Women | 1.24× | 1.99× |
For the slowest men, the last round is more than double the first. For the fittest, it is up by about a third.
3. The fast actually gain ranks as others tire. For every athlete we computed their percentile within the field at each station, then compared the average percentile over the last four stations against the first four:
| Tier (Open Men) | Percentile drift, late vs early |
|---|---|
| Top 25% | +1.7 pts (moves up) |
| Middle 50% | +0.3 pts |
| Bottom 25% | −3.2 pts (slides down) |
In the women’s race the spread is wider: top +3.8 pts vs bottom −4.8 pts.
4. Durability is not same as fit. One can say “durable just means fitter”. But that is not ture. We grouped athletes into bands/cohorts of identical fresh running pace (average of Run 1 and Run 2), then split each band into the durable half (low fade) and the fragile half (high fade) and compared median finishes within the band:
| Fresh pace band (Open Men) | Durable half | Fragile half | Durability penalty |
|---|---|---|---|
| ~4:54 /km | 1:29:04 | 1:36:41 | +7:37 |
| ~5:35 /km | 1:43:59 | 1:50:35 | +6:36 |
| ~6:05 /km | 1:51:32 | 2:01:28 | +9:56 |
| ~6:41 /km | 1:59:35 | 2:18:15 | +18:41 |
| ~7:50 /km | 2:19:25 | 2:39:17 | +19:52 |
Two athletes who start at the exact same pace can finish 8–20 minutes apart, purely on fatigue resistance. The same pattern holds in every division (Pro Men: up to +25 minutes; Open Women: up to +23). Our take: durability is not a proxy for speed; it is a separately trainable quality, and at the amateur end of HYROX it appears to be the single largest lever you can train on.
Put together: your run pace reveals your level, but your wall balls, your grip, and your ability to keep moving in the back half decide how much time you actually lose.
Reading all four divisions together, the pattern is consistent. Our hypothesis on what slows the average HYROX competitor down, in rough order of effect size:
What this suggests for training, for an average amateur with a HYROX time goal:
Have you have liked these insights? If you have found any additional patterns in the data, we would love to hear from you. Please share with us via email or through any of our social media channels.
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