Jack Driscoll's breakthrough moment and a crazy Jake Williamson HYROX doubles stat.
Welcome to The Extra Lap! Each week, we’ll be sharing HYROX insights and analysis, product updates, stories, community shoutouts and much more.
Black Friday Special!
Today through Monday 12/2, you can buy RoxOpt reports for 60% off ($9.99 from $24.99).
Use promo code SUB60 at checkout!
Stat of the Week
This past weekend at HYROX Dallas, Jake Williamson teamed up with Hunter McIntyre and threw down the second fastest Pro Doubles finish of all time (0:48:48).
But that’s not the stat.
4 of the 13 fastest Pro Doubles times feature Jake Williamson and a completely different partner.
- 2nd w/ Hunter McIntyre - 48:48
- 4th w/ Charlie Botterill - 49:17
- Tied 12th w/ Jake Dearden - 50:06
- Tied 12th w/ Alen Ploj - 50:06
As an added bonus, he also has the fastest Open Doubles time (47:57) with, yes, a completely different partner: Fabian Eisenlauer.
Jack Driscoll Arrives
I met Jack at HYROX Dallas 2024. I was catching up with Rich Ryan afterwards and he saw the RoxOpt logo on my shirt and said he had bought a report to prepare for the race and loved the data.
He finished with a 1:04:28 that day and pondered whether a sub 60 was in play.
Over the course of the year, he slowly chipped away, nearly improving every race.
He broke 60 min with a 59:51 at HYROX Atlanta later that season.
But the ambition didn’t stop there.
Heading into this season, he put himself out there.
Elite 15 was the goal.
After 3 races in Boston, Toronto, and Atlanta he still hovered around the 58-61 min mark but was progressing.
Then came Chicago and Dallas the past two weeks.
10 days. 4 monster races. 1 breakthrough.
He laid down back-to-back 56:23 and 56:21 pro solo races.
He also teamed up with Ryan Douglas (another under-the-radar rising star) in Pro Doubles. They put down a 51:09 in Chicago and then took off another minute in Dallas (50:12) for the 17th fastest time ever.
Jack now sits at 24th in the Phoenix Elite 15 Major Rankings and is currently qualified for Elite 15 Pro Doubles w/ Ryan Douglas (19th but there are duplicates)
It has been awesome to see. Jack’s been one of our biggest supporters since we launched.
Take a look at his trajectory from Dallas 2024 to Dallas 2025. It really shows how small micro goals can unlock a massive leap.
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HYROX London Bounty
We’ll be running our popular Bounty Competition for HYROX London next week.
£75 will be awarded to anyone who beats their RoxOpt predicted peak potential.
To be eligible, one must buy a RoxOpt report for their most recent HYROX race by December 3rd to generate a prediction.
Already purchased? You are all set.
We track it all automatically. Just go rip it!
RoxOpt Origin Story - Entry #5
In June 2023, Rich Ryan responded to my cold email where I asked if I could pick his brain and get feedback on some early directions of what would become RoxOpt.
We hopped on a Zoom and Rich being Rich had come prepared, clearly having thought through some ideas beforehand.
I was really curious how he evaluates run performance with HYROX split data and his insights were really helpful in guiding my analytics approach.
He pointed out that in terms of individual run splits, 1 and 8 are not comparable to runs 2-7.
Run 1 is always shorter or longer.
Also, while run 8 is the same distance and laps, for some reason, HYROX lumps the roxzone transition to the wall ball arch with the 8th run split.
If you dig into your detailed HYROX splits, you’ll see a “Rox Out” and “Rox In” timestamp for every run except the eighth. On run 8, it shows “Rox Out” and then jumps straight to “Wall Balls In”—the “Rox In” is skipped.
He also noted that he preferred to look at total run + roxzone together. Why? He noted that course to course, there is variation in roxzone length and HYROX adjusts the runs accordingly.
He’d been told HYROX aims for a total of 8.7 km of running when including Roxzone time, so evaluating athletes through that lens would give a more consistent picture.
Finally, he emphasized the importance of pacing.
With runs 2-7, he said he looked for consistency across splits as a key indicator of whether an athlete paced well.
When those runs were volatile, he often saw worse outcomes, both in his own races and with his athletes.
When they were steady, athletes tended to better handle the totality of the race.
While these are such small, nuanced details, they make a significant difference in whether race analytics are actionable and useful vs just pretty charts and visuals.
My goal was to make something useful.
And I was lucky to have someone like Rich to guide me in that pursuit.
