California’s Brittany Weiss Turned Back Surgery Into a Hyrox Comeback After CrossFit

• Brittany Weiss, a California athlete who competed on CrossFit Games teams for years, had back surgery in March 2025 and finished her first Hyrox race before the year ended.
• Running was the one training she could do without aggravating her back, and she calls it “a free form of therapy.”
• Her altitude plan for Salt Lake City and the Denver race on November 12 to 15 relies on heat training, extra salt and an early arrival.

A Back Surgery Ended One Plan and Started Another

Brittany Weiss spent 16 years as a gymnast before she found CrossFit in 2013. She has made several trips to the CrossFit Games with teams, and her team won in 2023. After that win she set a harder goal: qualify for the Games as an individual.

A back injury ended that plan. Weiss, who lives in California, had surgery in March 2025, and the comeback she had mapped out for the individual field disappeared with it. She needed something she could do while her back healed, and the answer turned out to be the simplest movement in the gym.

“It was a free form of therapy for me,” she said, describing the runs she began once she learned that running did not aggravate her back. She had no formal running program. She ran inside what her body allowed and added distance when her recovery let her.

Less than a year after the operation, she lined up for her first Hyrox. The sports nutrition brand NOCCO invited her to Hyrox Anaheim in December 2025, and she finished around third in her age group. In January 2026 she went all in on the sport.

What a Hyrox Race Asks of a Newcomer

Weiss’s story suits readers who have never raced. Hyrox is built for people who already own a gym membership and a pair of running shoes. Every race, in every city, uses the same course. Athletes run 1 kilometer, work through one station, and repeat that eight times for 8 kilometers of running and eight stations.

The stations come in a fixed order:

• SkiErg
• Sled Push
• Sled Pull
• Burpee Broad Jumps
• Row
• Farmers Carry
• Sandbag Lunges
• Wall Balls

A finish takes anywhere from 60 minutes to two hours, depending on fitness and division. No one needs a barbell snatch or a muscle-up. Organizers say about 1.6 million people raced Hyrox worldwide in 2026, and they expect more than 2 million in 2027. Boston, Tampa, Nashville and Denver have all joined the US calendar, so a first race is rarely more than a short flight from home.

The format also rewards the kind of athlete Weiss had become. A gymnast’s body control, a decade of CrossFit conditioning and a fresh base of running mileage all feed the same 60 to 70 minutes of work. Her story shows that a person with a sidelined barbell plan can still find a race to train for.

Training for Air She Could Not Train In

Weiss’s second challenge came in Salt Lake City, her first altitude race. Utah’s first Hyrox weekend filled the Salt Palace Convention Center in September. She spent one summer on the East Coast and could not train at altitude on any regular basis, so she built a stand-in: heat.

In hot conditions her heart rate climbed to around 170 at paces that normally produce about 150. She used that strain to rehearse the effort of thin air. “You are probably more fit and more in shape than you actually think you are when you come back down,” she said of altitude work.

Her race-week habits are specific. She arrives 24 to 48 hours before the start, or 1.5 to 2 weeks early for a longer stay. She eats familiar foods and cooks in her hotel room. She adds electrolytes and extra salt for altitude races. She keeps her training volume the same in the final week, trims the intensity slightly and runs a shakeout the day before.

Her stomach rule is blunt. “If your stomach is messed up when you’re running, you’re absolutely screwed,” she said, which is why she sticks to meals she knows.

Altitude changes how a Hyrox feels from the first run. Thinner air at 4,000 feet and above makes every breath less productive, so the same pace costs more effort. Racers who live at sea level often start too fast, feel fine for two stations and pay for it on the sled pull. Weiss plans for that by treating her first kilometer as a test, not a statement.

Her preparation also keeps the rest of her routine small. She cooks her own meals in hotel rooms, packs the same snacks and follows the same shakeout run the day before every start. The routine gives her fewer variables to worry about on race morning, a real advantage when the air is thin.

Denver Is Next

Weiss has Denver on her calendar for November. Hyrox Denver runs November 12 to 15 at the Colorado Convention Center, in a city that sits about a mile above sea level. Hybrid Fitness Media expects the race to draw athletes from Colorado, Utah, Arizona and nearby states. Salt Lake City sits at roughly 4,200 feet, so Denver will test her altitude plan with another 1,000 feet of elevation.

Weiss does not name her home gym in the Wodify feature, and her Salt Lake City result was not reported. What she does describe is a method any first-timer can borrow. Start with the thing your body tolerates, in her case easy running. Build a week of routines you repeat before every race. Treat the trip itself as part of the training.

For readers sitting out a training block with an injury of their own, her path offers a modest lesson. Her surgery in March 2025 closed one door. By December she was racing in Anaheim, and by January she had committed to a new sport. The route from a sidelined CrossFit athlete to a Hyrox starting line ran through a few miles of slow running and a lot of patience.

A former Games athlete with a repaired back is now planning altitude races across the American West. Anyone with a recovery year behind them could ask the same question she did and see what the answer looks like at the next start line.