Midtown Classic 12-16-13

I competed in a meet in Sacramento this Saturday.  It was held at Midtown Barbell (run by Ben Claridad) aka Supertraining Gym (run by Mark Bell).  They share a space or something.  This was the same place as the meet I went to back in May.

I. The Prep

Since the Tommy Kono Open in 8/17, I've been on an extended training cycle.  The cycle was broken up into 4 mini-cycles: strength/skill/strength/skill.  Things felt like they were going super well until I went to my European vacation for ~2 weeks.  I felt like that set me back about a month.  I didn't PR on any lifts for a long ass time after.

After the 2nd strength cycle, I hit a 475 back squat and 375 front squat.  From there we went into the final pre-comp cycle where I hit a pr snatch at 107kg and a pr C&J at 127kg.

II. The Meet

It was a super packed meet with 80 lifters.  There is a B session (lifters who never totaled or has a <200kg total) as well as an A session.  I was in the latter with my 225kg total from last time.  Things ran pretty late, so I didn't even start lifting until about 6pm.  I think I was about 17th to open, and there were maybe 7 people behind me.

Snatch: I opened with 97kg, and it felt super light.  I hit it pretty solidly.  My coach called for 103kg for my 2nd attempt, which also went up pretty easy.  My coach wanted 110 for my third, but I wanted to have the best chance of PRing so I just went for a 108.  Unfortunately while the bar was plenty high, I swung it out a bit forward and couldn't get under it.  Result: 103kg.

C&J: I opened at 120 which was pretty solid.  My coached called for 126 for my 2nd attempt for a 1kg meet PR :)  I hit that one without too much trouble, but the clean recovery was surprisingly hard (at least it felt that way).  My 3rd attempt was 130.  I missed the clean.  My coach later told me that I didn't finish the pull so it was out in front.  Result: 126kg.

I totaled 229kg which was a 4kg PR over the last meet.  I'm slightly disappointed in the small improvement (was hoping for like 10kg, oh well) but my last meet was 6/6 and this one was 4/6.  I also blame that god damn vacation I took :)

They give medals to the top 5 by Sinclair, so I didn't quite make it.  I may have had a chance if Ian Wilson and DeAngelo Osorio hadn't decided to show up (they're basically the best the US has to offer, Ian did something like a 160/200 and DeAngelo did a 150/190 or something).  They were by far the top 2.

III. Conclusion

The road to Nationals continues.  I want to train for at least 6 months before the next meet, and want to make a legit improvement (would be nice to total 250+kg next time).  I have video of all of my lifts; I will post them later.