Frank (8/22): IPA Meet Results

Today was the day! Nate, Dierdre, and I went to the IPA Connecticut State Championships in Norwich, CT. The meet had its tense moments, and its slow moments, but overall, it was a pretty awesome experience that I'm looking forward to doing again in the future. I will list my results below and follow it with some general observations. I would put Nate and Dee's results up as well, but I think I will leave that up to them, unless they postpone it for too long because they're too busy catching up on the snuggling they couldn't do while I was chaperoning them (I'm kidding, I'm kidding =). If that happens, I will post their results and mock them mercilessly despite the fact that they both did awesome jobs. So without further ado...

Arriving

We stayed at some hotel (Marriott something or other) that was comfortable, but I wasn't awake at the hotel long enough to comment much more. The only thing that annoyed me was that I didn't know that they didn't have a free continental breakfast, and I got busted trying to walk out with some danishes and milk. Bastards.

We took a couple wrong turns trying to get to Fitness World, but we did eventually arrive. Upon getting there, the first thing we noticed was a giant mohawked man with humongous triceps. He turned out to be none other than Gene Rychlak, who I don't believe competes anymore, but who still looks pretty freaky strong. We did the standard weigh-in (172lbs for me) and rules overview, then it was on to the lifting.

The organization of the lifting was fairly standard, according to Nate. We were arranged into "flights," or groups of lifters. Since there weren't many lifters at this meet, all 20 or so were put into the same flight. Within a flight, lifters progressed from the lowest planned lift to the highest planned lift. Each person had three attempts for each of the three lifts, and only the first attempt (the opener) had to be announced ahead of time. The lifts went in the order of squat, bench, and deadlift. I had the dubious honor of being among the first to lift for the squat and bench.

My (Frank's) Results

Squat
345 (easy, got it)
365 (former PR, got it)
385 (FAILED. Like before, I got down to parallel and just sat there.)

Bench Press
275 (easy, got it)
290 (Old PR + 5, got it, but it was pretty hard. I had to grind out the lockout.)
300 (FAILED. This was kind of a long shot anyway. I was able to get the bar a few inches off of my chest but couldn't get it any further.)

Deadlift
475 (easy, got it)
505 (former PR, got it)
520 (Old PR + 15. I might have had another 5lbs in me, but this was very, very close to the most I can pull.)

So I went 7/9 with a 365 + 290 + 520 = 1175 total and two new PRs. I'm glad I didn't bomb out and even more glad that I managed to beat some of my old maxes, but I'm less enthused that my deadlift is pulling ever further away from my squat. More thoughts on that later.

Miscellaneous In-Meet Observations

The atmosphere of the meet was really awesome. From what I could tell, people were very supportive of each other, which really helps when lifting. There's a moment in every maximal lift when your eyes cloud over and all you can sense are the bar in your hands and the blood pounding in your ears. But here, through it all came the sound of people screaming "Come on!," "Pull!," and "Up!," which really helped me squeeze out the last part of the rep.

There were some pretty impressively strong people there. Most were your stereotypical hairless pink gorillas (kidding again, kind of). There was one 65 year old guy who managed to outlift many of the younger folks, including me. I recalled that he had a mid-500s squat, mid-200s press, and a low-500s deadlift. He was equipped for at least the squat, but the amount of strength it takes to do that is still impressive. The women were also uniformly impressive. Besides being strong, those that attended surely put to death the myth that lifting will make women bulky and masculine. There was also the red-bearded Viking dude and Vin Dizenzo (sp), who managed to bench 605lbs, a phenomenal amount.

Awards and Closing

Since there were so few lifters and so many categories, each lifter basically had a category to himself, except for Nate and his compatriots. This means that I took first place and managed to pick up an awesome gargoyle trophy. The way back was pretty uneventful, and we were all pretty dead anyway.

I'll be taking Sunday off but will be back to my normal schedule starting Tuesday. I will probably take it light for another week or so before I get back into serious lifting with goals, a program, and all that, so expect another long-winded post from me around that time. See you all in a few days.