The "laid back" athlete who wakes up at 3 AM and trains for 4 hours
Kris Rugloski is the quintessential hybrid athlete. She crushes obstacle courses, wins ultra marathons, and competes in the Hyrox Elite 15. Kris was the first female athlete to complete 100 miles in the World's Toughest Mudder and the 2022 Hyrox World Champion.
The Hybrid Letter talked to Kris about why she participates in extreme competitions, how she manages to smile while racing, and her struggles after suffering a serious injury.
The Hybrid Letter: Did you grow up playing sports?
Kris Rugloski: No, I did not grow up with athletics or sports. I grew up in a large family where sports were not prioritized. We were all very active, so I had a very active childhood. I was homeschooled, and I’m a quick learner, so I was able to get my work done quickly. I grew up on five acres in the countryside of South Central Texas, spending a lot of time outside. We were always moving, climbing trees, or wandering around the neighborhood.
In my teen years, I was just being a kid and had no interest in sports. It wasn’t until I was 19 that I saw people doing Tough Mudders and Spartans. I did a 12-mile Tough Mudder with friends, and we walked most of it. I found it wasn’t as challenging as I thought, and some of the obstacles were simple for me because of my active background. After that, I decided to try Spartan races, which I heard were harder. After several Spartans, I wanted to do a Trifecta. I would volunteer and race for free. Someone told me there was an Elite side to the sport where people fly across the country to compete for cash prizes. That was my first spark of interest in competitive racing.
THL: How did that spark lead to more racing and competitive events for you?
KR: At the end of 2016, I podiumed in Canada. They had coins at the time, so I "coined." Then I came back to the States and raced Killington, where I got fifth place towards the end of the season. I still didn’t really understand what it all meant, but it was cool.
I am definitely a competitive person, but I had never channeled that into racing before. I started racing the summer after I moved to the East Coast to pursue working with horses full-time. The horse world is very elitist; if you don’t have the money or the family or the background, it’s tough. It was a rough summer, but obstacle course racing was an equalizer. People come from all kinds of backgrounds. It was neat to find something where hard work led to success.
After that summer, I moved to Houston and got involved with an OCR gym. I started working out there, playing around with obstacles, and going to the gym for the first time ever. This set me up perfectly for Hyrox. I did my first Hyrox in Dallas in early 2020. I was the seventh female but first in my age group. That’s when I realized I liked the challenge and was well-suited for hybrid races. That year, I beat Rose Wetzel, an elite athlete, which was a big moment for me.
2020, when everything shut down, was actually a great year for me. I was in South Texas, running and biking a lot, and becoming a better athlete.
THL: You are known for competing in long multi-day races, which many elite Hyrox athletes don’t pursue. What attracts you to extreme endurance competitions?
KR: I like the challenge of doing things I thought I could never do. When I first heard of a 100-mile race, I thought there was no way I could do it. I want to be healthy and strong my entire life. These competitions give me structure and motivation to get up every day and work towards something. I work very hard at it, but I'm not obsessed with winning. It's a challenge and motivation for daily movement and activity.
With ultras, the more activity you do, the better you get. Anything I do contributes towards them. If I am going for a long walk, I’m going to be better at ultras. If I'm going for long runs, I am going to be better at ultras. If I’m doing a lot of lunges and wall balls, I’m going to be better at ultras.
THL: What has been your approach to training, especially since you race so frequently in a lot of different events?
KR: My training varies across the year, but I generally focus on what’s coming up in the next four to six weeks. For example, I have an Ironman in five weeks, so I’m focusing on biking, swimming, and running. I’m an early-morning person, love my early-morning workouts. I start work at 8 every day, so I have till 7 or 7:30 to workout. I get up at 3, so I fill that four-hour block with whatever it is I want to focus on. Right now, with the Ironman, two days a week I’m doing a bike, swim, bike, and maybe a bike, run, bike the other day. Those are my Ironman days. The other two days a week, I’m at the gym doing a lot of basic leg strength and rehab stuff because I had some quad issues.
Coming into Hyrox, I would definitely have a track day and probably a Hyrox-specific movement day. But I don’t follow specific cycles or training blocks. I travel a lot on the weekends. This past weekend I did a big bike ride, 60 miles. A lot of times I will go to the mountains and do long hikes or long runs. The weekends are for that kind of adventure.
THL: Do you feel like the variety in your training helps you?
KR: Absolutely. I am a strong believer that fitness is fitness. I am a better biker than I ever thought I would be because I am a good runner. I see it as making daily deposits in my fitness piggy bank. Whatever is coming up next, I can draw from that. Even though it may not be super specific, it gets me ready for something else. Fitness is fitness. I do things that excite and motivate me. It all contributes.
THL: You are known for always smiling during a race, but you are also a fierce competitor. What is your approach to race day?
KR: On race day, whatever is going to happen will happen. I work hard and give my best effort. I will never quit. But at the same time, I’m not competitive against reality. I don’t put pressure on myself to create a specific outcome. I’m kind of laid back and I know I’ve worked hard and will be proud of my effort regardless of the result. I put very little pressure on myself to create any kind of reality or any kind of result.
I have a healthy view of competition. I want to do my best, I want to be the best, but I can’t control what others do. I will work hard, the hardest I possibly can. Then, based on those results, I know what to do next. I think there is a lot of freedom in recognizing that I don’t have control over anything except my effort. I’m competitive with myself but realistic about what I can achieve.
THL: Where does your mind go during the heat of the competition?
KR: Every single race I run is an experience. I want to soak in the area, I want to soak in the feeling and experience of it all. So in Hyrox, I am listening to music, I’m looking around, I’m seeing people. I would say that feeds into my energy. I choose enjoyable locations for my 100 milers.
I like to run with a lot of gratitude. Gratitude for being there, gratitude for what I get to experience. To me, that makes every race a very positive experience, even if it hurts, even if it doesn’t go well, even if everything falls apart. It is still part of the experience. I just want to experience things even if it sucks. There is always something to learn, there is always something to be grateful for, something to appreciate, and something to learn.
THL: It’s great to see you back training and competing after your injury. How did you cope with tearing your meniscus?
KR: I cried a lot for the first several weeks. It took several weeks to sink in. I was in pain, but I expected it to fade. It only intensified for the first six to almost eight weeks. I was in so much pain I couldn’t sleep at night because anytime I would try to turn my knees or any movement in my knee would wake me up in pain. So I had to rely on a lot of sleeping pills to stay asleep.
I was very frustrated and very confused. Honestly, I felt betrayed by my body. I felt like I took care of my body. I have a very healthy approach.
But eventually, I reframed my mindset. I very much view my body as the physical body and then my consciousness as two different things. I realized my body does a lot, and it really does a good job of doing whatever my brain tells it to. I can respect my body and give it the chance to heal. I had this feeling of feeling betrayed by my body, but then I thought, "Maybe my body feels betrayed by me?"
It has actually done a lot, and I’m still very grateful for my body. It does amazing things. Right now, we’re just asking for a hard stop, and I can respect that and be gracious with it.
It was really hard. I am big on movement. I very easily get 10k steps a day, normally 30k steps a day. And for weeks, it hurt to move, period. I still had to move around for my job but there were some days my knees were so stiff I could barely bend them. So there were several weeks of basically no movement. I was doing a lot of rehab. I was doing shockwave therapy and dry needling. I was so limited in movement. I could just do upper body, so I stopped going to the gym. I don’t need to be around gym people or gym stuff. I slept in. I was getting more sleep than I had in a long time. I think part of it was a coping mechanism, but part of it was good.
After six to eight weeks of pain, I could finally move. I started realizing I could walk for an hour. I had this realization that I really just like running. I don’t care about doing upper body or getting a pump. I just want to run.
It’s very gradual. I thought I would be able to race Hyrox Anaheim. Talking to my doctor, we thought we it was possible. But towards mid-April, when I should have started running, I definitely couldn’t run yet. I couldn’t do Anaheim, so that knocked out Elite 15.
I just had to recognize where I was at. I’ve been rebuilding a respect for my body and for what it’s telling me.
THL: Is there a race that stands out as particularly memorable?
KR: Yes, a 100 miler in Wyoming in the summer of 2021. It changed a lot of core beliefs about who I am as a person. It ended getting lost so it was 111 miles with 30,000 feet of elevation. A lot of it was only a partially maintained trail, so it’s just wild. I was out there for 40 hours, I was one of only 17 finishers. I was out there in the worst racing conditions. It rained, it hailed, and it snowed. There were bears on the course. There was so much bushwacking and sliding around in mud. It was 40 hours of just highly physically and mentally demanding work. After running in and actually finishing, I realized I'm stronger than these things that I've always dreaded and hated.
It changed my perception of what I’m capable of. The following year, I won the Hyrox World Championship and I became the youngest female to do the Grand Slam of Ultrarunning in one summer. I got some of my fastest 100 miler times and then I won World’s Tough Mudder. I think that race in 2021 was very pivotal in how I viewed the things that I dreaded and disliked.
THL: What are your racing plans after the Ironman this summer?
KR: I might do some shorter ultras in September. For Hyrox, I might do Toronto. But I’m registered for Dallas, Chicago, and Anaheim and plan to focus on doubles this fall. I need a shorter solo season, so I am going to focus on that in 2025.
You can follow Kris on Instagram or hear her chat a bit more about her training on Here to Party Sports.
Recommended Viewing: The Unseen Battle of Mikaela Norman
This short documentary details how Mikaela Norman, the former Hyrox world record holder in singles and doubles, has fought to continue to compete at an elite level while dealing with a variety of serious ailments."The willpower I have is my biggest strength but also my biggest weakness," Norman says.
Inspiration of the Week: 99-year-old Betty Lindberg
It's never too late to compete.
On July 4, Betty Linberg became the oldest finisher of the Peachtree 10K in Atlanta. She is 99 years old. Linberg didn't start running until she was 63. But she has run the Peachtree 35 out of the last 36 years.
Linberg is the former record holder for a 5K in the 95+ age division, with a time of 55:48. In 2023, 96-year-old Rejeanne Fairhead beat her time by almost minutes.
You can read more about Lindberg's running journey in the Atlanta Track Club Magazine.
Hybrid Athlete of the Week: AJ Golik
Name: Alexander "AJ" Golik
Age: 24
Hometown: Long Island, NY
Why did you start hybrid racing?
Coming out of college, I was hooked on CrossFit. I was introduced to hybrid through a local DEKA STRONG Road Show on Long Island in 2022. After that I started to jump into more hybrid and obstacle course races and immediately knew this was something I wanted to pursue. I started training for Hybrid racing specifically in 2023. I was itching to compete after my college lacrosse career got cut short in 2020. Hybrid is the perfect blend of functional fitness movements and running — two things I found after college that changed my life for the better.
Favorite race to date? My favorite race to date is easily the DEKA Strong Teams race at the 2023 World Championship in Dallas. I got the honor to compete alongside my coach, mentor, and friend, Kevin Gregory — AKA @bubblestheclowne. This race was extremely competitive. The entire podium was separated by seven seconds. We battled other incredible teams and narrowly came out on top. Sharing the podium and DEKA World Championship title with Kevin is one of my proudest moments in my short career in this space.
Do you have a race goal? I'd love to break the 60 minute mark in Hyrox. I've come close a few times. I'd also love to race in Europe again. I had the opportunity to compete in Manchester for the 2023 HYROX World Championship. The experience was incredible.
Favorite station? My favorite station are wallballs. I can't explain exactly why I love them other than it being a stronger movement of mine and it's the last challenge before the finish line. At every race, the wallballs always have the biggest crowd and the energy is infectious.
Least favorite station? Lunges. They feel like they're never-ending. I am not the most proficient here (a weakness i'm working on) and I always have to work extra hard to get out of that station.
Things you wish you knew when you started racing? I grew up playing team sports and that continued through college. I never competed as an individual prior to racing. Competing as an individual has a different vibe to it. There is more self-pressure and more self-criticism. Training can be lonely and the sessions can be extremely tough. When I first started competing, the pressure I felt to perform that I put on myself was massive. I have been steadily working to improve my self-confidence and mindset. Every race I learn something new about myself, physically, mentally, or emotionally.