Hyrox training in Ponders End,
built around your race.

Where to train in Ponders End

20 gyms and sports centres sit within a few miles of the centre of Ponders End. That is enough to choose on what the floor actually holds rather than on which is nearest.

Closest to the centre you have Laser Quest, Southbury Leisure Centre and The Fitness Station, the nearest of them about 0.2 km out. Ring before you join and ask two questions: is there floor space to push a sled, and can you throw a ball at a wall. Those answers decide more than any membership tier.

Laser Quest and Southbury Leisure Centre are listed as sports centres rather than gyms. Multi-use sites are usually where the floor space is, which tends to be where the sled and carry work ends up happening.

Better, David Lloyd Clubs and Nuffield Health Fitness & Wellbeing have sites here, so an existing membership may already cover you. If you are joining from scratch, a rolling monthly contract is worth the few extra pounds while you work out which sessions you actually turn up for.

Where to run around Ponders End

You are well served for measured running around Ponders End. 8 parkrun courses sit within reach: Pymmes parkrun, Gunpowder parkrun and Grovelands parkrun, Enfield are the closest three, Pymmes parkrun being about 3.2 km out. Use one as your fixed benchmark and run it in the same conditions each time, or the number tells you nothing.

All of them sit within about 8 km of each other, so you can rotate courses without the travel changing, which makes the times comparable.

Racing from Ponders End

ExCel is roughly 16 km from Ponders End, close enough to be a normal morning rather than a trip. That is the one to build towards for a first race: no hotel, no unfamiliar bed, no early train.

Between the race and the 20 places to train listed here, the constraint is rarely equipment. It is the calendar, which is why the programme is dated to a day rather than numbered by week.