The NASCAR Cup Series season is long and grueling, so it's expected that crew members will quickly take a well-deserved vacation once the checkered flag flies on the championship race.
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Yet two members of Shane van Gisbergen's pit crew are not immediately packing up and heading to the beach after November's championship weekend at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Instead, they are going to Texas. Their plan is to test themselves against dozens of other people in a Hyrox fitness competition
"It just puts you in a different mindset of training," Jerick Newsome, rear tire changer on the No. 97 Chevrolet, explained to FanBuzz during a recent sitdown.
"(Because) now you're training for something that... I probably haven't thought about doing one before. And you see it, like, 'Man, okay, that's going to be challenging.'"
For those unfamiliar, Hyrox has become wildly popular recently. This competition is called "fitness racing" as it combines several running segments with some movements that one might see in a CrossFit workout.
The locations change, but the format remains the same across the globe. The athletes complete meters on a SkiErg, 335-pound (152 KG) pushes, 227-pound (103 KG) sled pulls, burpee broad jumps, meters on a rower, farmers carries, lunges with a sandbag on their shoulders, and wall ball throws. They break up these movements with 1,000-meter runs.
These particular Hyrox festivities featuring Newsome will take place from Nov. 18-22 at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas. Dozens of competitors spanning different divisions will take to the floor and compete in the variety of events making up the fitness race.
Newsome will actually be taking on this competition with a fellow member of the No. 97 team. Fueler Evan Marchal is also making the trip. After all, he is the man who came up with the idea of an offseason competition.
He has a workout page, and he's been making progress while losing weight and getting stronger. Taking on Hyrox provided another challenge to overcome, so he convinced Newsome to join forces with him for the grueling test.
Newsome and Marchal will form a team in the men's doubles division as they showcase the different areas in which they excel. They will do the runs together as required, but they will split up the different work stations based on their respective strengths.
"(Marchal) was just like, 'Man, Jerick, you will be a good partner for me too,'" Newsome explained. "Cause he said, 'Well, you can run.' He said, 'You're strong, strong enough to do everything else.'
"But like, the sleds, he can do the sleds. I can do burpees. I can do wall balls. I'm pretty good on the rower too. So where I'm slacking at, he can pick up on it. And when he's slacking, I can pick up on it."
These two pit crew athletes already train together, so they have the chemistry part locked down. The entire No. 97 over the wall crew — which also features tire carrier Brendan Foley, front changer Austin Holland, and jackman Marshall McFadden — takes classes at Vitality Fitness in Concord, North Carolina.
These crew members have done so for eight years. They all train together throughout the week so that they can simultaneously make each other better through competition and move as one unit during the pit stops.
So while Newsome and Marchal know they have the teamwork, they have started game-planning for the other challenges they will face in Dallas.
They completed half of a Hyrox together one day while training. They then completed the second half on another day.
Photo credit: Hyrox
These training sessions were not in the competitive environment like they will face in Dallas in November. Yet, they provided more of an idea about where Marchal and Newsome will each excel.
"I think my strongest part is going to be the burpees," Newsome said. "I'm already... I'm kind of short, so I don't have a long way to go to the ground (laughs).
"So the burpees are definitely going to be my strong part of like, where I know, okay, it don't matter how tired I am, I can get through it. Like, it's going to hurt. Just hope I save my legs from the sled pushes."
These athletes know how to handle the intensity of a CrossFit workout, whether they are working on strength or just their overall fitness. Hyrox presents a different challenge in that the intensity is spread out over an extended period of time.
A standard CrossFit workout — not counting warmups or skill sessions — can last between 12-30 minutes. An "elite" Hyrox time is under 60 minutes. A first-timer can take up to 120 minutes to complete every station. The average time for men in the doubles division falls into this hour-plus range.
"When you're doing CrossFit, you want to control your heart rate," Newsome said. "So if you spike it immediately, then it's going to be hard to bring it back down.
"So you want to just kind of find that happy medium to where you can do it over and over again. Like you don't want to go burn out on the first (run), then now you're already kind of worn and then now you got to work on it.
"Then you got to go run again. You want to pick a good time where you're like, 'Okay, I feel good now, and I can keep doing it.'"
Keeping that heart rate steady early is something that Newsome continues to emphasize despite competing in a sport where the No. 97 crew has to complete a pit stop in fewer than 10 seconds.
He and his fellow crew members still train together in quick bursts when they are doing pit stop practice. They test themselves in high-intensity workouts during their CrossFit classes. This part of the job is more of muscle memory at this point.
But Newsome has also focused more on his running to prepare for the 8,000 total meters (5 miles) of running during the competition. He has added in several runs this spring ranging between 2 and 8 miles.
He hasn't focused on his overall speed; instead, he has really dialed down on his consistent pace and heart rate. Newsome knows that he and Marchal have to be able to have the same pace on the last run that they did on the first.
What they can't do is let other athletes on the floor dictate their pace. They have seen others fall into this trap in the world of NASCAR while trying to have the fastest pit stop.
They can't let it happen while competing this November in Dallas.
"That's one of the things that's kind of cool about the Hyrox — like you can sit there and train and do everything, and like, it's still the unknown," Newsome said.
"Cause like anytime you've been in a competition, it's something like you can say, 'Oh yeah, I'm going to set my pace here,' but then you see that somebody's ahead of you or somebody is moving faster. Like that make you want to try to go faster.
"But that's also to be mentally stronger. I understand like, 'No, I don't need to go fast. I need to stay at my pace.' And then you never know, you can catch them because they might be better than you this (station), but then you can be better than them in that one."
Newsome and Marchal will see the results of their extensive training this November when they head to Dallas, but for now, they will remain focused on helping Shane van Gisbergen compete for a spot in The Chase and possibly for the championship.
