Also ... I feel like everyone who tries OTF becomes a die hard. I haven't heard anyone say they don't like it or are lukewarm about it. Are they drugging the water or something?
This is from February 2019. Fast forward 4 years (I think that's the math) ... I guess I'm kind of an OTF die hard now? I mean, I have the lowest tier membership, but I also love a lot of things about it and I might upgrade in a few months when my schedule briefly calms down (the short lull between Passover and baseball season). Oh, and it's not the water, it's something that passes into your skin through the heart rate monitor. I don't know how they do it, but that's definitely what causes the obsession.
But I get what you're saying about OTF. That's one of the things that has scared me from trying - I don't need everyone else to see my stats up on a board.
Also ... the board doesn't scare me now that I know what's on it. Most classes that I've been to that have leaderboards (I'm thinking spin classes mostly), I opt out because I don't want anyone to see my stats or rank. OTF I'm on the board because I wear their HRM (I like having my stats in the app), but all it shows is my HR zone/percentage and "splat points" (# of minutes spent in the two highest zones), and it's all alphabetical, no ranking at all. And nobody cares that I'm always in the red zone (my heart rate shoots up like crazy when I exercise). I like that there's no ranking and it really doesn't feel like a competition to me.
I get why I was scared of Orangetheory initially. And I think that if I had tried it at a different point of my life, I would feel very differently about it. But I think I found it at a point in my life where it's really good for me.
Anyway, the reason I'm here (other than the fact that I just can't quit this thing) is to share a story from Orangetheory. On Friday we did a benchmark workout called
"Catch Me if You Can". Basically, every few minutes (starts at every 2 minutes then goes to every minute towards the end), there's a checkpoint and if you're not at a certain distance, you get "caught" and stop running (and move on to another exercise - for the class I did, it was alternating rowing 200m and running 0.2 miles). If you run 2.8 miles in 20 minutes, then you didn't get caught (you then get an extra 2 minutes to tack on more distance).
At first I was afraid of CMIYC. There's no universe in which I can run 2.8 miles in 20 minutes. There probably isn't a universe in which I can run 2 miles in 20 minutes. But then I saw some people on reddit (which I still hate and only use for OTF things) talking about hoping to make it to the 10 minute mark and I realized ... it's okay if I get caught. So I went. I got caught at the 10 minute mark (the distance was 1 mile and I was at 0.94), and I was happy with that. I was one of 3-4 people in my group who got caught at that point, and the coach (who happens to be one of my favorite coaches) was encouraging us to celebrate getting as far as we did. 2 people in our class didn't get caught, out of like 25-30 total people. So really, almost everyone got caught. And that wasn't a bad thing. We were all encouraged to celebrate what we accomplished and were never made to feel like we failed or missed out on anything. And that's kinda what I've come to love about Orangetheory. It's the fact that whatever you did that day is an accomplishment - it doesn't matter how far or how fast, it's still something to be proud of.
(And the coach, who has been there for most of the highs (hitting my goal treadmill speed for 15 seconds) and lows (panic attack on the treadmill) of my OTF membership was very excited for me and proud of me!)
I've been doing a lot of things at Orangetheory that feel like I'm challenging myself - new benchmarks and signature workouts, faster speeds, heavier weight (although not so much of that). I'm even planning to sign up for DriTri, which is their twice-a-year version of a triathalon (it's rower/bodyweight exercises/running, so not much shared with an actual triathalon). I think that's also part of why I'm connecting with Orangetheory so much these days. It feels like a safe place to challenge myself, and I haven't felt like I had that in a while. Running definitely has not felt like that in a long time.
Anyway, next on my agenda may or may not be my second attempt at the 2000m row benchmark on Friday (last time I did it in 9:57:14, so that's the time to match or beat). I'm signed up for class but I'm also going back to Queens on Friday so TBD whether I will actually be able to make it to class.
