On 28 September 2025 Alexey Khomyakov stepped onto the embankment of Russky Island in Vladivostok and wrote under his run: “Came from Moscow to run at the other end of the world.” An ordinary post from an ordinary amateur. The only difference — that run went into the URX running league protocol and became the first of 63. Eleven months later the tally is hundreds of kilometres and two absolute first places.
Here’s what matters about Alexey Khomyakov: he is not a salaried athlete and not a blogger with a support team. “An ordinary average IT guy from Moscow” — those are his words about himself, not our discount for modesty. At some point the office, sitting work, and running as a way to step away from the numbers became a system — and the system started winning races.
In league numbers
From September 2025 through August 2026 Alexey has logged 719 kilometres, 63 runs, almost 67 hours on his feet, and 15 different races in the URX standings. Career average pace — 5:34 per kilometre; best result — 4:51 on a five-kilometre effort in Nairobi, where he “wanted an easy run” and ended up improving his PR. That happens to him often.
He took the absolute — first among all participants, with no age-group split — in Mistake and Mundial. Six more times he finished first in his group. In the Nairobi standings he posted 21 runs, 238 of his 719 kilometres — and even there absolute 13th says as much as the wins: twelve other serious runners finished ahead of him in that tally.
April, May, June — 11–14 starts a month, 100–170 km. Not a spike before a report: the steady working rhythm of someone with an ordinary five-day week.
The league is more than organised starts
Here’s the point: part of this tally Alexey built not on URX-branded starts, but on his own runs — the Kazan Marathon, “April Run” at Luzhniki, Sber’s “Green Marathon,” charity starts for animals and on Poklonnaya Hill. He went out one morning in Kazan for a city marathon — and that run landed in the same league protocol as his win in Mistake.
In Balashikha, on a cross he was logging toward Francisco Goya, it wasn’t a race against the elite — it was a chance meeting: “Unexpected meeting with Olympic champion Alexander Panzhinsky!” — that’s how Alexey noted the morning in one line. Not a shared finish chute, not a level comparison — just a live offline-start episode that also went into the league protocol.
That is the essence of URX as a league: not a closed venue for the chosen few, but a layer on top of any race a person would have run anyway. A city marathon, a neighbourhood loop, a night trail — all of it becomes one shared standings, one story, one results table. An ordinary person goes out for an ordinary run — and their kilometres sit in the same league protocol as those who hold the top.
Who he is — in his words
About himself Alexey speaks without pose: “Off the table I’m probably an ordinary average IT guy from Moscow who found himself in running.” The formula for why he runs is short too: “Running as meditation.” From there the rest grows — a strange city at dawn, a climb in the heat, a night trail, a song on repeat instead of work thoughts.
Comments on his runs are his signature: honest, sometimes unexpectedly warm. A cow on the path on the first day of summer: “we swapped sides and each ran on.” After a storm — air that “charges you for the whole work week.” After a half marathon — “now to work, charged to 100.” Once he managed to bring his son on a run, and ten kilometres “flew by in a blink.” Family, in his words, “supports and sometimes joins in.” Ordinary life never leaves this running — and that’s why it’s worth following: it’s true, not a showcase.
A road instead of a dry bio
The geography reads like the travel list of someone who picks a start instead of a holiday. Vladivostok and Russky Island — “the best holiday is a sports holiday.” Chelyabinsk — “morning, forest, and that says it all.” Kazan on a marathon morning. Yekaterinburg — “I hadn’t run here yet, and now I have!” Petersburg on Krestovsky Island. Moscow is not one point: the Garden Ring as a long-held goal (“conquered!”), the Botanical Garden, VDNKh, local loops where he greets “hobby colleagues” with a raised hand.
By winter and spring he already had slots bought for the whole summer. “A race every weekend. Different courses, different cities, different organisers” — that’s how he describes the method himself. Not a one-off surge. A system he built for himself.
A route with character
A flat 10k still comes — and comes fast. But what holds Alexey isn’t only smooth asphalt. On the Historic Race 1969 after Sergiev Posad he leaves a comment that holds his whole running:
“Sergiev Posad, heat, hiiills, so many hills… Brutal… But of course at the finish — a high… Victory”
And what matters more than the protocol in a win like that — he says straight: “The feeling that you did more than you could. You overcame yourself and made it.”
Night Yaroslavl in Buenos Aires — “an interesting course and a lot of emotion,” and there he ran 10 km at 4:55 — the second-best pace of his career.
Night Alpha-Bitsa in the Business Run — “trail on night Alpha-Bitsa, brutal hills up and down.” Trail for him is “another world”; night trail — “complication and an interesting experience.” Even when the tracker drops the final surge and the climb is “infuriating,” what stays beside the distance is his: “an unreal high.”
What’s next
The horizon is concrete: “I really want T20 GRUT next year — hope I can catch a slot.” Same logic — a distance where he’ll have to bargain with himself longer than usual. Golden Ring Ultra Trail is already in his collection — the hundred is done; next is another level of difficulty.
Alexey Khomyakov is in Spotlight not because he’s an exception to the URX league rules, but because he is the rule in pure form. An IT guy who went out for a run and in 11 months built a dense tally: hundreds of kilometres, his own absolutes, his own voice at the finish. In URX there is no entry barrier between “ordinary person” and “table hero” — only the next start you can enter. Alexey has already done that 63 times. The next line in this protocol could be yours.
