Wow, what a day. I don’t think I’ve been that nervous in a long time. My head was actually pounding at the end of the day from all the nervousness. I’ll try to do a quick recap of how the meet worked and my experience. The whole thing got off to a bit of a bad start. I went and did all my pre-registration on Friday night. I knew that weigh ins started at 9:00 on Saturday morning, but I wasn’t too worried about being there exactly at 9:00 because I had already gotten most everything out of the way. Oops. I got a text at 9:05 asking where I was. Uh…I’m on my way. Apparently I was supposed to have weighed in already. They obviously can’t weigh in men and women at the same time because you have to strip down to your undies….or get naked, depending on how serious you are. So, I missed it. I got there around 9:30ish by the time I parked and made it inside. They had already started with the men and there was a pretty big line. I milled around a bit and wasn’t exactly sure what I should do. Then this big guy, Brad, caught wind or my situation. He kept saying that I should just go up to the front of the line. I didn’t want to cut and make the guys wait because I had missed my time slot, but he wasn’t having any of that. He went and cleared all the guys out of the locker room for me, and then tracked down a woman to weigh me in. It was super nice.
After the weigh in, I had wanted to watch some of the bench only competition. I got to the stands just in time to catch the medal ceremony, shit. Then it was time to start warming up for my squat. But first….I had to change into my ridiculous outfit. Then I headed down to the weight room to stretch and do some warm up sets. I did quite a few with just the bar, then went up to 135, then 155. It was all pretty easy and I felt good. Next up was the rules meeting. They went over all the stuff that we already knew, all the calls, how to turn in your weights, etc. For some reason it all made me a lot more nervous though. I had 20 minutes after the rules me before my first lift so I went back to warming up a bit. Peed three or four times and then headed to the bull pen area. I was up second for the squats. My opening weight was 159 or something. I was so nervous I don’t even really remember. I just went out there and prayed that I would remember the calls and not screw anything up. First I had to wait for the bar to be loaded, then the judge says “bar is loaded” and you can come onto the platform. Then you can go and unrack the weight. Next you have to stand with your knees locked out completely until the judge says “start”. You have to squat down to below parallel and then come back up and lock you knees out completely. When the judges are satisfied, they say “rack” and you can rack the weight. Seems simple, but it’s so many things to remember. The next weight I tried was 170, and then I did 187.5 for my last attempt. It was a personal record (PR) by 2 pounds ; )
More to come, and some great pics.
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