Rich Ryan Wins Hyrox Tampa Pro at 40 After Rebuilding His Sled Training

• Rich Ryan, now racing in the 40 to 44 age group, won the Men’s Pro race at Hyrox Tampa in 54:28.
• He says he was once “racing scared” of the sleds, then fixed the problem with two dedicated sled sessions a week for about a year and a half.
• His longevity plan rests on threshold work, one strength session a week in season and a firm limit on how much he trains.

A 40-Year-Old Who Keeps Getting Faster

Rich Ryan crossed the line in Tampa in 54:28, 45 seconds ahead of Canada’s Ryan Douglas (55:13) and 79 seconds clear of fellow American Gabe Piepergerdes (55:47) in third. The win came at the Tampa Convention Center at a four-day Hyrox weekend that ran October 22 to 25. Ryan holds the 35 to 39 age-group record and now races in the 40 to 44 group, which gives a Pro win at his age extra standing among record holders.

Most of what is known about how he trains comes from a 2025 interview on the Next Move podcast, recorded when he was 39 and the oldest athlete in the Hyrox Elite 15. He said then that a lot of the limits in the sport “do come from over training.” A year later, a win in Tampa is the clearest evidence that he meant it.

Hyrox is a fitness race with a fixed format: eight 1-kilometer runs, each followed by a station. The stations are the SkiErg, sled push, sled pull, burpee broad jumps, rowing, farmers carry, sandbag lunges and wall balls. Pros and first-timers race the same course, and finish times compare from city to city. Ryan’s 54:28 in Tampa is the same number he posted in Chicago in 2025, which suggests how steady he has become.

From Middle-Distance Track to Obstacle Racing to Hyrox

Ryan is an American hybrid athlete and coach who ran track at Saint Joseph’s University. He was a middle-distance runner, racing events in the four to 15 minute range, and he was the only collegiate runner in the Elite 15 at the time of the podcast. After college he made his name in obstacle course racing, and CrossFit gave him the strength base he still draws on. He started Hyrox in 2021, the year the sport reached the United States.

He runs his own online fitness business, which became his full-time work in 2017. He describes himself as an athlete, content creator and coach, co-hosts a training podcast and has a YouTube channel that has passed 10,000 subscribers. In the interview he mentioned seeing a movement specialist in Boulder, Colorado.

His 2025 season showed what the format rewards. He ran 54:28 in Chicago in the Pro division, set the men’s Pro doubles world record of 48:31 with his partner in Miami, and finished 11th at the World Championships. At those championships he had the fastest sled push and the second-fastest sled pull of any athlete.

Fixing the Sleds After a Race in Madrid

That sled speed was not always there. Ryan said he left a race in Madrid in the 2023 to 2024 season feeling that he was “racing scared” of the sleds. The sled push and pull are the stations where a lean distance runner can lose several minutes, and he decided to train them as a skill rather than hope they would go well.

For about a year and a half he scheduled two sled sessions a week. He organized them around three ideas: strength, speed and lactate tolerance, meaning the ability to keep working while the legs burn. The work paid off in his 2025 results. He also said he went “a little bit too hard on the sleds” at Worlds, a reminder that even a fix can be overdone.

A runner who struggles with the sleds in a first race can use the same approach: pick the station that scares you, give it two slots a week, and train it on purpose.

Threshold Minutes and One Lift a Week

Ryan tracks how much time he spends in what he calls low zone four, a heart rate range just under his threshold. His sessions run 40 to 55 minutes, starting at an effort he rates 7 to 7.5 out of 10. His peak week reached about 100 minutes in that zone. He also found that heart rate does not carry over one-to-one between movements, so he adjusts for the change from running to rowing to the SkiErg.

Strength has shrunk to a supporting role. His lifetime bests are a 325-pound back squat, a 405-pound deadlift and a 245-pound bench press, and he says that is enough. In season he lifts about once a week, with the work tied to the stations.

Over the years he has worked through lower back, knee and ankle pain with longer warm-ups and the help of movement practitioners. His answer to the question of how a man in his late 30s keeps improving is rest. “I think a lot of limitations in this sport in general do come from over training,” he said.

What a 40-Year-Old Pro Win Means for Everyday Racers

Ryan’s age gives hope to the recreational racers who fill cities like Tampa. A man who moves into the 40 to 44 group and still beats the best Pros in the field shows that the sport does not belong only to athletes in their early 20s.

It also shows that the plan can be copied at a smaller scale. A weekly sled habit, a few threshold sessions that stay controlled, a single focused lift and enough rest are all things a first-time racer with a day job can try. Ryan’s results suggest the people who last in Hyrox are the ones who learn what to leave out.

Willow Collins won the Women’s Pro race in Tampa in 1:00:42, two weeks after she won both the singles and doubles races in Boston. The next test for Ryan is whether the Tampa form carries through to the World Championships.