My alarm goes off at 6:30 am and I don't want to get out of bed...
It's the Bavarian strongman challenge and I have to be there for 10:30, only an hour away but I give myself time to slowly get ready. Fuck it, I'm a lazy bum and hit snooze until 8:30. Slam back a good breakfast of oatmeal, natural peanut butter, and protein powder and hit the road. On the way there I start to get nervous. This is my first time competing at this level and I don't know how I'll do (probably last).
10 am I arrive in Kitchener, stoked and scared but hell I'll give'r hard and fuck the scoreboard. Show up, find a place to set up and wait... long wait but that was expected. We go over the rules, pick out the starting order and I draw second, fuck.
First event is the truck pull. Harness and rope to pull a 40,000 pound truck 100'. First guy goes and smokes the course in about 33 seconds. I think that this won't be too bad. I harness up, set up and start. My start was slow, took a bit to get the truck going but once it was going, I was going good. I got caught up trying to keep handling the rope and I wasn't sure if it cost me time but the start is where I need work. Finished with a time of 35.96 seconds.
Next was log. 270 clean and press every rep. Shit, best I've done is a 245 log, so this was to be interesting. I cleaned the log, gave it a shot... but no go. Not enough warm up and it just was too heavy for me today. Big fat Zero.
Next was a medley of duck walk and farmers. 400 pound duck walk for 80' then 270 pounds per hand farmers back. I was a bit worried as in training the 275 farmers felt heavy to pick, but the handles were high so my worries went away. I smoked the duck walk, I think, but it drained my quads. I was able to move the farmers about 16' but didn't have the energy to finish. Not too bad but wanted more out of the farmers. I need to work on my conditioning at these higher weights.
Fourth was the 800 pounds yoke walk. I did this in training with eric, so I felt good at this weight. I psyched up and got under that bad boy, it just felt heavy. I couldn't move with it, my quads were fried. My hips kept popping forward when picking it up, but I kept at it. I only got like 11', but hell I tried.
Last was stones, oh those atlas stones... 5 stones 185,275,300,330,360. I felt that I am good for four out of the five. I tape up and tacky up... way too early, but meh. I am using my PR tacky, that stuff can warm up on my skin and get nice and sticky. I go up, I nailed the first one, lift and nail the second. The third, I got up but couldn't see the podium. Luckily I had eric shouting that I was good, so I got it up. Onto the 330, now I can make excuses that my tacky wore out and wasn't sticky (and it did) but it is no real good reason to not nail this stone. I just couldn't nail it. Three out of the five, I wanted four but got three.
I ended the day in last place, it sounds bad but I walked away from this as a learning experience. I got lots of tips and information from the other competitors and feel I showed my mettle today. No one can take that from me.
So where does this leave me? It leaves me hungry, hungry for so much more. I want to compete at this level again. I want to smash some serious weight. I know where to work on. My pressing needs to be hammered and so does my conditioning. Some technique work too but I have a good base of people to train with and learn from. 2012 will be a good year for me.
