I’ve done a couple of Dri–Tris at Orangetheory in the past. And as I mentioned in yesterday’s post, my 4th workout last week was another Dri-Tri. But this time, the Dri-Tri was going to be a relay event and it would be my first time doing that.
With the Dri-Tri relay, you have a team of 3 and each person does one section (rower, floor, or treadmill). I immediately knew I wanted to do the rower. First, it would give me a great opportunity to try to PR on my 2,000 meter row. Also, I knew how tough the floor work was for me each time and I didn’t think I was ready to do a 5K (or 1/2 5K as a power walker). So the rower was what made sense to me. I tried to get a team together, but many of my Orangetheory friends weren’t able to do the Dri-Tri. Fortunately, the studio would help find a team for me so I signed up to do the row and figured I’d find out the day of the Dri-Tri who my team would be (I wouldn’t be at the studio doing the Dri-Tri until the day of since I went to the new Culver City location).
The day of, a bunch of people who signed up ended up dropping out so there was a bit of work done by the staff to put together new teams. Also some people decided to do the Dri-Tri solo instead of being on a team. I thought about if I should do the full event, but I hadn’t really prepared properly for it so I didn’t push myself. But they figured out a team for me and since the rowing was first I got ready to start.
I knew that I didn’t want to overdo it with the row in the beginning. I’ve made the mistake in the past of starting too big and then not being able to sustain that. So I tried to start slower than I thought I should because it was at a speed that I knew I could maintain for a while. I had the PR time in my head and as I was getting further into the row I kept doing the math to see if I would beat my PR time. It seemed like I was on pace to do that once I got to the halfway point and I just tried to stay focused on staying steady and not focused on the time or distance as much.
I have to say that my teammates were so amazing while I was rowing. They were cheering me on and super supportive. I wasn’t expecting that and I never had that experience when I did the Dri-Tri solo so it was a nice surprise for me. It helped me get any negative thoughts out of my head when I was starting to struggle and they were able to tighten the foot straps for me (they sometimes get loose when I row) so I didn’t have to stop and do it myself.
Once I got to the last 200 meters, I realized that it was going to be much closer to my previous PR than I thought. There was a chance I wasn’t going to beat it and I wasn’t mentally prepared for it. Even though I had already been rowing for 8 minutes and was exhausted, I kicked my butt into gear and was rowing so hard that I probably was doing too much (I was starting to struggle to catch my breath but refused to slow down). And when I was done, I was pretty mad.
My previous PR was 8:45.2. I missed it by 2.4 seconds. That is pretty much like missing it because of 1 or 2 pulls on the rower that could have been a bit stronger. Honestly, I would have rather missed it by 20 seconds than missing it by 2 seconds. It was about 40 seconds faster than my last Dri-Tri attempt, but that wasn’t cheering me up. I had my heart set on beating my PR and I failed at it. I’m so competitive with myself and it was tough to know that I failed at something that I felt was so certain to happen.
But I couldn’t stay upset for long because I needed to go support my teammate on the floor. We were cheering her on and when she was on the second round of the floor work I was cheering that she was done with push ups/burpees/whatever the move was each time she was done. And then we went to support our teammate on the treadmill and we kept cheering whenever he hit a milestone. I don’t remember exactly what time our team was done with the entire event, but it was pretty much in the middle of the pack which was awesome considering I was the last person to finish the row.
After we were done, we were cheering on the rest of the people on the treadmill. The great thing about the Dri-Tri is that everyone seems to stay in the room and as each person is close to finishing their treadmill work they gather around to cheer. And it was the same this time and I loved getting to cheer for people. Some people hit PRs, some hit goals they thought would take months, and some completed their first Dri-Tri. Every person in the room accomplished something awesome (and yes, even though I was mad I had to be a bit proud that I rowed 2,000 meters without stopping and almost matched my PR).
And this year, they were giving out medals for the Dri-Tri! So of course we all needed a photo with the medals.
Even though it was good to do the Dri-Tri relay, I don’t know if I would do the relay again. While it was nice to not have to worry about doing anything after the row, I also felt a bit like something was missing. I think if I had worked harder leading up to it, I probably could have done the full one. But who knows how I will feel the next time we have one. Also, I might be doing the next Dri-Tri at the Culver City studio. I’ll just have to wait and see.
But for now, I’m just enjoying knowing I did another Dri-Tri and loving how my medal looks on my medal hanger.
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