Exclusive | Inside NYCs obsession with HYROX the expensive, intense and wildly social fitness race: At some points, I wanted to kill

Former New Yorker-turned Miami resident Jordyn Taylor was so wiped out after her first HYROX race that her planned celebratory dinner turned into a night on the couch with electrolyte drinks.“I think I puked at some point,” she confessed to The Post.Within days, she had signed up for another event. “I was so electrified by the adrenaline of that first experience,” Taylor, 34, an author and former Men’s Health executive editor, told The Post — admitting that after a short recovery period, she was once again raring to go.What hooked her in, she said, was the rush of feeling powerful —  while submitting to something objectively absurd.Welcome to the strange world of HYROX, the grueling global fitness race that has become NYC’s loudest, most look-at-me, cult-iest workout obsession — where fanatics pay hundreds of dollars to run, row, ski, push sleds, pull sleds, carry weights, lunge with sandbags, and throw wall balls — then, once they’re done, they do it all over again. Even if it made them puke. HYROX has had the strange velocity of a trend that seems to arrive fully formed.One month, it was the fitness challenge only gymheads were participating in.

Then suddenly, it was all over social media and group chats, with weekend training plans squeezed in between bottomless brunches.The race has become a kind of social shorthand — not just for working out, but for working out hard enough that everyone is supposed to know about it.Even some regular participants seem startled by the speed of it.On Reddit, users described going from being the lone HYROX obsessive at their gym to watching races sell out the day tickets drop, with workout facilities all over carving out dedicated HYROX training areas.What was once a niche pursuit has now become an official craze, with 2 million athletes expected to participate across 107 race weekends and six continents in the 2026-2027 season.

It’s the new Barry’s, the new IRONMAN and, depending on your swiping...