“I have no idea why I joined, I was regretting it the whole way,” said 30-year-old recruitment consultant Jeff Mang who signed up with his partner Mavis Chan. “But once I finished it was all worth it.”

He was, of course, joking and said it was a new challenge they were both looking to tackle after competing in last year’s Spartan Race. Mang, who usually spends his time weight training, had some sound advice for future competitors.

“If people are thinking about doing this race, I recommend months of training beforehand. Obviously mine was not enough.”

For 27-year-old marketing executive Jasmie Mong, the race was an opportunity to help bring down stereotypes that exist around strong and athletic females in Hong Kong. Mong, who trains as a strongman competitor at Strength Culture in Central, said the city still had a long way to go towards accepting women with muscles.

“Athletic female bodies are not as appreciated here in Hong Kong as they are in other cities. I feel like this competition is an opportunity for females to show Hong Kong that girls can be strong as well.

“It was a lot of fun and a lot of sweat, but it was worth it, plus there’s a KFC right outside the door, so that will definitely be worth it later on.”

Mong welcomed the launch of Hyrox in Hong Kong and hoped it would help inspire other women to look into newer types of training and fitness.

“I feel that heavy lifting helps me be more confident with myself, not just in the athletic field, but also in work. I carry it into my daily life and I don’t really care about what other people say about my physique because I know what my body is capable of,” she said.

For Pete Laverick and Rhys Jones, who won Saturday’s men’s double competition, their involvement in future events is almost guaranteed. Their win granted them automatic entry to the Hyrox World Championships in Manchester next May.

“We trained hard for this, it was nice to have something to aim towards,” Laverick said.

Both Laverick and Jones have played rugby with Societe Generale Valley RFC and said the fitness from training was a huge advantage.

“Rugby training really helped us,” Jones said. “We normally train quite a lot and we usually look after ourselves quite well anyway, we just tweaked a couple of things. But we were still going out and having beers, we didn’t want to let that part of it go.”

And as for the world championships. It was a resounding yes.

“Of course we’re going to do it. I think we’ll just set a date, commit to it and give it a crack, but we might have to think about being a little bit more professional next time around.”

Richard Cowley, director of Hyrox Hong Kong, said the event had broken all expectations and set a positive tone for its future in Hong Kong and across the region.

“This is the first-ever two day race in Hyrox history and the first race in Asia, so to see this many people is really exciting,” Cowley said.

“A big part of today’s success was building a network with gyms in Hong Kong. We had 100 people from Fuse, almost 70 from social group DB Dad Bods, 60 members from Coastal Fitness … we’ve really tried to build that community.”

Next year Cowley said there are two events planned for Hong Kong, in addition to Singapore, Australia, Taiwan, Japan and Korea.

“This is just the stepping stone of what we’ll achieve here in Asia.”

Hyrox will continue on Sunday with the women’s double event starting at 11am, and the men’s single competition kicking off from 12.40pm.