Anna Bramley (right), lunges towards a world title at the 2025 Hyrox world champs in Chicago.
Sarah Cowley Ross for LockerRoom
When Anna Bramley lined up for her first Hyrox race last year, she booked herself a ticket to the World Championships in Chicago. But her immediate reaction was she wouldn’t go.
“I can’t go because I’ll have to fly,” Bramley, 43, remembers thinking.
After a deeply traumatic flying experience on a flight from Auckland to Queenstown seven years earlier, long-haul travel had been off the table.
“It felt like we were falling out of the sky. There were men screaming and crying. I thought this is it,” she recalls.
But with her husband Joe Vao in the seat next to her, Bramley gritted her teeth and flew across the globe. And in just her second Hyrox race, she became the world champion in her 40-44 age group.
Bramley first came across the fitness race that’s become a global sensation online and saw it as an opportunity to channel her background as a New Zealand-level equestrian rider and later, a middle-distance runner.
“I was pretty good at a national level [in athletics], but I was never elite,” she says, having claimed bronze in the senior women’s 800m at the 2014 national championships.
She had also competed seriously in CrossFit. While she loved the sport, some of the complex gymnastic movements and max strength elements didn’t play to her greatest asset – her aerobic engine. “Then I saw Hyrox starting to spread around the world and was just hoping it would come to New Zealand.”
In a Hyrox race, athletes complete eight 1km runs, each followed by a workout station – from sled pushes to rowing to wall balls – testing endurance, strength and grit.
When Hyrox finally arrived in Bramley’s home city of Auckland in January 2025, she entered thinking she’d tick it off with a single race.
“But I just loved it – I caught the bug straight away,” she laughs. “Coming from both a running and CrossFit background, it felt like those two worlds collided. I just loved being out there, knowing the task and trying to improve.”
With athletes starting in heats, she had no real sense of where she’d placed amid the large field – not realising she’d won her 40–44 age group.
Winning again at the World Championships in Chicago further fuelled her appetite for the sport.
Now competing in the pro ranks, she’s set her sights on testing herself against the very best.
In Brisbane in April, Bramley earned a place in the Apac Elite 15 race (reserved for the top 15 ranked Hyrox women in the Asia-Pacific region) and delivered an outstanding fourth-placed finish in a personal best time of 1h 3m.
A podium finish would have secured her a spot in the elite race at the World Championships, adding extra stakes to the performance.
“My goal was top five, and I achieved that, so I’m happy,” she says, before adding with a laugh, “but podium would have been better!”
Her result was made even more impressive by the lead-in. An injury four weeks out had limited her ability to train the lunges, a key station late in the race.
“They really taxed my legs, and by the final station, the wall balls felt really hard,” she says.
Balancing the demands of maintaining her running prowess while building the strength required for the eight workout stations remains a work in progress.
“I have a huge amount of respect for the amount of specific training needed to keep improving in this sport,” Bramley says.
It’s a challenge she’s navigating alongside her husband. A former high-level CrossFit competitor, Vao programmes the strength sessions, while Bramley leans on her running background to shape the conditioning work – all woven around their busy family life.
“Joe is so clever at designing challenging workouts, which I really like,” she says. “You really have to earn his praise, he’s constantly telling me, ‘You can do better.’”
A mum to two boys, Bodhi-Wolf, 7, and Nakoa-River, 4, Bramley is often up early to train before school and daycare drop-offs.
“It’s about fitting training into our family life – it’s all we know. Sometimes I’ll run to where we’re going, like a kids’ birthday party. You make it work.”
Making it work around family, fulltime work – as sales co-ordinator for The Beauty Collective – and even a fear of flying is simply how Bramley operates.
She’ll soon decide whether to defend her age group title at the World Championships in Stockholm in June, or line up in another elite race in Sydney in July.
“We’re still figuring out the balance of training and racing – where do I put my effort?” says the ever-curious athlete.
Either way, Bramley has found her stride in a sport she loves and she’s no longer ruling out flying to her next challenge.
This story was originally published at Newsroom.co.nz and is republished with permission.