American Gam

“Las Vegas is like being in a trashy, fun snow globe.” ~ Linette Lopez

Heading down the Carefree Highway we slipped away to get to Las Vegas by the weekend to see Michael (Treva’s son) and Stephanie (his fiancée) compete in the HYROX competition happening in Sin City.

We stayed at the Las Vegas KOA, which was surprisingly peaceful and secure considering it’s surrounded by casinos and a not-so-nice neighborhood. It was well manicured, had a nice hot tub, and a great staff. We walked next door to the Sam’s Town Casino to have a couple of meals at one of their half dozen restaurants.

The HYROX Competition that we came to see was held inside the Las Vegas Convention Center, which is a huge place and will give you a workout just trying to get around within it.

HYROX is a global indoor fitness competition, which originally started in Germany in 2017, that mixes strength work with running. Over the course of a couple of hours every participant has to run 1K and then complete one of eight functional exercises, in the order listed below, before running another 1K to the next station, and so on. Here’s what the full course looks like as Michael and Stephanie ran it:

Run 1K

Ski Erg 1000 m

Run 1K

Sled Push 50 m

Run 1K

Sled Pull 50 m

Run 1K (You get the idea.)

Burpee Broad Jumps 80 m

Run 1K (Yup, another lap around the building.)

Rowing 1000 m

Run 1K (Here we go again.)

Farmer’s Carry 200 m

Run 1K (Okay, now I’m getting tired.)

Sandbag Lunges 100 m

Run 1K (Last lap!)

Wall Balls 75 to 100

Because anyone can participate in a Hyrox competition, you’ll find several divisions and no course time limits. You can expect to finish the course in three hours or less, though last year’s average finish time was around 1.5 hours. You can run the course by yourself but also have the option to compete as a group of two or four, as Michael and Stephanie did. Those who perform well and finish fast also have the chance to compete in world championships.

The team of Stephanie & Michael finished the challenge in…

The afterglow…

We’ve been to Vegas a few times before so we didn’t do too much sightseeing this time around. We drove down the main boulevard to check out all the glitz and neon. We saw our favorite haunt, the Paris Hotel and Casino, which is right across from the fabulous water show at the Bellagio. Usually, we go down to the Fremont Street Experience at night to listen to the bands, to check out all of the unusual night people wandering around, and to take flight on the zip-line that hangs right over the crowds on Fremont Street. I like this zip-line because you can fly belly down like Superman. The only thing we went out of our way to see on this visit was the new Sphere. We found it’s actually better to see it from a distance than close up and, of course, at night.

I hope you know there’s no such thing as a sure thing; that’s why they call it gambling.

The gam(bling) continues …