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From a 37-Minute 5K to HYROX Pro Doubles: Clodagh Lucey

In December 2024, Clodagh Lucey ran her first 5K in 37 minutes. In September, she and her best friend raced HYROX Pro Doubles in Salt Lake City, and their running ranked in the top third of 203 teams.

<h6>Seattle Fitness Magazine · 5 Oct 2026</h6><ul><li><strong>37</strong>First 5K, minutes</li><li><strong>22</strong>5K best, minutes</li><li><strong>4</strong>HYROX races</li></ul><h2>HYROX, with the weights turned up</h2> <p><b>HYROX is an indoor fitness race: eight 1-kilometer runs, each followed by a workout station.</b></p><p>Doubles partners run every kilometer side by side and split each station’s work however they like. Anyone can enter, and Clodagh Lucey has now raced four HYROX events.</p> <figure><img src="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/626360_f226e598a9df4c9595c0c1191f44eb93~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1360,h_1800,q_90,enc_auto/626360_f226e598a9df4c9595c0c1191f44eb93.jpg" alt="Clodagh Lucey on the SkiErg at HYROX Las Vegas, with Shane Lucey beside her" width="1360" height="764" loading="lazy" decoding="async"></figure> <p>Pro turns every weight up. Under the 2026/27 doubles rulebook, Pro women push a 152-kilogram sled, 50 more than the standard women’s division, and pull 103 kilograms instead of 78. Each farmers carry handle weighs 24 kilograms, up from 16, and the lunge sandbag doubles to 20. Even the wall ball, thrown at a target 100 times, gets half again as heavy. Mixed Doubles, which she races with her husband, Shane, uses exactly the same loads.</p> <figure><img src="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/626360_0e61eb5171764901bb41a55f34bea2cb~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1360,h_1800,q_90,enc_auto/626360_0e61eb5171764901bb41a55f34bea2cb.jpg" alt="Clodagh Lucey on the sled push at HYROX Miami, her first race" width="1197" height="1800" loading="lazy" decoding="async"></figure> <h2>A Saturday in Salt Lake City</h2> <p><b>On 19 September, Clodagh and her best friend, Jazmin Sanders, finished HYROX Salt Lake City in 1:16:34.</b></p><p>Racing Women’s Pro Doubles, the heavier of HYROX’s two women’s pairs divisions, they placed 20th in the 25 to 29 team age group and 84th of 203 teams. Clodagh calls it “amazing considering some of the extremely talented ladies we raced with.”</p> <figure><img src="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/626360_e6f9445346564144a74417cdf0a1f485~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1360,h_1800,q_90,enc_auto/626360_e6f9445346564144a74417cdf0a1f485.jpg" alt="Clodagh Lucey and Jazmin Sanders at the HYROX Salt Lake City sign" width="1360" height="764" loading="lazy" decoding="async"></figure> <p>Jazmin made it a fun day as well as a fast one. Racing beside her “made this race so much more fun,” Clodagh says, and training with her HYROX partner “helped a lot with accountability.” As she puts it, “Even though things didn’t go quite according to plan, we had the best time together and made some pretty great memories.” A crew of her Emerald City Athletics friends came out to cheer them on.</p> <h2>Where she was strongest</h2> <p><b>Running is where the pair shone.</b></p><p>Their eight runs added up to 37:16, the 54th-fastest running total in the division and 30 places better than their overall finish. Less than two years after her first 5K, running has become the strongest part of her race.</p><p>Wall balls were her hardest station of the day. Salt Lake City sits about 4,300 feet above sea level, and the altitude made “a huge difference,” she says. It felt “much harder to clear the lactic build-up from my legs and recover between efforts,” which made the wall balls “especially brutal.” Through all of that, the pair made wall balls their best-ranked station of the eight.</p> <h2>Starting from scratch</h2> <p><b>Before she had children, Clodagh says, she was “always the girl saying, ‘I’m just not a runner.’”</b></p><p>She grew up in Ireland, spent nine months living in Ukraine in 2021, and in 2022 moved to the United States knowing no one but her husband, Shane, and their daughter, Lilliana. “I had to start completely from scratch,” she says. So she joined a gym to train with Shane, get back into a routine and make some friends. It worked: “I’ve met so many amazing people who have become a huge part of my life.”</p><p>Then came the running, and the numbers she loves. “I love data, especially fitness data,” she says. Her first 5K, in December 2024, took 37 minutes, and her latest 5K personal record is 22 minutes, “something I genuinely never would have imagined when I first started.” She also works with kids, so the gym doubles as her chance “to get fitter, get healthier, and, honestly, talk to adults.”</p> <h2>Four races, four states</h2> <p><b>Salt Lake City was her fourth HYROX.</b></p><p>She debuted in Miami in April 2025, racing Mixed Doubles with Shane, then raced her first Women’s Pro Doubles that November in Dallas. Las Vegas in February 2026 brought her personal best: 1:12:40 in Mixed Doubles with Shane, 5:32 quicker than Miami. Then came Salt Lake City. Racing with Jazmin, she set her fastest Women’s Doubles time yet, with her running leading the way.</p> <h2>Her training week</h2> <p><b>She trains five or six days a week and lifts at the gym on two of them.</b></p><p>Monday is legs: a couple of heavy compound lifts, then single-leg work that supports her running mileage. Thursday covers back, biceps, triceps and core, and finishes on the stairs at an easy Zone 2 effort. On gym days, she and Shane “switch off and take turns” working out.</p><p>She planned her runs for this race in Runna, the running app: a shorter Zone 2 run of 8 to 12 kilometers on Tuesday, a track session on Wednesday and a long Zone 2 run of 13 to 20 kilometers on Saturday. Sundays are for rest or hot yoga. She gave Salt Lake City three to four months of focused training, around a three-week trip home to Ireland where she took a break from hard training and macro tracking.</p> <h2>Where she’d send a Seattle beginner</h2> <p><b>Her first advice for a Seattle friend new to HYROX is simple: “Get to running! Run, Run, Run.”</b></p><p>Running fills nearly half of a race like hers. Her second tip is the one that separates HYROX from a fun run: “Practise running on compromised legs,” meaning legs already tired from the station before.</p> <figure><img src="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/626360_40fb7bfd19c64bd29af7c997884e12d1~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1360,h_1800,q_90,enc_auto/626360_40fb7bfd19c64bd29af7c997884e12d1.jpg" alt="Clodagh Lucey running with Shane Lucey between stations at HYROX Las Vegas" width="1360" height="764" loading="lazy" decoding="async"></figure> <p>For a place to train, she points to Emerald City Athletics, which calls itself an official HYROX Training Studio and, in her words, “has all the equipment necessary to train for the event.” Its clubs are in Columbia City, Wallingford, Shoreline and Everett. She singles out Everett for its indoor track, and membership there starts at $22 a month. The gym also says it stages a HYROX simulation race every quarter.</p> <h2>Next stops, Phoenix and Portland</h2> <p><b>Seattle is still waiting for a HYROX race of its own.</b></p><p>In September 2025, Vancouver Magazine reported Rich Poole, co-owner of a HYROX-affiliated Vancouver gym, as saying his city beat Seattle and Calgary in a bid for a five-year HYROX contract. For now, the closest race on the current list is HYROX Vancouver, 17 to 20 December.</p><p>Clodagh is not waiting around. A half marathon in Seattle on 29 November comes first, she says. Then come two HYROX races in Mixed Doubles: Phoenix, 25 to 28 February 2027, and HYROX’s first Portland race, 21 to 23 May 2027 at the Oregon Convention Center.</p> <h2>What keeps her going</h2> <p><b>She trains, she says, to be “the best version of me for my family.”</b></p><p>Her daughters are Lilliana, six, and Saoirse, three, and she wants them to grow up seeing exercise as something that makes a person feel “strong, happy and capable.” She hopes they see her “setting goals, working hard, having fun and proving to myself that I’m capable of more than I ever thought.” In her own words, she is happiest “surrounded by people I love, moving my body, drinking coffee, and pretending I have my life completely figured out.”</p><p>In less than two years, Clodagh has gone from a 37-minute first 5K to a 22-minute best, raced HYROX in four states and placed 20th in her age group in Women’s Pro Doubles. She has done it while raising two young daughters, working with kids and building a life from scratch in a new country. Next on her list: breaking 70 minutes with Shane.</p>
Seattle Fitness Magazine · 5 Oct 2026
  • 37First 5K, minutes
  • 225K best, minutes
  • 4HYROX races

HYROX, with the weights turned up

HYROX is an indoor fitness race: eight 1-kilometer runs, each followed by a workout station.

Doubles partners run every kilometer side by side and split each station’s work however they like. Anyone can enter, and Clodagh Lucey has now raced four HYROX events.

Clodagh Lucey on the SkiErg at HYROX Las Vegas, with Shane Lucey beside her

Pro turns every weight up. Under the 2026/27 doubles rulebook, Pro women push a 152-kilogram sled, 50 more than the standard women’s division, and pull 103 kilograms instead of 78. Each farmers carry handle weighs 24 kilograms, up from 16, and the lunge sandbag doubles to 20. Even the wall ball, thrown at a target 100 times, gets half again as heavy. Mixed Doubles, which she races with her husband, Shane, uses exactly the same loads.

Clodagh Lucey on the sled push at HYROX Miami, her first race

A Saturday in Salt Lake City

On 19 September, Clodagh and her best friend, Jazmin Sanders, finished HYROX Salt Lake City in 1:16:34.

Racing Women’s Pro Doubles, the heavier of HYROX’s two women’s pairs divisions, they placed 20th in the 25 to 29 team age group and 84th of 203 teams. Clodagh calls it “amazing considering some of the extremely talented ladies we raced with.”

Clodagh Lucey and Jazmin Sanders at the HYROX Salt Lake City sign

Jazmin made it a fun day as well as a fast one. Racing beside her “made this race so much more fun,” Clodagh says, and training with her HYROX partner “helped a lot with accountability.” As she puts it, “Even though things didn’t go quite according to plan, we had the best time together and made some pretty great memories.” A crew of her Emerald City Athletics friends came out to cheer them on.

Where she was strongest

Running is where the pair shone.

Their eight runs added up to 37:16, the 54th-fastest running total in the division and 30 places better than their overall finish. Less than two years after her first 5K, running has become the strongest part of her race.

Wall balls were her hardest station of the day. Salt Lake City sits about 4,300 feet above sea level, and the altitude made “a huge difference,” she says. It felt “much harder to clear the lactic build-up from my legs and recover between efforts,” which made the wall balls “especially brutal.” Through all of that, the pair made wall balls their best-ranked station of the eight.

Starting from scratch

Before she had children, Clodagh says, she was “always the girl saying, ‘I’m just not a runner.’”

She grew up in Ireland, spent nine months living in Ukraine in 2021, and in 2022 moved to the United States knowing no one but her husband, Shane, and their daughter, Lilliana. “I had to start completely from scratch,” she says. So she joined a gym to train with Shane, get back into a routine and make some friends. It worked: “I’ve met so many amazing people who have become a huge part of my life.”

Then came the running, and the numbers she loves. “I love data, especially fitness data,” she says. Her first 5K, in December 2024, took 37 minutes, and her latest 5K personal record is 22 minutes, “something I genuinely never would have imagined when I first started.” She also works with kids, so the gym doubles as her chance “to get fitter, get healthier, and, honestly, talk to adults.”

Four races, four states

Salt Lake City was her fourth HYROX.

She debuted in Miami in April 2025, racing Mixed Doubles with Shane, then raced her first Women’s Pro Doubles that November in Dallas. Las Vegas in February 2026 brought her personal best: 1:12:40 in Mixed Doubles with Shane, 5:32 quicker than Miami. Then came Salt Lake City. Racing with Jazmin, she set her fastest Women’s Doubles time yet, with her running leading the way.

Her training week

She trains five or six days a week and lifts at the gym on two of them.

Monday is legs: a couple of heavy compound lifts, then single-leg work that supports her running mileage. Thursday covers back, biceps, triceps and core, and finishes on the stairs at an easy Zone 2 effort. On gym days, she and Shane “switch off and take turns” working out.

She planned her runs for this race in Runna, the running app: a shorter Zone 2 run of 8 to 12 kilometers on Tuesday, a track session on Wednesday and a long Zone 2 run of 13 to 20 kilometers on Saturday. Sundays are for rest or hot yoga. She gave Salt Lake City three to four months of focused training, around a three-week trip home to Ireland where she took a break from hard training and macro tracking.

Where she’d send a Seattle beginner

Her first advice for a Seattle friend new to HYROX is simple: “Get to running! Run, Run, Run.”

Running fills nearly half of a race like hers. Her second tip is the one that separates HYROX from a fun run: “Practise running on compromised legs,” meaning legs already tired from the station before.

Clodagh Lucey running with Shane Lucey between stations at HYROX Las Vegas

For a place to train, she points to Emerald City Athletics, which calls itself an official HYROX Training Studio and, in her words, “has all the equipment necessary to train for the event.” Its clubs are in Columbia City, Wallingford, Shoreline and Everett. She singles out Everett for its indoor track, and membership there starts at $22 a month. The gym also says it stages a HYROX simulation race every quarter.

Next stops, Phoenix and Portland

Seattle is still waiting for a HYROX race of its own.

In September 2025, Vancouver Magazine reported Rich Poole, co-owner of a HYROX-affiliated Vancouver gym, as saying his city beat Seattle and Calgary in a bid for a five-year HYROX contract. For now, the closest race on the current list is HYROX Vancouver, 17 to 20 December.

Clodagh is not waiting around. A half marathon in Seattle on 29 November comes first, she says. Then come two HYROX races in Mixed Doubles: Phoenix, 25 to 28 February 2027, and HYROX’s first Portland race, 21 to 23 May 2027 at the Oregon Convention Center.

What keeps her going

She trains, she says, to be “the best version of me for my family.”

Her daughters are Lilliana, six, and Saoirse, three, and she wants them to grow up seeing exercise as something that makes a person feel “strong, happy and capable.” She hopes they see her “setting goals, working hard, having fun and proving to myself that I’m capable of more than I ever thought.” In her own words, she is happiest “surrounded by people I love, moving my body, drinking coffee, and pretending I have my life completely figured out.”

In less than two years, Clodagh has gone from a 37-minute first 5K to a 22-minute best, raced HYROX in four states and placed 20th in her age group in Women’s Pro Doubles. She has done it while raising two young daughters, working with kids and building a life from scratch in a new country. Next on her list: breaking 70 minutes with Shane.

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