Overall training for the SPF North American Powerlifting Championship was good and resulted in some decent PR’s. This was my first meet in the 242 class and my weight was at 247 a few weeks out. At weigh-in I was 240. After weighing in I asked how many competitors there were and was told 15. For clarification I asked if it was 15 equipped, 15 men or what exactly and to my surprise I was told 15 total. At this point I didn’t know what to think. I began to wonder how 15 lifters would be sequenced and then began to worry about my lack of conditioning. I did my best to push it out of my thoughts and continued on with the day. Lily and I got some breakfast and headed to the Sweatt Shop for her to train. Laura and Shane welcomed us and have a great facility. From speaking with Laura I found out that 9 of the competitors at the meet were from her gym. The rest of the day was spent relaxing and eating.
The morning of the meet I got up early, I grabbed a little breakfast and headed to the warm up room. I wanted to get there early to start warming up due to the limited number of lifters. The meet was at a nice hotel and was in one of the conference rooms. The room was partitioned off with the platform on one side and the warmup area on the other. When I entered the conference room I liked the set up and saw the platform with solid equipment, nice calibrated plates and new bars. As I cornered the wall into the warmup room I was taken by surprise and shocked a little…the room was empty. Totally empty….no equipment whatsoever. I dropped my bag and contemplated just leaving at this point. I found the meet director and asked what the plan was. I was told everyone would warm up on the platform (there were 2 benches), there would be two flights and we would take time for warmups and not rush the day. Rolling this around in my head only eased my frustration slightly. After more people started showing up it was decided to have one flight and to take our time with warmups. I decided to stay and see how this played out. The next challenge was the only plates available were the meet plates which were kilos. Yes there was a conversion chart but who needs that, right? Well when I thought I took 600 on my squat and thought to myself that it felt damn heavy and my opener was still 177 pounds away. Turns out what I thought was 600 was actually 680 something so I felt a little better. I got through warmups okay due to everyone being really cool and the judges not rushing anyone. Time to start the meet…..