With Tia Clair Toomey’s plans for 2025 still not entirely fixed, one thing seems certain for the GOAT. Having committed to HYROX Atlanta in April and the Torian Pro in May, she will be balancing both HYROX and CrossFit for the foreseeable future.
That means improving her running performance in order to be competitive in Hyrox, but not letting her strength slip so she can still maintain all her CrossFit fundamentals. Given the amount of running she needs to do to reach an elite level in HYROX this will be a tricky balancing act.
In a recent video she goes into detail about how she trains CrossFit and HYROX in the same day and why she’s focusing on threshold pace:
“We’re doing 3x 9 minute efforts, threshold pace… paces that we ideally want to be running on race day.”
The more Tia can push her threshold pace the better she can compete with the elite runners at HYROX, even when she is fatigued. Sessions are carefully designed to compromise her, but still perform at an elite level.
And she is running a lot, clocking in 60-70 kilometres per week. The goal is to maintain explosiveness while simultaneously building her running endurance, however her husband and trainer, Shane Orr, acknowledges there is some tradeoff.
“Mass moves mass, and the math doesn’t add up right now.”
They know it would be great if running 70k per week led to your back squat going up, but that’s not the reality right now.
We’ll be fascinated to see how her training pans out and if she can be competitive in both HYROX Atlanta and the Torian Pro it will only cement her status as a legend in competitive fitness.
