Disclaimer: This was (mostly) written by CGPT o1 (AI). Those who know me know I love Hunter S Thompson, and I felt blogging about Hyrox Vegas would be a snoozefest of a read so I decided to upload a bunch of bullet points from the weekend and let the robots summon the ghost of Dr. Gonzo himself. It worked, sort of. If you don’t know who I’m referring to, I suggest you go read some of HST’s work before you read what the robots wrote. Like all of Hunter’s work, this is mostly true, or as true as my brain remembers it. Its a little cheesy, a little cringe, but I still chuckled and maybe you will too. AI- its pretty wild! Also, huge shoutout to my bro Scott for bringing me along. THANK YOU. (and go to his gym, Endorphin on S Broadway in Denver!)
We were somewhere around the the Las Vegas Convention Center when the hangover began to take hold. My brother-in-law (and attorney) Scott—had corralled me here months ago for a thing called “HYROX,” a bizarre fitness carnival that promised unspeakable agony interspersed with eight thousand souls sweating for existential glory. He signed me up in a fever dream of CrossFit fantasies, big neon lights, and cult-like camaraderie. I’d come off the kind of January that would make a bartender blush. Training? LOL! Outside of some running, my training regimen began and ended with raising pitchers to my lips while half-watching the occasional Hyrox tutorial on YouTube. Smart.
I’ve tangled with savage sports before: mountain bike races, dirt biking that reeked beautifully of two-stroke fuel, snowmobiling, and a few big-mountain ski competitions where the only guiding principle is don’t break yourself. But none of that prepared me for the spectacle at HYROX Las Vegas—an endless tide of throbbing calves, compression shorts, and sweaty mania.
Vegas, that foul den of greed and neon-laced hope, has always been a twisted bastion of misfits and lost wages, a swirling kaleidoscope of obesity, lip filler, and fanny packs stuffed with maximum-denomination chips. The city’s air tastes like it was siphoned straight out of a slot machine ashtray. Yet people flock here by the thousands to do something reckless. Usually it’s gambling. This time? Pushing their bodies to the brink in an industrial-scale sufferfest designed to weed out the meek. And me? I have no idea why I chose to do these types of things.
HYROX, for the uninitiated, is a diabolical gauntlet: run a kilometer, do an exercise. Repeat. The problem is, they’ve found a way to break the space time continuum. One hour in that pit of masochism feels like an eternity. The worst part is it’s alarmingly organized. An unholy machine of ankle trackers, announcers, and wave times. They corral you in with eight thousand other masochists—eight thousand!—like sweaty cattle. And there I was, tother in with a partner named John, whom I’d never met before but quickly decided was a wonderful lunatic with a comparable thirst for terror and beer. Our assigned mission was the Open Doubles division: run, lunge, row, ski-erg, push, pull, and run some more until we either expired or crossed the finish line.
But first, the pre-game. My attorney Scott came with reinforcements: a veritable army from his Denver gym, Endorphin. This outfit is half cult, half wellness emporium, fueled by tequila shots and the savage pursuit of lactic acid glory. They’re the kind of people who can throw back a pint, break into an impromptu workout, and still look suspiciously good doing it. Their ranks were so thick, I started to think I’d stumbled into the fitness version of the Grateful Dead. They were everywhere—smiling, high-fiving, wearing matching shirts. The bastards did well, too. Nice people, even if they take pleasure in burpees.
John and I had our own brand of moral support—namely, the knowledge that we’d consumed enough beer in January to fill a good portion of the Luxor’s pyramid. We harnessed that ethanol-laced courage at the start line. The announcer told us something about pushing your limits, about how everything is possible if you believe. I believed, all right—believed I was an idiot for thinking this was a good idea.
Then came the gun. Or buzzer. Whatever it was, it might as well have been a howitzer firing the starting shot of a war we had foolishly enlisted in. We took off at a pace more suited to criminals fleeing the cops. The first kilometer? Fine. The second? Ugh. By the time we hit the rowers, I was having visions of sabretooth tigers closing in. Or maybe they were the fit specimens around us, each one looking far more sculpted than my haggard reflection.
But we hammered away, hurtling from station to station. If Dante had designed a circle of hell for the foolishly vain, this would be it. Farmer’s carries, wall balls, burpees, sled pushes—the whole infernal parade. Pain is a constant. Hallucinations are optional, but recommended. I’ll never forget the moment we collided with the sled push area—like leaning into the face of a hurricane built from rubber mats and your own wretched soul. Men and women contorted in punishing angles, sweat dripping into eyes wild with determination. A lunatic soundtrack blasted overhead.
Finally, after an hour and three minutes of madness (which felt more like an eternity), we stumbled across the finish line. We collapsed in a sprawl of cramping limbs and mania. 26th out of 550 pairs in the Open Doubles. I couldn’t decide if that was impressive or just living proof that poor decisions occasionally work out. Perhaps the beer loading offered a sense of aerodynamic lubrication.
Later, my attorney (Scott) insisted on many victory drinks, because in Vegas, you celebrate everything, even near-death. We drifted through the chaos of the Strip with a bunch of Endorphin lunatics—the entire place afloat in neon scum and late-night possibility. People-watching was a carnival of open-mouthed tourists caught in a dopamine meltdown, pockets stuffed with unlucky gambling slips. Sometime in the swirling mania, I found myself at a craps table with a pit boss who had the gnarliest cauliflower ear I’ve ever seen—like a battered trophy from a lifetime of carnage. He watched our chips with the intensity of a lion eyeing a wounded gazelle.
I asked myself a simple question: Would I do HYROX again? By all rational metrics, the answer is a violent “No.” Races like that should be reserved for men in a fever pitch, fugitives on the run from multiple felony charges, or beasts with no concept of tomorrow. But as the echoes of the cheering crowd rattled around my skull, a twisted logic crept in: Maybe, just maybe, I would do it again. Because once you’ve danced on the edge like that—dodging your own mortality with every treadmill stride—it’s hard not to come back for another fix.
And so ended our short and savage trip to HYROX Vegas, a brutal odyssey in the city of Drunken Debauchery, Lip Filler, and Type 2 Diabetes. John the Strange, Scott the Attorney, and the cult of Endorphin who rolled in, took names, and left with a fistful of shiny new personal records. Cheers to them. They are the walking embodiment of delirious mania done right—fitness freaks who can still throw back a shot of tequila and grin, sweaty hair matted against wide-eyed faces.
Yes, the city is a beast. And yes, the event is a machine of suffering. But in some demented corner of my mind, I can’t deny that I loved it.
Viva HYROX. Viva Las Vegas. God help us all.
Overall I score this a 6.5/10. Its cringe, but there is *something* in the weights of these models that is fascinating to me, something that kind of lets a voice live on forever, which is why I felt compelled to post this. Those wondering, here is a link to the prompt I used to have the AI write this…
Anyway, cheers and thanks for checking this out!