Tag Archives: dri-tri

Some Dri-Tri Prep Workouts (or Trading One Ailment For Another)

Posted on April 1, 2019 | Comments Off on Some Dri-Tri Prep Workouts (or Trading One Ailment For Another)

This past week of workouts were interesting for me. I was finally getting over my bronchitis, but I also started dealing with nausea. It was really annoying timing because the day I was finally feeling better from one thing was the day that I started being nauseous. It was also an interesting week because the workouts were designed to help us get ready for the Dri-Tri. At the beginning of the week, I was on the waitlist for the Dri-Tri, but by Friday I knew I was officially in. I was hoping to get in so I did do my workouts with the assumption that I was prepping for it.

Monday’s workout was the class that was very clearly prep for the Dri-Tri. We had a workout with endurance, strength, and power and the endurance portion of the class was a 2000 meter row benchmark. This is the same distance that we have as the row for the Dri-Tri. While it is a benchmark, we don’t do it that often so I was happy that I had it as a part of my workout so I could have an idea of what I’d be able to do.

I knew I wouldn’t get a personal best with the row because of how I was feeling. I also know that my endurance is still lower than it’s been before so I have to work up to that again. But I still wanted to set a goal time in my head. I would have loved to have been under 9 minutes, but I knew that would be pushing myself too much. I wanted to push myself a little, but also not hurt myself or make it so that rowing throughout the week would be painful. So I went with just wanting to be able to do the row in under 9 1/2 minutes. That’s still better than many of my 2000 meter rows and it seemed like a good number to have in my head.

I was pretty steady with my rowing. I didn’t change up the speed for a majority of the row. I was just going and trying to not push too hard since that is the downfall for longer rows. I kept checking in with my time and my distance and saw I was right about what I would need to be to get to my goal time. But I also knew at the halfway mark that I’m often slower for the second half than the first half and if I wanted to hit my goal I would need to push it at the end. So when I got to the last 200 meters, I just went hard and I made it under my goal!

The cardio work was decreasing distance runs. We were doing our own tracking and timing. For the bike, it started at 2 trips and then we had a minute to recover. Each round went down by .4 with a recovery after. I was trying my best to track my distance each time, but sometimes I got a bit distracted. I always went the full 2 trips if I forgot what distance I started at. I figured overdoing it was better than under-doing it.

And on the floor, we had a mix of Bosu work and weight work. On the Bosu, we had back extensions and running men. For weights we had squats to overhead presses and tricep work. We also had bicycle crunches. I was going heavy for my tricep work and medium heavy for the overhead presses. Even though I was going from being on the ground to standing up over and over, my nausea wasn’t kicking in during that the way I was expecting it to. That was a nice surprise and allowed me to do more rounds on the floor than I thought I would be able to do.

Wednesday’s workout was a strength based class, and it ended up being special because I realized it was my 50th class of 2019! I’m ahead of my goal for my workouts this year and that’s exactly where I want to be. I want to be ahead so that when I do have a week where I can’t do 4 workouts that I already have workouts banked to cover that.

For cardio, we had 2 blocks that had a similar format. We started with doing a distance run/bike and we were supposed to go to a recovery once we hit that distance. I was having a really bad nausea day, so I never hit the distance by the time we were moving on. But that just meant I skipped the recovery time which was fine since I wasn’t pedaling too hard. After the distance each block, we had incline work. We increased the incline/resistance level every 30 seconds and it ended with an all out pace. The way the resistance levels worked for me, I increased the level every 30 seconds and 1 level higher than the hill was my all out level which worked out nicely.

On the rower, we had 2 similar blocks. We started with a 2 minute timed row. After the row we had lunges with rotations for the first block and regular lunges for the second block. Then we did half the distance we got on the 2 minute row with more lunges. And we ended with cutting the distance in half again. I never made it to the lunges after the 3rd row, but I was happy with how I was doing with the rower for all my distances.

And the floor was 1 long block with almost all weighted exercises. For weighted exercises we had kneeling low rows, sitting shoulder presses to stands, hip hinge reverse flies, and double crunches. We also had low rows on the straps. Because of the nausea I was dealing with, I had to go a bit lighter on the weights. I was able to go a bit heavy on the double crunches since I was laying on my back, but the other exercises were bringing my nausea out a bit.

Friday was my last regular workout of the week and the first workout I had were I knew for sure I’d be doing the Dri-Tri. I went easy on myself because of the nausea and because I knew I’d have a hard day the next day. I’m glad I knew to go easy because I would have hated it if I worked hard and was sore and then found out I got off the wait list for the Dri-Tri.

The cardio was 2 blocks with hill climbs. Each block started with a 90 second hill where the incline/resistance level increased every 30 seconds. We had a base pace with no incline work before a 90 second push pace without incline. Both blocks ended with a push pace and an all out pace. I was using my new resistance levels for all the work and the hill work was around the levels I use for my push and all out paces.

On the rower, the first block was timed rows with lunges between each row. We had a 90 second row, 60 second row, and 30 second row. The second block was distance rows with lunges between. The rows were 400 meters, 200 meters, and 100 meters. I did pretty well with how far I got with the timed rows and how quickly I could do the distance rows. But I struggled a lot with the lunges. For the second block, I decided to do squats instead. It can get tough for me to step over the rower to have the space for the lunges and I can do squats just standing over the rower.

And on the floor, we had 2 blocks as well. The first block had sit-ups to sumo squats, goblet squats, and bicep curls. I had to separate the sit-ups and sumo squats because it’s very difficult for me to do them as a single move. But because I split them, I could go heavier with the weight I used. And the second block was push-ups, squats, and side plank rotations. The second block was a bit harder for me in terms of my nausea, but it wasn’t as bad as it was on Wednesday.

After my 3 workouts for the week, I did feel as prepared as I could be for the Dri-Tri. I am always a little nervous before doing it and I’ve got a little extra nerves this time because I’ve never had to do the Dri-Tri while getting over a cold and dealing with nausea. But I know I did a lot of work during my workouts to be in the best place I could be going into it. My expectations were lower than other times and I was curious to see what would happen. And I’ll be writing about how it went a little later this week!

You Might Also Like

Default ThumbnailFeeling Better About My Progress (or Coming Back From The Dri-Tri) Default ThumbnailDri-Tri Prep Workouts (or The Beginning Of My Workout Week) Default ThumbnailMixing Up The Routine (or Almost PRs And Dri-Tri Prep) Default ThumbnailLots Of Running (or Dri-Tri Prep Week) Default ThumbnailGetting Ready For The Dri-Tri (or Working My Way Through The Workouts) Default ThumbnailBack To Regular Workouts (or Making Improvements On My Dri-Tri)

Comments Off on Some Dri-Tri Prep Workouts (or Trading One Ailment For Another)

Posted in Fitness, Fun Stuff

Tagged , , , , ,

Another Dri-Tri Saturday (or Just Trying To Show Improvement)

Posted on September 25, 2018 | 2 comments

I’ve done the Dri-Tri 4 times before the one I did this past weekend. 3 of those were individual ones and the most recent one was a relay where I did the rowing only. No matter if it’s an individual one or a relay, I want to do my best. I always want to see signs of improvement and proof that I am getting stronger and fitter.

It’s tough to do that because the Dri-Tri is different from regular classes. No matter how prepared I feel, I always feel a bit overwhelmed in the middle of the event. I do everything I can not to feel that way, but it was the same thing with the 5K races I did.

This time, I was feeling a bit uncertain about a lot of it. I hadn’t been doing as much treadmill work as I normally do and even though we had lots of rowing and even some endurance rowing I was still unsure about my rowing abilities. But no matter what, I knew that I would be able to do this and finish. It was only a question if I could PR on any part of it.

This was the first time I had the Dri-Tri at the Culver City location and I think that I was the only person in my heat who had done one before (this was the first Dri-Tri for the Culver City studio). Since I am there more often than the Brentwood studio, it was nice to have it at a studio I am used to going to 3 times a week. And I do think the room set-up there is a bit better for the event.

Before we got started, the coaches went over everything. It was the same as the other ones I did. We started with a 2000 meter row, then we had 300 body weight floor exercises (push-ups, squats, burpees, step ups, hop overs, and plank jacks) and then a 5K on the treadmill. There were some people in my heat doing the sprint Dri-Tri which means they did half of all the sections. But almost everyone was going to do the full one and the room was a mix of excitement and nerves.

When we started on the rower, I focused on not going too hard. Burning out on the rower is something I’ve done before and something I was scared to do again. My goal was to try to stay pretty steady with my pace the entire time and then pick it up for the last 200 or so meters. The rowers were set with our 500 meter split times so I was able to track that and try to do the math in my head if I was on pace or not. I knew I wanted to be under 9 minutes but I really to be under 8:45 to get a PR.

I was doing really great with being steady on the rower. Some of the coaches were complimenting me on how strong my form was. That was nice to hear because I know my form can get sloppy when I’m tired. I knew that I would likely be the last person off of the rower, so I didn’t focus on people around me. I was in my head a lot trying to distract myself at times and just time my pacing when I felt like I was going too hard. And for the last 200 meters, I towed really hard and went for it. I finished in 8:51 which was under my goal but not a PR. But I couldn’t focus too much on that because I needed to get to the floor work.

I took a moment to catch my breath and drink some water, but I tried to quickly get started with the push-ups. I wasn’t trying to compete and place, so I did them on my knees to make things a little easier for me. The squats were easy and fine for me. For the burpees I did my modified ones using the bench so I could hop back and forth instead of stepping my feet out. I can’t do step ups because of my hips so I did lunges instead (which is what I did every other time). And the hop overs and plank jacks were both easy enough to do, but still tough because I was tired.

The floor work is done as 2 rounds so once I finished the first round I took another break to catch my breath. The floor work has always been tough for me in the Dri-Tri, but getting to that halfway mark really helped this time. I knew what I had already done and what I still needed to do. And I was ready to go through it again. I was also keeping my eyes on the clock because I knew what time I needed to be on the treadmill by in order to be under my goal time.

For the past few Dri-Tris, I’ve wanted to do the treadmill work as a run/walk. Power walkers only do a 2.5K, so I have had the idea that I would do the 2.5K and record the time to compare it to my other Dri-Tris and then I’d continue on to do the full 5K and record that time too. I would love to have goal times for both. And that was my intention with this one. I told the coaches of my plan and they understood what I was hoping to do. So when I got on the treadmill I was optimistic that this would be the time that I did it.

Since my running has been very limited, the run/walk intervals I had in mind were not what I have done for 5Ks in the past. I was thinking about walking for 2 minutes and running for 30 seconds. If I felt good I could change it, but that seemed like a good plan to me. And I did do that to start out. I think starting with the walking was smart and allowed me to do the little bit of running. But I managed to do the intervals twice before I realized running just wasn’t going to be the right choice for me.

So I went down to my power walking speed and just kept going. I was still watching the clock and trying to do the math in my head if I was going to make it under my goal time. And I realized I would need to pick up the pace a bit to make it. So I did intervals similar to the run/walk one I had planned but just did it with increasing my power walking speed.

I knew it would be close and realized that I would need to run a little bit more to hit my goal. So for the last .1 of the 1.55 miles I did, I ran at my normal running speed. As much as I would have liked to have sprint, just running felt like a sprint at that point.

I didn’t really have a goal time in mind for the treadmill, just an overall goal time I was mindful of. I wanted to finish in under 50 minutes (I knew my PR was significantly faster than I could have gone so I didn’t even think about that time). And when I finished my 2.5K, I looked up at the clock and it said 49:08! It was such a relief to finish and to finish under the goal time. It was a bit frustrating to not PR in any section or overall, but I also know just completing it is more than many people do.

And there was no way I could keep going on the treadmill. I was done. My hips were killing me and I needed to recover. I didn’t even think twice about stopping and was so happy to be off the treadmill. I sat on the floor to stretch, drink water, and cheer on those who were still working on finishing.

I love that everyone stayed to cheer others on. It’s so supportive and I know if I was the last person on the treadmill I would feel better about it if I didn’t have to be alone. I finished toward the middle of the group so there were several people I got to cheer on. And watching them finish and be so proud of themselves was so great to watch.

And of course once we were all done we had to take a sweaty group photo.

All the coaches at all the Orangetheory locations I’ve been to have always been so supportive, but I felt like I got a bit of extra support this time. When I was on the rower, my foot straps were getting loose and that makes it harder to row. I didn’t want to stop rowing so I asked my coach Jenna to help me out. She didn’t hesitate for a second and got things much more secure for me so I could keep going. And when I was on the treadmill, my coach Hart came by to check in on me. I was struggling, but I asked him if he could help me refill my water bottle. I was out of water and didn’t want to have to get off the treadmill. Again, there was no hesitation to help out so that I could focus on finishing.

I’m guessing the next Dri-Tri will be in the spring since that is usually the timing of them. And as always I plan on doing that one and seeing what I can do. I really want to PR somewhere in the Dri-Tri and would seriously love to be able to do the full 5K. I know both things will require a lot of hard work and training on my part, but I want to see what I can do. And I love that I am so motivated to try! That’s not easy for me to want to do!

SaveSave

You Might Also Like

Default ThumbnailDri-Tri Prep Workouts (or The Beginning Of My Workout Week) Default ThumbnailRunning And Walking (or Accepting My Limits) Default ThumbnailLearning To Love The Rower (or Creating My Own Challenge) Default ThumbnailBuilding Up My Running Skills (or Getting A New PR) Default ThumbnailMixing Up The Routine (or Almost PRs And Dri-Tri Prep) Default ThumbnailRowing And Partners (or Enjoying A 4 Workout Week)

2 Comments

Posted in Fitness

Tagged , , , ,

Dri-Tri Prep Workouts (or The Beginning Of My Workout Week)

Posted on September 24, 2018 | Comments Off on Dri-Tri Prep Workouts (or The Beginning Of My Workout Week)

This past week of workouts consisted of 3 regular workouts and the Dri-Tri. My experience of the Dri-Tri is going to be in a different post (I feel like it always deserves its own post), so this is just about my first 3 workouts of the week.

Monday’s workout was a weird one for me. I got to the workout feeling really good and doing my warm-up on the treadmill since I wasn’t feeling nauseous anymore. I was fine during the warm-up but as soon as I added incline to do the first push pace, the nausea returned. I was really disappointed in this because this workout was a power day and it was going to be a great day to work on running (which I wanted to do to prepare for the Dri-Tri), but I couldn’t keep going on the treadmill feeling like that and switched to the bike.

With the exception of the first push pace in the first block, all of the blocks on the cardio side were about doing all out paces and walking recoveries. Each block had the same pattern with the all out pace being the same amount of time and the walking recovery increasing by 15 seconds each time. Each block had 4 all out paces and 3 recoveries and the all out paces were 1 minute, 45 seconds, and 30 seconds. Since I was feeling frustrated on the bike, I decided to push myself more than normal. I did my normal all out resistance for the 1 minute block. For the 45 second block I did 2 levels higher which I rarely use. And for the 30 second block I went another 2 levels higher which I usually only use if there is supposed to be a high incline on the treadmill for hill work. It wasn’t easy, but it made me feel better about being on the bike.

On the floor, we ended each block with an all out on the rower to go along with the last all out that the people on the treadmill were doing. But before that row, we had regular exercises to do. The first block was clean to press with weights and goblet squats. I went really heavy with my weight for the goblet squats and my legs were really feeling that the next day (probably the work with high resistance on the bike also made my legs sore). The second block was squats to high rows with weights and running man. And the last block was plank leg raises and double crunches. And with all the rowing all outs, I tried to get my rowing to be the best form possible while going quickly and with a lot of strength coming from my legs. Our rowers were set to MPH instead of wattage and I was able to get the MPH higher each time I was on the rower.

Wednesday’s workout was an endurance based run/row and I was a bit nervous about it. My legs were still feeling a bit sore from Monday’s workout (clearly I overdid it a lot) and I didn’t know how I would feel on the treadmill. But somehow, it really felt like we weren’t on the treadmill much at all.

We had 3 blocks of the run/row and it was kind of like we created our own plan. In the first block, we had a 2 1/2 minute row for distance. We had to remember what the distance was and after that we had a recovery row for about a minute. Then we were in the next block. For the second block, we had to row the same distance we got in our 2 1/2 minute row, but the goal was to complete it faster. I managed to take a few seconds off of my row which made me happy. When the row was done, we went to the treadmill and went until the block ended (which was about 4 1/2 minutes for me). I was power walking slightly slower than I normally do because my legs were sore. But it also felt good to be on the treadmill to try to stretch them out a bit. When that block ended, we had to remember the distance on the treadmill. And for the last block, we had to do the distance we got on the treadmill again and then go to the rower to do the distance we did in the first block. And if there was any time left after that, we had to hold a static squat. I finished with about 15 seconds left so I got to do a little bit of squat work before switching to the floor.

The floor also had 3 blocks and in all 3 blocks we had blast-off push-ups. These are push-ups that start with you leaning back like you are getting ready to spring and them push forward to be in a plank to do a push-up. They were not easy to do and they were actually making me feel a bit queasy. It was a different feeling than my hormonal nausea which was interesting to experience in a workout. So I had to be careful with where I was focusing my eyes during these push-ups. In the first block we also had skier swings with weights. The second block we also had uppercuts with weights and triceps with weights. And in the last block we also had weighted squat swings and bicycle crunches. I wasn’t going too heavy on my weights, especially on the squat work because I was sore. But I think because I was sore it felt like I was working harder than I really was, but that’s ok. I also was feeling a bit less sore after the workout than I was when I started.

Friday was my last workout before the Dri-Tri. I was debating if I should go a bit easier on myself so I didn’t get too sore or feel tired the next day, but when I saw it was a power workout I decided not to do that. I was still being a bit cautious and not going too hard, but I also wanted to test myself. I haven’t had a lot of time on the treadmill lately and I haven’t been able to do a lot of running. But with the Dri-Tri I really wanted to try to do some running intervals. So this workout was my last chance to test them out.

It was a 3 group workout so I was on the treadmill for about 15 minutes. We had 3 blocks and they all had a push pace, a base pace, a push pace, and an all out pace. Some of the push paces were a bit longer and over a minute and normally I would try to run those. But since I hadn’t been doing much running at all I decided to limit my running to 30 seconds at a time with the exception of the all out paces which were 45 seconds. While I would love my running intervals to be better and to know at the Dri-Tri I could do better than my last 5K, I’m not there yet. I was already thinking my run intervals for the next day would probably only be able to be 30 or 45 seconds, so limiting my running during the workout was a good prep day for what it would feel like. It wasn’t easy, but I felt a bit more optimistic that it would be possible to do intervals for the Dri-Tri as long as the rowing and floor work don’t burn me out.

Next I was on the rower where we had sprint row intervals. In between the rowing in the first and last block we had squats and in between the rowing in the second block we had lunges. The rowing was all short so a lot of people were pushing themselves to see how fast they could go. I decided to use that time to work on making sure my form is good and that I can stay steady with a pace. I still went a bit faster than I would have liked to, but all my rowing times were under the goal time which is always good. And on the floor we also had 3 blocks. We had lunges, push-ups, single arm chest presses, single arm reverse flys, hopovers, and bicep curls. I wasn’t using the heaviest weights for the weighted work because I didn’t want to be too sore on Saturday. But I still worked hard.

After those 3 workouts, I was cautiously optimistic about my Dri-Tri. I knew that I had done the best I could to be ready for it, but I also knew that there was so much more that I would have liked to do. I would have liked to have more long rowing challenges to test my endurance. I would have liked to be better with my running so I could feel confident that I could do run/walk intervals on the treadmill. And I would have liked to have just felt better about things going into it. There was still a bit of uncertainty on how well I would do, but I had to just keep telling myself that even if I am significantly slower than I ever have been, I will still be able to finish it.

And tomorrow I’ll share about how it went and whether or not I was able to reach any of the goals I had in my head.

You Might Also Like

Default ThumbnailFeeling Better About My Progress (or Coming Back From The Dri-Tri) Default ThumbnailSome Dri-Tri Prep Workouts (or Trading One Ailment For Another) Default ThumbnailLots Of Running (or Dri-Tri Prep Week) Default ThumbnailMixing Up The Routine (or Almost PRs And Dri-Tri Prep) Default ThumbnailGetting Ready For The Dri-Tri (or Working My Way Through The Workouts) Default ThumbnailBack To Regular Workouts (or Making Improvements On My Dri-Tri)

Comments Off on Dri-Tri Prep Workouts (or The Beginning Of My Workout Week)

Posted in Fitness

Tagged , , , , , ,

My First Dri-Tri Relay (or Trying To Not Be Disappointed In Myself)

Posted on March 20, 2018 | Comments Off on My First Dri-Tri Relay (or Trying To Not Be Disappointed In Myself)

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.

You Might Also Like

Default ThumbnailMaking Challenges More Challenging (or A Dri-Tri First For Me) Default ThumbnailLearning Something New Every Time (or Being Ok With My Dri-Tri) Default ThumbnailThird Time’s Not The Charm (or Being Ok With An Ok Dri-Tri) Default ThumbnailDri-Tri Time (or Beating My Own Records) Default ThumbnailMy First Dri-Tri (or Beating My Expectations) Default ThumbnailBaby Steps Of Improvements (or Getting Ready For The Dri-Tri)

Comments Off on My First Dri-Tri Relay (or Trying To Not Be Disappointed In Myself)

Posted in Fitness, Fun Stuff, Tough Stuff

Tagged , , , ,

Third Time’s Not The Charm (or Being Ok With An Ok Dri-Tri)

Posted on September 27, 2017 | 2 comments

This past Saturday was the Dri-Tri at Orangetheory. This would be my 3rd Dri–Tri, but even though I had done it before I was pretty nervous. I might have been more nervous this time because not only did I know what I was in for but I had high expectation of what I could do. But I also was nervous because I knew I didn’t feel as prepared this year as I had in the past.

My week of workouts leading up to the Dri-Tri seemed pretty good, especially with my running. I was really optimistic that while my rowing might not have been where I wanted it to be that I could make up the time for the overall timing with my running. Ideally, I wanted to beat my time on the rower, on the half 5K, and overall; but I would have been happy with just having a best on 2 of those things.

The morning of the Dri-Tri I was feeling a bit concerned, but I was excited to get there and do it. There were multiple heats for it and I got a space in the first one. It was later than I’m used to working out on a Saturday, but not that much later. When I got there, I got a rower and sat down while trying to calm myself down. I tried to focus on taking deep breaths and getting into a relaxed headspace. I knew that I didn’t want to overdo it on the rower and I was just reminding myself that I didn’t have to race anyone and that I could just focus on me.

Before we got started our coaches went over how the entire event would work. This was pretty familiar to me but the floor work always seems overwhelming when they go over everything that we have to do. Once we got back to the rowers to get started, I just kept reminding myself to take it easy because I knew that the row was going to take a while and I didn’t want to have to take breaks.

Once we got started, I tried to zone out. I didn’t look at the rower computer or really focus on anything. I just tried to keep my breathing and rowing to a pattern and steady. I did start a bit harder than I wanted to, but I quickly got into a comfortable rowing speed and was feeling pretty good. By the time that other people were done with their row, I started to focus a bit more again and see how I was doing. In my last Dri-Tri, my row was completed in under 9 minutes. This time, I was hoping to be done in under 8 1/2 minutes but I realized that it wasn’t going to happen.

I didn’t think I was going that slow, but I think that I wasn’t pushing hard enough with my legs. My wattage was lower than it should have been and that made my rowing distance go by slower. I knew I’d be able to get it done in under 10 minutes for sure, but I really wanted to be as close to my last 2,000 meter row time from the last time I did it. When I was done, I was exhausted and ready to move on. I was the last person to finish on the rower, but that was what I figured would happen. But I took almost 9 1/2 minutes to complete my row. It was pretty disappointing and I started to get down on myself. But I was still hopeful that I could make up some time on the floor and on the treadmill so my overall time was still improving.

On the floor, we had 300 body weight exercises. Those included push-ups, squats, step ups (or for me, lunges), hop overs, and plank jacks. We had a certain number of reps to do for each exercise, but to complete 300 reps we did them all twice. This part has been one of the toughest for me in the Dri-Tri because I’m usually so tired after the rower and it’s not easy to do all these exercises. Plus, I’m so competitive with myself so I don’t take all the breaks that I should. I’m not good at planning my breaks when they aren’t built into the workout so I usually go without breaks for the beginning and then take more breaks than I should toward the end.

The floor work was going fine for me until the first set of burpees. My hip popped out during those and I just figured I’d get it to pop back in and keep going. I pushed it back like I normally do and thought I got it done. But it kept coming out. This does happen from time to time and it’s really annoying when it does because it seems like it takes forever to make better. But I didn’t have forever to work on it so I just had to keep going and stopping when I needed to put pressure on my hip to make it feel better. I tried to count in batches so it didn’t seem so overwhelming when I was trying to count to 30 and that helped a bit. And like with the rower, I was the last person to finish on the floor before moving to the treadmill.

The treadmill part of the Dri-Tri is a 5K. If you are a power walker, you do half of a 5K. I originally thought that I’d try to see how far I could get into a 5K before I had to stop, but my official time would be with the half 5K since that’s what I’ve used every other time. I was going to do my treadmill work as a run/walk and since I had some great running earlier in the week with my workouts I was hopeful that it would go well. My big goal was to do the running as either 2 or 3 minute intervals with 1 minute of walking and see how that felt. But because of my hip, I barely made it 1 minute of running at the start before I had to walk.

I thought that maybe I’d just have to do 1 minute intervals even though I didn’t want to be slower than before, but when I tried to run the second time I knew my body just wasn’t having it. It was tough to accept that I would be walking the entire time, but I knew that I had to do it. I kept my speed steady at 3.5mph which is my standard base pace and I kept my incline at 4% which is also what I use for my base pace. I knew I could do it normally, but this wasn’t normal circumstances. My hip wasn’t happy and I had to take lots of breaks to try to make it feel better.

There were plenty of times I felt like giving up on the treadmill. And there were a few times I was close to tears because I was so mad at myself. I questioned if I did too much in my workouts leading up to this and made things harder on myself. I questioned if doing the Dri-Tri in general was the right decision for me. And I wondered where things went wrong and caused all the issues that I had that day. The other problem was that it takes much longer to do the half 5K walking than it does as a run/walk, so it felt like it was taking forever. But when I got close to the end I decided that I had to push myself and ran for the last minute or so until I got to 1.55 miles. This was not the best time I could have gotten on the treadmill, but it’s what ended up happening.

It’s slower than what half of a 5K would have taken me for the past few races, but again there was almost no running this time. And when I do 5K races I didn’t do 2,000 meters of rowing and 300 body weight exercises before my race, so I guess I can’t really compare it.

The first time I did a Dri-Tri, I wanted to finish in under an hour and I finished in just under 53 minutes. My second Dri-Tri I wanted to just do my rowing in under 10 minutes (which I did) and I did the entire thing in under 44 minutes. This time, I thought maybe I could do the entire thing in under 43 minutes and I could beat my rowing time. I didn’t beat my rowing time and my overall time was just over 50 minutes. I’m not happy with myself at all, but I’m trying to be. I know that not everyone can do this fitness event so just getting through it is an accomplishment. But when you have such high hopes for yourself it’s tough to accept something less than what you wanted.

I’ve spent the past few days trying to think about what I could have done better, but I think that things were just not in my favor that day. I don’t know if I could have changed anything and that’s part of what’s tough for me to deal with. But I keep reminding myself that this was just one time doing the Dri-Tri and I should have plenty of chances in the future to do another one. I can work harder on preparing and see what’s possible. But more than anything, I need to just remember that I did it and that’s the most important thing!

 

SaveSave

You Might Also Like

Default ThumbnailBeing Hard On Myself (or Pushing Myself To Not Be Sick) Default ThumbnailRunning And Walking (or Accepting My Limits) Default ThumbnailMore Progress And Steps Back (or Trying My Hardest) Default ThumbnailRowing And Partners (or Enjoying A 4 Workout Week) Default ThumbnailLots Of Running and Rowing (or Proof Of My Progress) Default ThumbnailLearning To Love The Rower (or Creating My Own Challenge)

2 Comments

Posted in Fitness, Fun Stuff, Tough Stuff

Tagged , , ,

Lots Of Running (or Dri-Tri Prep Week)

Posted on September 25, 2017 | 1 comment

This past week of workouts was one that I was taking a bit more seriously than other weeks. I knew I’d be doing the Dri-Tri on Saturday (that’s going to be a post for another day) and I also knew that I probably hadn’t been training as much for it as I had in the past. I wasn’t super worried about how I would do in the Dri-Tri, but I also didn’t want to feel horrible when I was done. So I spent this past week of workouts trying to do the best that I could every day in the hopes that the training would get me ready for Saturday.

Monday’s workout was the 3 group workout that focused on power. On the treadmill, we pretty much did 90 second intervals the entire time that were push to all out paces with variations on how long each push or all out was (but they all added up to 90 seconds combined). I was able to run all of the 90 second intervals which made me happy. I do want to get my running intervals up a bit and the last 5K I did was with 2 minute running intervals. I’d love to be at 3 minute running intervals for my next race (which I’m not totally sure when that will be), so 90 second intervals was good practice and something that shouldn’t be too tough for me.

On the floor, we had 2 blocks. The first block was lunges, chest presses on the straps, and squats. I knew I’d have lunges and squats during the Dri-Tri and that we would have push ups so chest presses are close. And the second block was more lunges, squats using the Bosu, and plank work. And when I was on the rowers is was mainly sprint rowing work. The first block started at 400 meters and went down 100 meters each time with squats to bicep curls in-between. And the second block started at 100 meters and went up 50 meters each round with squats in-between. I wish I had a long row that day because I was nervous about the 2,000 meter row, but there wasn’t one that day.

Wednesday was a run/row day that focused on endurance, strength, and power. It was an interesting run/row because we had weight work between everything so it felt almost like a full workout just in the run/row. It started with a 500 meter row, then 10 front raises with weights, then a .1 mile run, and the round finished with 5 arm snatches on each side. Then the next round had the row go down 100 meters and the run go up .05 miles.

I told myself that I would try to run the run segments in full as long as I could. I figured that I probably would need to take a walking break when I got to the .25 mile run but I’d try to run the earlier segments in full. Fortunately (I guess) for me, I never made it to the .25 mile run so I did manage to run all the run segments that I had. And for the rowing, the 500 meter one was a bit tough because I went a bit too hard in the beginning. But the other rowing segments weren’t too bad and I was able to take it easy since I was tired from the running.

The floor had 3 blocks. The first block was squats with the Bosu, lateral lunges with medicine ball presses, kneeling wood choppers, and sit ups with rotations. This block was pretty hard for me and I was taking a bunch of breaks. The wood choppers were especially hard and I think it’s because we haven’t done them for a while and I’m out of practice. The second block had plank jack to pop jacks (which I had to end up doing as plank jacks only due to hip pain), crunches, and hip raises. And the last block was lunges using the straps and swimmers. I felt pretty strong during those last 2 floor blocks so that made up for feeling so off during the first one.

And Friday’s workout also ended up being a run/row day and it was focused on power. I knew I didn’t want to overdo things because of the Dri-Tri the next day. Fortunately this format actually worked well for taking it easier than normal. Our class was small so we ended up working in 1 group that all started on cardio instead of splitting up and having half of us start on cardio and half of us start on the floor.

The first block of the run/row started with rowing. We rowed 200 meters and then however long that took on the rower was the time that we ran on the treadmill. Each round we went up 50 meters on the rower and used that time for the treadmill. All of the times for me were under 2 minutes so I knew I could run it all. I kept my running at my usual push pace which is the pace I’ve been able to use for some of my distance running.

After that block we all moved to the floor where we had 2 blocks. The first block was a timed block with 30 seconds for each thing. We had bicep curls, squats, and skaters. We did the series of moves for 3 rounds and then moved on to the next floor block which was by the number of reps (not timed). That block had lunges, running man, and side plank rotations. And then it was back to the run/row.

The second block of the run/row was similar, but flipped. We started on the treadmill for a .1 mile run and then went to the rower and rowed for however long it took us to do the run. Each time on the treadmill went up by .05 miles and then we used that time for the rowing that round. I had a similar idea with the running as I had on Wednesday. I knew running .25 miles was probably going to be a run/walk but I could run the shorter ones in full. And again, I never made it to the .25 mile run so I was running them all in full. The rowing was all pretty much sprint rows since they weren’t too long so again I was a bit nervous about my lack of endurance row training. But the key was just trying to not go too hard in the beginning and to stay steady since that’s what I’d need to do with a 2,000 meter row.

The floor in the end was similar to the other floor blocks. We had one block that was timed and one block that was by reps. For the timed block, it was 3 rounds of 3 exercises for 30 seconds each. This time we had bicep curls on the straps, sumo squats, and skaters before moving on to the last block. The final block was squats, plank shoulder taps, and abs. That last block was a bit tough because I was tired and feeling a bit off that afternoon (I think I was dehydrated), but I made it through.

Even though I did a ton of running, I still know I haven’t been doing as much running as I should. Part of the reason has been that I’m not clear on when my next 5K will be so I don’t feel like I’m training for something. I usually have a 5K in November. This year it was supposed to be in October but nothing has been officially announced and there are no sign ups. And my race that I do in April seems to be changing and there might not be a 5K anymore. I’m still waiting on seeing what happens, but knowing that April might be my next race isn’t that much motivation. I need to find something other than a 5K to push me to work on my running so that when I have the Dry-Tris I will feel more prepared.

You Might Also Like

Default ThumbnailFeeling Better About My Progress (or Coming Back From The Dri-Tri) Default ThumbnailGetting Ready For The Dri-Tri (or Working My Way Through The Workouts) Default ThumbnailDri-Tri Prep Workouts (or The Beginning Of My Workout Week) Default ThumbnailMixing Up The Routine (or Almost PRs And Dri-Tri Prep) Default ThumbnailSome Dri-Tri Prep Workouts (or Trading One Ailment For Another) Default ThumbnailLots Of Running And Hills (or Back To A 4 Workout Week)

1 Comment

Posted in Fitness

Tagged , , , , ,

Mixing Up The Routine (or Almost PRs And Dri-Tri Prep)

Posted on September 18, 2017 | Comments Off on Mixing Up The Routine (or Almost PRs And Dri-Tri Prep)

This past week of workouts was an interesting one for me. I’m so set in my routine that when things change it can throw me off. And this past week, I couldn’t work out on Wednesday and I switched it to Tuesday. I don’t want to say that I’m set in my routine, but it is weird when I’m not doing my normal schedule. My Tuesday felt like a Wednesday, my Wednesday felt like a Tuesday, and I didn’t know what day it was on Thursday since I had 2 days off from working out. But I still managed to get my workouts in and it’s good for me to mix things up sometimes.

Monday was a 3 group class and we did a mix of a partner workout and a tornado workout. It was very unexpected but it was pretty awesome! It was a 3 partner workout for most of the class, but only the partners on the floor and treadmill switched. The treadmill partner did .1 all out runs 3 times with some recovery between and then tagged the floor person. I did the first and third .1 as a run and the middle one as a .05 power walk. When it was my turn on the floor, we had a mix of jumping jacks, push-ups, abs, pop jacks, and arm work. But I was never on the floor that long because my partner on the treadmill would tag me out.

My turn on the rower was in the middle of the workout and it was just a 10 minute distance row with some guidance of when to do push or all out on the rower with some recovery. Overall, the goal was to get to 2000 meters and I thought that was perfect because I have the dri-tri soon and 2000 meters is how we start the dri-tri. But in the 10 minutes I was on the rower, I only made it to 1700 meters and it made me realize that I need to work on distance rowing more to get ready for the dri-tri.

After the partner workout was done, we had a 2 minute tornado workout around the room. So we were only at each station for 2 minutes. On the treadmill it was a 1 minute push pace to a 1 minute all out. I was pretty tired by that point so I ended up walking it. On the floor we had 2 minutes of plank work. And on the rower we had a 2 minute row for distance and I was just under the goal of 400 meters.

While I’m getting pretty used to working out 2 days in a row, it was still very weird to me to work out on Tuesday. It’s pretty rare that I’ll work out then but it was the only time I could fit in the workout in my schedule unless I wanted this past week to be a 3 workout week (which I didn’t want). The workout was a mix of endurance, strength, and power and we did switch between the blocks. And I was very happy to start on the treadmill after all the times I haven’t been able to start on it lately.

There were 2 mini blocks on the treadmill for the 2 times we were on it. And all of them were pretty much the same format. We had a 1 minute push pace which I was able to run, a 2 minute hill which I walked, and a 30 second all out pace which I ran. I was happy that I was able to do a little bit of running and since I rarely run on hills I didn’t mind walking my hill work.

On the floor, we also had 2 blocks and each block started with rowing. The first block had an 800 meter row and the second block had a 400 meter row. Both rows were under the time we were supposed to be under, but neither were spectacular times for me. And besides the rowing we had squats, abs, planks, and lunges on the floor. Even though it felt weird to be working out on a Tuesday, it was the first workout in a while that felt totally normal to me. I felt like myself and that I was working out as hard as I could.

Friday’s workout was a challenging one. I knew going into the workout that we were going to have a 23 minute run for distance challenge. Usually I would check my records to see what I usually can do for those challenges, but I forgot to this time (I’ll come back to that). I’ve been pushing myself more with my running and have found that sometimes I can run for a lot longer than I thought I could. I was pretty certain that I couldn’t run for 23 minutes without stopping, but I figured that I could do my best and see what happened.

I didn’t follow any of the coaches instructions of when we were doing base or push pace because I just wanted to run at a steady pace that I know I can handle. And it did start off pretty rough and I debated if I just wanted to do some intervals instead. But I decided that I was just going to go for it and when it got to be too much that I’d take a walking break. I focused a lot on the clock on the treadmill and was telling myself when I was 10%, 25%, 30% done because it did help me think that I was doing ok. And I eventually decided that I would take the middle minute of the challenge as my first walking break. So when the clock on the treadmill said 11 minutes, I went down to a recovery walk.

Originally, my plan was to run the last 11 minutes after taking my walking break, but my body wasn’t going to do that. For the last 11 minutes, I took 2 or 3 more walking breaks (I honestly can’t remember how many I took) but they were each only about a minute. And when we got to the last minute of the challenge, I bumped my speed up a bit. My long-term goal for the 23 minute distance challenge is to be able to do 1.75 miles, so I was pretty happy with my distance when I was done this time.

But the problem was that after the workout was done I looked at my treadmill records and saw that my PR was 1.640. I was only 0.001 miles off of my PR and that would have been only like 1 second less of walking or bumping up the speed a tiny bit for a second or two at the end. That was so frustrating to see and I was a bit mad at myself. I know if I had looked at my record before the workout that I would have made the effort to beat it this time.

After the treadmill work, I was pretty exhausted and fortunately the floor work wasn’t too bad. We started with a 4 minute distance row, but for me I was more focused on just getting through the row and not seeing what my distance was. I did manage to get over 800 meters, so I was happy with that. Then we moved on to the first floor block which was all Bosu work. I had to make some modifications with my workout so I did squats with one foot on the Bosu instead of lateral hop overs, plank leg lifts (but I skipped using the Bosu), and running man. And the second block was  strap work, push ups, and crunches on the Bosu.  And we ended the workout with a 2 minute row for distance.

Even though I was pretty disappointed after my workout with being so close to getting a PR on my run, I was still pretty happy overall because I did manage to run for more time than I ever have before in class!

Saturday’s workout had to be a bit of a recovery workout for me. I was still feeling my long run and I knew that I wouldn’t be able to do what I can usually do in class. We had a mix of endurance, strength, and power and it was a 3 group workout. Each section of the room had 2 blocks and we did both blocks for that section before we moved on.

I started on the rower and the first block was a series of 30 second all out rows followed by lunges and squats. I didn’t stress too much about how far I was going each 30 second challenge so I didn’t reset my rower each time. I know I did at least 100 meters each time, but I really didn’t think too much about it. And the second block on the rower was decreasing rows starting at 500 meters with weighted swings between each row. I only was able to complete the 500 and 400 meter row before time was called (I was working on the 300 meter row then).

Next I moved to the floor where again we had 2 blocks. The first block was arm work, squats with weights, and seated knee tucks. The knee tucks are tough on my hip, but I was able to get through half of the set before I had to take a break each time. And the second block was pull ups on the straps, skaters, and plank jacks. And all of those ended up being much easier for me than I thought they’d be.

Finally, I ended up on the treadmill. I knew that it was going to be a walking workout no matter what. We did a lot of 2 minutes of work either on an incline or at a push pace (which means at an incline when you are walking) followed by base pace for the time we were on the treadmill. Since I wasn’t running and this was at the end of the workout, I didn’t really focus on what I was doing and felt like I was a bit on autopilot.

This week is the dri-tri and I’m hoping that all the work I’ve done lately will help me get a new best time. I know that it might not be possible, but I can still hope for it. But I know that this crazy workout week that I had last week was good prep work since I had a long row and a long run to use as training. I guess I’ll have to see how it goes when I attempt the dri-tri for the third time this week!

You Might Also Like

Default ThumbnailDri-Tri Prep Workouts (or The Beginning Of My Workout Week) Default ThumbnailFeeling More Back To Normal (or A Good Week Of Hell Week Prep) Default ThumbnailA Shorter Workout Week (or Doing Some 5K Prep) Default ThumbnailWalking And Running (Mixing Up My Workouts) Default ThumbnailLots Of Running (or Dri-Tri Prep Week) Default ThumbnailSome Dri-Tri Prep Workouts (or Trading One Ailment For Another)

Comments Off on Mixing Up The Routine (or Almost PRs And Dri-Tri Prep)

Posted in Fitness

Tagged , , , , , ,

Dri-Tri Time (or Beating My Own Records)

Posted on March 29, 2017 | 2 comments

As I mentioned in my workout recap post this week, my 4th workout of the week was the Dri-Tri at Orangetheory. I’ve done the Dri-Tri once before, and while it was tough I had a great time. I had such a sense of accomplishment when I was done with the event and it felt like I had really been able to push myself more than I ever knew I could. So when I saw that the Dri-Tri was coming up again, I knew I had to sign up.

I was hoping I could get one of my workout friends to join me, but nobody was able to do it too. But that’s ok since we had an amazing group of people doing it and a bunch of the Orangetheory staff was there to cheer us all on.

The first event of the Dri-Tri is the 2,000 meter row. I’ve been doing a lot of rowing lately and my power and speed have been improving quite a bit. But even though I’ve been doing significantly better on the rower, 2,000 meters is a long distance. We rarely do rowing that long (although we did have the 2,017 meter row in January) so I was feeling a bit unsure about my ability to do the rowing. Last year, I really wanted to do my rowing in under 10 minutes and couldn’t do that. So I decided to set my goal to something that seems reasonable and wanted to do it in under 10 minutes.

While I was rowing, I tried to zone out. I didn’t go that hard because I knew that I could do too much in the beginning and burn out. I wanted to keep a relatively steady pace and just hope that I could get through it quickly enough. I was starting to notice other people finishing their row and getting up, so I knew that I must be getting a bit closer to finishing my row. I ended up being the last person off of the rower, but that doesn’t matter since I was only competing against myself and what I was able to do last time. And I ended up not only doing my row under 10 minutes, I did it in under 9 minutes! I did my 2,000 meters in 8:45.2! That was so much better than I ever imagined that I could do.

But there was no time to celebrate my amazing row because it was time to move on to the second part of the Dri-Tri: the floor work. This was a set of 300 body weight moves that we had to do. There were 2 rounds of the floor work (each round had a total of 150 reps) and it consisted of squats, push ups, burpees, hop overs, plank jacks, and step ups (I had to do lunges instead of step ups). I was pretty tired from the row, but I knew that last time the floor work was a struggle and I needed to stay focused.

I was taking breaks for water, to wipe off sweat, or to catch my breath quite a bit. But each time I was taking a break was when I was switching moves and not in the middle of a set of something. While it’s nice to have things broken up into 2 rounds, it was hard to think after the first round that I had to do that all over again. And again, I was the last person to be done with that part but I was ok with it because I knew I had the treadmill still to go.

The treadmill portion of the Dri-Tri is a 5K run. If you are a power walker, you do half of a 5K. I knew I’d be doing run/walk intervals and thought that I would try to go for the full 5K this time instead of doing half like I did the time before. I had my intervals at 2 minutes running/1 minute walking and that was going ok for me. But my hips were starting to really hurt (which usually happens when I do rowing or floor work before the treadmill) and I realized that it would be best for me if I only did half of the 5K. I was a bit sad that I wouldn’t do what I set out to do with doing the entire 5K, but I also realized that this way I would find out exactly how much faster I was this year.

I kept my intervals up for the entire thing. My speeds were pretty stable except for the very end when I took it to a sprint for me so I could get as many seconds off as I could. And I was happy to see that my half 5K was faster than what half my 5K was during my last race by about 20 seconds.

This gives me high hopes that my race coming up next week may be a PR again! But I’m still worried about how I will do with a full 5K as a run/walk again. But I couldn’t focus on that because I completed my Dri-Tri! And when compared to my Dri-Tri last year, I took just over 9 minutes off my total time. That’s a pretty impressive improvement in my mind.

When I was done, there were still a few runners finishing their 5K run. I was more than happy to hang out and cheer everyone on because I know this is a pretty tough challenge to do. This is much more difficult than a regular class since you are not stopping between blocks to pay attention to instructions. Once the clock starts, you are on the go until you complete everything. And even though I was done in under 45 minutes, it didn’t feel easier than an hour-long class.

I’m so lucky that I’ve been able to do the Dri-Tri twice so far. And I know that I will be doing it again in the future. It may be another year before I do another one because of the timing of things, but I’m excited to see what I’ll be able to do whenever I have the next one. Maybe I can take more time off of my row. Or maybe I can do the full 5K! Whatever I can do, I’m just so happy that I’ve been able to prove to myself that I’m so much stronger and powerful than I was last year!

You Might Also Like

Default ThumbnailLots Of Running (or Dri-Tri Prep Week) Default ThumbnailMy First Dri-Tri (or Beating My Expectations) Default ThumbnailMixing Up The Routine (or Almost PRs And Dri-Tri Prep) Default ThumbnailMy First Dri-Tri Relay (or Trying To Not Be Disappointed In Myself) Default ThumbnailSome Dri-Tri Prep Workouts (or Trading One Ailment For Another) Default ThumbnailThird Time’s Not The Charm (or Being Ok With An Ok Dri-Tri)

2 Comments

Posted in Fitness, Fun Stuff

Tagged , , , , , , ,

My First Dri-Tri (or Beating My Expectations)

Posted on May 10, 2016 | 6 comments

As I mentioned yesterday, I did the Dri-Tri at Orangetheory this past Saturday. I have wanted to do the Dri-Tri a couple of times before, but they have always been on days that I couldn’t do it for one reason or another. I don’t do a ton of fitness events (mainly just my 5Ks), so to have something to train for and challenge myself with sounded awesome to me.

All the coaches at Orangetheory have been upfront about what exactly the Dri-Tri is. It’s a 2,000 meter row, 300 body weight exercises, and a 5K. For power walkers, you only have to do a half 5K but everything else is the same. And I’ve done all of those elements before. Technically I don’t know if I’ve ever done 300 body weight exercises in a row, but I figured that since it should take me a similar amount of time to finish as it takes to do a class it wouldn’t be that much worse than a class. I’ve done a 2,000 meter row and I’ve done a 5K (and I only had to do half of one), so I wasn’t too worried. But of course, the nerves just got worse every day leading up to the Dri-Tri.

The day of the event, I had to work in the morning (my heat wasn’t until 1:45pm) and I had found the perfect shirt to wear earlier that week.

Strong

There’s actually a workout shirt sold by Old Navy that has my word of the year on it! So of course I had to get it and I figured the Dri-Tri was the perfect opportunity to wear it!

When I got to Orangetheory that afternoon, they had our names on the treadmills and floor stations so there was no confusion on where we needed to go (and I was glad that I got one of my favorite treadmills). There were 12 of us in the heat (they have to keep it small so we all have our own stations) and we started with a group stretch and instructions on how the event would go. We had all the floor work demoed for us and there was only 1 thing that I couldn’t do because of my hip. I got my alternative given to me before we started so I felt pretty ready to go when we were going to start as a group.

Our first event was the 2,000 meter row. I’ve done that distance a couple of times in the past and I know that I can do it in under 10 minutes. But 10 minutes on the row is a long time and I knew it was going to be tough to get through it. I didn’t pay attention to the clock or the distance countdown and just looked at the treadmill in front of me and tried to get into a different head space. People were done with their rows starting at about 6 minutes in and I just kept trying to focus on not stopping. I’m happy to say that I only had to stop one time (the straps for my feet were getting loose so I had to stop and tighten them). And even though I was the last person off of the rower by about a minute and it took me over 10 minutes to get it done, I did it and was happy to say good riddance to the rower for the day.

I knew the floor work wasn’t going to be easy, but I really wasn’t prepared for how tough it was going to be for me. The floor work consisted of pushups (I did mine on my knees), burpees, step ups (I did lunges instead), hop overs, plank jacks, and squats. Each thing was a lot of reps (I think the smallest number was 20) and after we did the cycle one time we had to go back to the beginning and do it again to make it 300 body weight exercises. The pushups were fine and the squats were tough but not unbearable. But the burpees were pretty bad. My hips were starting to lock up and I was feeling a bit dizzy from going from standing to on the ground a lot. But I took breaks when I needed them and once I made it through the first round I knew I was half way through the floor.

The second round on the floor felt like it took so much longer than the first, but I also knew where I was going to hurt and I took a few more water breaks (and catching my breath breaks) than I did the first time. By the time I had finished it and moved on to the treadmill, I was one of the last people on the floor and I felt like I had already done more than a normal class. But I knew I still had 1.55 miles to go on the treadmill and the sooner I started it the sooner I would finish!

The treadmill sucked. There’s no other way to say it. It was pretty awful. My hips were in so much pain and I knew that there was a good chance this would happen. After doing floor work, my hips don’t always seem to be right so walking can hurt. But since I had to do things in the order of the Dri-Tri, I had to do the treadmill last. I originally thought I’d try to start the treadmill at 3.5 miles an hour, but after less than a minute I realized that was not a good plan. I pretty much did the entire 1.55 miles at 3.4 miles an hour and 6% incline. I had to take breaks every .1 miles or so to press on my hips (that helps to relive the pain), drink some water, and catch my breath.

After being on the treadmill for a few minutes, the first Dri-Tri finisher finished their 5K. People started to finish pretty close together and I was maybe only halfway through my 1.55 miles. By the time I was getting close to the end of my treadmill time, there were only 3 of us left (I was the only power walker in the entire group). I finished by 1.55 miles in a little more than 27 minutes and as soon as I was done I was ready to sit on the treadmill to rest. I knew I couldn’t do that so I stood up and worked on catching my breath and drinking more water. Eventually I sat down on a rower I watched everyone else finish.

My time for the event ended up being 52:40, which is much better than the hour I was expecting it to take me. I really had no clue how long I had been working when I was done (there was a clock on the heart rate screen but I forgot to look when I finished). I knew that it was under an hour, but I had no idea I could have done it in under 53 minutes. That’s pretty amazing and I think it’s a good time for my first every Dri-Tri.

Finisher

We all waited for the last people to finish their 5Ks on the treadmill and it was really great to cheer everyone on. At every stage we were being cheered on and when we were on the treadmills everyone was cheering for each person (it’s not easy to cheer on the rowers or floor). And as the last person was finishing their run, we were all clapping and cheering for them and they had such a huge smile on their face as they finished. It was such a wonderfully supportive room and I feel so lucky that I got to be a part of that experience.

Dri-Tri

They try to do the Dri-Tris at Orangetheory 2 or 3 times a year, so hopefully this is just the first of many for me. As long as I don’t have a conflict that I can’t get out of, I know I’ll be at the next one. It’s a struggle and challenge to do, but I like having things to work toward and now I just want to beat my time of 52:40 so I can say I have a PR!

You Might Also Like

Default ThumbnailMore Progress And Steps Back (or Trying My Hardest) Default ThumbnailA Shorter Workout Week (or Trying To Go All Out) Default ThumbnailA Full Workout Week (or Sticking With My Plan) Default ThumbnailMore Running! (or Gaining Endurance) Default ThumbnailDri-Tri Time (or Beating My Own Records) Default ThumbnailTruly My Peak Performance (or Exceeding My Expectations)

6 Comments

Posted in Fitness, Fun Stuff

Tagged , , , ,

Baby Steps Of Improvements (or Getting Ready For The Dri-Tri)

Posted on May 9, 2016 | 1 comment

First, I will share that I did do the dri-tri at Orangetheory this past weekend. That is going to be tomorrow’s post (I think that event deserves its own post), but my workout week this past week was all about getting ready to do it. I decided on Monday morning that I was going to go for it, so I focused my workouts on how each thing was going to get me ready for it.

Monday’s workout was a switch day that had endurance, strength, and power. I signed up for the dri-tri just before taking Monday’s class, so I went into class feeling a bit nervous about if I did the right thing signing up for it. So I was not only grateful that we had a switch day, all of the blocks were on the shorter side. The treadmill portion of class went ok for me. The improvements in my speed that I had made recently were short lasting so I was back to my usual speeds on the treadmill. It’s frustrating when I was doing really well for a while to be back at my old speeds, but I just have to focus on what improvements I can make. On Monday we also had 600 meter rows, which aren’t sprints but I was grateful for them because I knew I’d have a long row during the dri-tri. The floor work was a lot of arms, shoulders, squats, and abs.

But at the very end of class, we had a little bit of time left so we all partnered up for a quick challenge. One person was holding a squat with their hands out while the other partner did high knees to hit their hands. I was able to keep a pretty low squat so my partner didn’t have to do too high of knees, but when it was my turn I knew I couldn’t do the running style of high knees. So I just pretty much marched in place and tried to get my knees up as much as possible.

Wednesday was a strength day, so that means hills on the treadmill. Hills are not my favorite thing to do, but I’m really trying to be better at them. This time, I’m pretty happy with how I did. My incline was between 4-10% for the entire time (10% isn’t that easy for me), and even though I was supposed to be at a higher incline at times I think I did a pretty good job. I was also able to do some speed increases on the hills which made me happy. After the treadmill work was done, we had a lot of heavy weight stuff to do on the floor. For my arm work and my lunges, I was holding 20 pound weights. For some arm things, I’m getting close to being able to use 25 pound weights, but I’m not quite there yet. But to do lunges with heavy weights makes me happy because for a long time I wasn’t able to use the weights while doing lunges. It’s still tough for me because of balance issues, but I’m starting to build my core up enough so that it is helping me build better balance. We also had a 500 meter row that day. 500 meters isn’t a long distance, but I was still feeling a bit tired at the end of it. And in my head, I just kept thinking that 500 meters is only 1/4 of what I have to do during the dri-tri, so that got to me a bit. But I just tried to focus on getting the row done and figured that since the row is at the beginning of the dri-tri I would feel different then.

Friday was another switch day with endurance, strength, and power. Again, the blocks were relatively short (I think the longest one was 8 minutes) so things were a bit easier for me. I actually ended up doing really great on the hills (still not going higher than 10% incline but the speeds were better). Since it was a switch day, I never spent that long on the treadmill and I started to worry about the dri-tri again (where I would need to do a half 5K on the treadmill), but I just looked at how far I got each block and tried to think about how that is a chunk of what I would do the next day. After the treadmill blocks were all done, I realized that maybe I should have done the bike instead since I was going to do treadmill the next day, but by then it was too late.

On the floor we had sprint rows (250 meters and under) that went pretty well for me. My biggest problem on rowing is that when I’m doing them my legs don’t always bend straight (they kind of butterfly out sometimes). And since I’m not bending straight, I’m not able to get as much power in my rows and I know I can. But for these sprint rows, I was bending much better than I think I ever have and the sprints went by really quickly. For the chest presses I was using 20 pounds weights and for my front raises (shoulder work) I was doing 15 pounds instead of 12 pounds. And we had a new move on the floor as well. It was a 4 point plank. Pretty much it was a plank with shoulder touches and then toe touches. I usually don’t do plank work on my toes because of my calf, but this time it ended up being easier to do the work on my toes than on my knees. They are pretty hard to do, but I managed my best and I don’t think I looked too awkward.

After my Friday workout, my nerves for the dri-tri were pretty high. I was thinking back what I had done this past week and tried to relate it to what I knew I would have to do on Saturday. But of course thinking like that stressed me out even more, so I tried to forget it all and just get a decent night sleep since I had to work in the morning before the dri-tri.

And that recap will be coming tomorrow!

You Might Also Like

Default ThumbnailDri-Tri Prep Workouts (or The Beginning Of My Workout Week) Default ThumbnailAlmost Normal (or Guess I’m Definitely Missing The Dri-Tri) Default ThumbnailBack To Regular Workouts (or Making Improvements On My Dri-Tri) Default ThumbnailGetting Ready For The Dri-Tri (or Working My Way Through The Workouts) Default ThumbnailThird Time’s Not The Charm (or Being Ok With An Ok Dri-Tri) Default ThumbnailMy First Dri-Tri Relay (or Trying To Not Be Disappointed In Myself)

1 Comment

Posted in Fitness, Fun Stuff, Tough Stuff

Tagged , , , ,