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Six months ago, when @colelearn reached out to me, the goal was very clear.

We agreed if he wanted to genuinely contend for a @hyroxworld Championship, he needed to be able to run with the best athletes in the world. That meant building the ability to consistently move at sub-3:20/km pace under fatigue.

Watching this clip from his most recent doubles race, I think it’s fair to say that standard is now there.

And yes, people will say, “it’s doubles.” But context matters. This is after the lunges. Smiling. Throwing up the 🤟🏼 dodging traffic, looking completely in control while running at a pace that, not long ago, simply wasn’t there.

What I’m most proud of is not just the outcome, but the process. The consistency. The trust. The work done over the last six months to give him the best possible chance lining up and competing against the strongest field this sport has ever seen.

With humility, but also genuine confidence, I believe the fitness is there for Cole to contend for a world title.

At that level, nobody is guaranteed anything. The race still has to come together on the day. Execution matters. Composure matters. Tiny moments matter.

But the work has been done. The fitness is there. And now we get to see what’s possible.

I recently listened to a podcast with Alistair Brownlee — two-time Olympic Gold Medalist, multiple World Champion, Commonwealth Champion, and one of the defining athletes in modern triathlon.

The biggest takeaway wasn’t complexity.

It was consistency.

One line really stuck with me:

“You don’t accumulate a lot of hours by doing a lot this week.
You accumulate a lot of hours by doing that for 200 weeks in a row.”

That is elite endurance development in one sentence.

Not one magic session.
Not one perfect block.
Not constant novelty.

Just repeatable training, stacked over years.

Brownlee also spoke about the importance of keeping easy training genuinely easy.

The easy work allowed him to build huge volume, recover properly, and protect the quality of the hard sessions.

That is the piece many athletes miss.

If easy work becomes moderate, it stops doing its job.

You accumulate fatigue, lose freshness, and reduce the quality of the sessions that actually need to be hard.

The hard work was still very hard.

But intensity was never the foundation.

It was the layer built on top of years of aerobic development, durability, routine, and repeatable work.

For Hyrox, the lesson is simple:

build the capacity to train before you obsess over the fitness to race.

Because long-term performance is rarely built through complexity.

It is built by doing the simple things well for long enough.

I love Adidas. We’ve been lucky enough to partner with @adidasau to support @shreddedhp & The Bayens Method. They genuinely feel like they can’t put a foot wrong at the moment. If they released a clog tomorrow, I’d probably convince myself it was the greatest clog ever made.

So take this review with that bias fully acknowledged.

That said… for a mediocre runner who is definitely on the heavier side, these are actually a very good shoe.

They sit somewhere between the ASICS MegaBlast and SuperBlast for me. Not quite as responsive as the MegaBlast, but definitely more cushioned and forgiving than a lot of the other easy run shoes from other brands.

First impression was honestly concern around the upper. I thought that side section was going to rub but about 10 minutes in, I completely stopped noticing it.

Do they look a little funky?
Absolutely.

Do I care?
Not really.

For heavier runners wanting something comfortable, stable enough, and protective for easy work, I actually think these are excellent.

Can’t comment on top-end speed work because I’m simply not fast enough for that review category to matter. But for steady running, general conditioning, and accumulating volume without feeling beaten up, I was pleasantly surprised.

Tapering isn’t magic.

You are not suddenly unlocking secret fitness in the final 7–14 days before a race. The work is already done.

A recent podcast from Steve Magness explained this brilliantly. The goal of peaking is actually very simple:
* Maintain fitness
* Minimise fatigue
* Feel good enough to express what you’ve built

That’s it.

One of the common misconceptions in endurance sport is that tapering somehow creates another level of fitness entirely. It doesn’t.

On race day, you never rise to the occasion. You fall to the level of your training.

The fitness is already there. The goal of a peak is simply to remove enough fatigue that the body can finally express it.

Less muscular fatigue.
Less nervous system stress.
Better glycogen restoration.
Better emotional readiness.

That combination is what gives athletes the highest chance of their best performance on race day.

There is still an art to tapering. There is no perfect formula that guarantees performance. But some fundamentals consistently hold true.

Most Hyrox athletes should begin reducing volume around 7–14 days out, usually somewhere between 30–50%, while largely maintaining intensity, frequency and routine.

The body likes familiarity.

Don’t suddenly stop moving.
Don’t completely change your structure.
Don’t chase miracle sessions late in the process.

One of the biggest psychological challenges during a taper is feeling like:
“If I’m doing less, I must be losing fitness.”

But fitness does not disappear that quickly.

In fact, maintaining fitness short term requires only a fraction of the training load it took to build it in the first place.

What disappears much faster is fatigue.

And fatigue is often what masks fitness.

The highest levels of performance can only truly be expressed under relatively low levels of fatigue.

That is the purpose of tapering.

The race is not where fitness is built.

The race is where fitness is expressed.

Worlds is undoubtedly important.
But your body doesn’t care that it’s Worlds.

Think about it this way.

If you improved by 30 seconds every month, you’d improve by 6 minutes across a year.

But that’s not the reality for any athlete qualified for Worlds, because you are no longer in that beginner phase where fitness gains comes quickly.

At a high level, many athletes might only improve by 60–90 seconds across an entire year of good training.

So realistically, even a perfect final month before Worlds might only be worth 8–12 seconds of actual fitness gain - if you’re lucky.

What can change rapidly in a month is fatigue.

And that’s the trap many athletes fall into before major races.

Huge spikes in intensity.
Massive increases in volume.
“Hero workouts” trying to magically find another 2 minutes.

But this final month is not about building a new engine.

It’s about maintaining the fitness you already built, sharpening race familiarity and specificity, and reducing fatigue enough that your body can actually express performance on race day.

Because hidden fitness is useless.

You do not want to arrive in Stockholm carrying an extra layer of fatigue from trying to force adaptations that physiologically take months and years to build.

Worlds is still just a race.
The same physiology still applies.

Your body will either express the fitness you already own… or it won’t.

This month should be about making sure it can.

Inspired by @thebayensmethod post on heats, points, and head to head racing.

We pulled the Lyon 2026 and Berlin 2026 Pro Men startlists and matched athletes to their PBs.

Heat 1 looks clean at both races. After that, harder to read. Lyon's final heat has a 66:36 PB athlete. Berlin has two clusters of sub 65 PBs racing 110 minutes apart.

What do you think? Honest question on the last slide.

(Startlists are provisional.)

Inspired by @thebayensmethod post on heats, points, and head to head racing.

We pulled the Lyon 2026 and Berlin 2026 Pro Men startlists and matched athletes to their PBs.

Heat 1 looks clean at both races. After that, harder to read. Lyon's final heat has a 66:36 PB athlete. Berlin has two clusters of sub 65 PBs racing 110 minutes apart.

What do you think? Honest question on the last slide.

(Startlists are provisional.)

Inspired by @thebayensmethod post on heats, points, and head to head racing.

We pulled the Lyon 2026 and Berlin 2026 Pro Men startlists and matched athletes to their PBs.

Heat 1 looks clean at both races. After that, harder to read. Lyon's final heat has a 66:36 PB athlete. Berlin has two clusters of sub 65 PBs racing 110 minutes apart.

What do you think? Honest question on the last slide.

(Startlists are provisional.)

Inspired by @thebayensmethod post on heats, points, and head to head racing.

We pulled the Lyon 2026 and Berlin 2026 Pro Men startlists and matched athletes to their PBs.

Heat 1 looks clean at both races. After that, harder to read. Lyon's final heat has a 66:36 PB athlete. Berlin has two clusters of sub 65 PBs racing 110 minutes apart.

What do you think? Honest question on the last slide.

(Startlists are provisional.)

Inspired by @thebayensmethod post on heats, points, and head to head racing.

We pulled the Lyon 2026 and Berlin 2026 Pro Men startlists and matched athletes to their PBs.

Heat 1 looks clean at both races. After that, harder to read. Lyon's final heat has a 66:36 PB athlete. Berlin has two clusters of sub 65 PBs racing 110 minutes apart.

What do you think? Honest question on the last slide.

(Startlists are provisional.)

Inspired by @thebayensmethod post on heats, points, and head to head racing.

We pulled the Lyon 2026 and Berlin 2026 Pro Men startlists and matched athletes to their PBs.

Heat 1 looks clean at both races. After that, harder to read. Lyon's final heat has a 66:36 PB athlete. Berlin has two clusters of sub 65 PBs racing 110 minutes apart.

What do you think? Honest question on the last slide.

(Startlists are provisional.)

Inspired by @thebayensmethod post on heats, points, and head to head racing.

We pulled the Lyon 2026 and Berlin 2026 Pro Men startlists and matched athletes to their PBs.

Heat 1 looks clean at both races. After that, harder to read. Lyon's final heat has a 66:36 PB athlete. Berlin has two clusters of sub 65 PBs racing 110 minutes apart.

What do you think? Honest question on the last slide.

(Startlists are provisional.)

Both are excellent tools for building aerobic capacity without additional impact.

The key drivers of aerobic development are volume, frequency and consistency. If you can accumulate more quality work while reducing orthopedic stress, that’s usually a positive trade-off for many HYROX athletes.

That said, if you’re heavier, injury-prone, or struggle to tolerate high running volume, the Stairmaster can be a really valuable addition. The greater posterior chain involvement can mimic many of the muscular demands of running while allowing you to reduce total impact and still maintain muscular endurance.

The bike is fantastic.
The stairs are fantastic.

The better question is:
Which tool helps you stay consistent enough to keep progressing?

I’m saying this purely as someone who genuinely loves the sport.

I think Hyrox made a great change introducing the points system. It adds meaning to every race, builds storylines, and removes the disparity in times and different courses.

But if athletes are racing for points, I’d love to see everyone competing for those points lining up in the same heat next season.

Over the weekend in Canada, we saw two incredible performances separated by a single second. The interesting part is that technically both athletes won their heat. Neither actually raced each other head-to-head.

And that’s the nuance.

Once points matter, conditions start to matter too. Different race times, different crowds, different sled conditions, different race flow. It stops being exactly the same race.

This isn’t criticism. Quite the opposite.

I just think the sport is evolving, and as fans, coaches, and athletes, we all want to see great racing. Great head-to-head competition. The best athletes in the world lining up together and fighting it out in the same moment.

That’s what would make the sport even better to watch.

My favourite quote from Thomas Sowell is the one referenced in this post.

My formal studies were actually in economics. It’s what I went to university for. But when I realised I didn’t want to wear a suit to work, I became obsessed with strength and conditioning instead, and that’s what I’ve spent the last 18 years studying.

One thing economics taught me early still shapes the way I think about training today:

Every decision has an opportunity cost.

And I think that’s exactly what makes Hyrox such a fascinating sport to program for.

Because the reality is, you are balancing multiple qualities at once:

Running economy.
Aerobic capacity.
Threshold.
Strength endurance.
Recovery.
Durability.

And although these systems can improve together, they also compete for time, energy and recovery resources.

The interference effect of concurrent training is well established. Can you improve strength and endurance simultaneously? Absolutely.

Can you maximise both simultaneously? No.

Something always comes at the expense of something else.

This is where blanket statements become misleading.

“You can never be too strong.”

Okay. But strength isn’t something you order off Amazon that magically arrives with zero cost attached to it.

Strength requires training time, loading, recovery and fatigue.

If maximal strength was simply gifted naturally, then sure, having more of it would probably help.

But by that same logic, you could also argue you can never be too aerobically fit, too mobile or too technically sound.

The issue is not whether a quality is useful.
The issue is what it costs to pursue it further.

If you want elite sled capacity, you need meaningful exposure to heavy sled work. But that loading changes how much running volume you can realistically tolerate.

Likewise, higher running volume would improve running performance, but eventually becomes incompatible with recovering from race-specific muscular fatigue.

That’s the challenge.

Not finding the perfect solution.
Balancing the trade-offs intelligently.

The best Hyrox programming is understanding the demands of the race and building a system where the qualities support one another as much as possible.

Another huge weekend for The Bayens Method.

Wins. Podiums. PBs. Breakthrough performances.

Weekends like this make the long hours, earl starts and late finishes all worth it. It proves the system works and works exceptionally well.

At the core of what we do is recovery-led performance. Using @trainwithmorpheus and HRV to guide decision makingand allow athletes to train at the right intensity, on the right days, with the right balance between stress and adaptation. Pair that with what I genuinely believe is the highest level of Hyrox programming in the sport right now, and you create an environment where athletes consistently improve.

This weekend was another example of that:
• Overall wins
• Podiums
• Multiple PBs
• Top points for Elite 15 rankings.

But what drives me just as much is that every race weekend also provides feedback.

When an athlete performs exceptionally well, it gives confidence that the process is working. When a race doesn’t go to plan, it provides another data point. Another opportunity to refine. Another chance to improve the system.

With just over 4 weeks until worlds I’m excited to see what final fitness can be developed for a lot of these athletes and all other athletes training under my programming and coaching systems.

Another huge weekend for The Bayens Method.

Wins. Podiums. PBs. Breakthrough performances.

Weekends like this make the long hours, earl starts and late finishes all worth it. It proves the system works and works exceptionally well.

At the core of what we do is recovery-led performance. Using @trainwithmorpheus and HRV to guide decision makingand allow athletes to train at the right intensity, on the right days, with the right balance between stress and adaptation. Pair that with what I genuinely believe is the highest level of Hyrox programming in the sport right now, and you create an environment where athletes consistently improve.

This weekend was another example of that:
• Overall wins
• Podiums
• Multiple PBs
• Top points for Elite 15 rankings.

But what drives me just as much is that every race weekend also provides feedback.

When an athlete performs exceptionally well, it gives confidence that the process is working. When a race doesn’t go to plan, it provides another data point. Another opportunity to refine. Another chance to improve the system.

With just over 4 weeks until worlds I’m excited to see what final fitness can be developed for a lot of these athletes and all other athletes training under my programming and coaching systems.

An all too common error developing athletes make in HYROX is confusing race feel with threshold pace in training.

You run a race.
The runs feel like an 8–9/10 RPE.

So naturally, you assume:
“That must be how my threshold pace feels in training.”

You go back into training and start forcing your threshold runs at the pace the race felt like.

But that’s the trap.

Because it’s manageable in training with controlled conditions and rest periods during your intervals.

But race day changes physiology.

Adrenaline rises.
Cortisol rises.
Competition elevates arousal.
Crowds increase emotional intensity.
Your body floods itself with extra fuel and stimulation.

And what that does is temporarily mask the true physiological cost of the effort.

That’s why it is so easy to overcook the opening stages of HYROX.

You easily run that first 1km too fast.
Hit the ski too hard.
Get through the second run still feeling “okay.”

Because the stress chemistry of racing is carrying you.

But then the physiology catches up.

The lactate accumulates.
The hydrogen ions accumulate.
The fatigue your body masked early suddenly arrives all at once.

And that’s where races unravel.

Not because the athlete lacks fitness.

But because they trained their runs too fast for what was appropriate and sustainable in race conditions.

This is why many athletes would perform better by doing their threshold work slightly slower than they think they should.

Building real tolerance.
Real fatigue management.
Real aerobic durability.

Then race day comes and the stress effect elevates the perceived effort naturally.

The pace feels harder — even though the pace itself is actually correct.

That’s the distinction.

The pace is the same.
The feel is different.

And this is also why experienced racers often pace better.

The more race exposure you accumulate, the more familiar the environment becomes.

The adrenaline spike reduces.
The emotional stress decreases.
The race is familiar.

Only then do athletes really begin to close the gap between training feel and race feel.

Train the pace.
Let racing add the stress.

Threshold training is still probably one of the most misunderstood parts of HYROX running.

Many athletes do a race, remember how hard the runs felt, then go back into training trying to replicate that exact feeling.

That’s usually the wrong approach.

Your threshold sessions are not supposed to feel like race-day.

They are supposed to build the system that allows you to perform at your best on race-day.

That’s a very important difference.

Threshold running is essentially about improving your ability to sustain a high pace while still managing fatigue - for the duration of the event, not a hand full of intervals with rest.

You are accumulating lactate and the associated hydrogen ions… but also clearing and managing them at the same time.

Think of it like sitting right near the maximum speed your engine can sustain for an hour, not a 1k sprint.

Once you push too far beyond that point, fatigue starts accumulating faster than your body can manage it.

And this is where athletes often get confused.

A HYROX race adds:
• Competition
• Adrenaline
• Atmosphere
• Crowds
• Emotion
• Stress

All of those factors make your race pace feel significantly harder than it does in training.

That does not mean your training should constantly try to recreate that sensation.

The goal of threshold training is not to repeatedly simulate race-day.

The goal is to gradually build an aerobic system capable of sustaining faster and faster paces under controlled fatigue.

That’s why good threshold work should usually feel more like managed discomfort than survival.

You should feel in control of the effort, not like you are hanging on for dear life every interval.

A good guide for the appropriate intensity is if someone came up to you mid interval and said add 3 more minutes, it wouldn’t be the end of you.

Because when race day arrives, the environment itself elevates the intensity.

And if you’ve built the system correctly in training, you can handle that higher emotional and physiological load without completely tipping over.