Spoilers: Bad Meet, only made 4/9 attempts, 1,427 total - 11lb shy of Class 1, which is what you would need for a Nationals invite.
Successfully lifted 540/347/540 on SBD.
Breakdown:
I was really hoping this sickness wasn’t going to affect me, but it’s progressed to a full on sinus infection it seems. All the last week or so any time I touched a weight it has felt heavier than it should, the way it does when you’re sick. By Saturday, my balance had become affected some. I actually had to bring tissues with me I was blowing out so much yellow gunk so often. I noticed getting out of the car for weighins that I was dizzy, and unfortunately this carried some into Squat on Sunday morning. Warming up with 315, I lost balance & fell forward - I had to good morning the weight back up. I was legitimately worried about hitting my opener of 507, but it went up smoothly. I called 540 for a second, and it moved true but was a hard effort. I played conservative & only went up 10kg for my third. 562 felt good when I walked it out, but the bar halted about a foot out of the hole after the rebound and the spotters had to catch me.
Bench just felt heavier than it should have for how training has felt lately. I knew 347 was now going to be a heavy opener, and it was, so I called for 369 for my second instead of the 375 I had intended. 369 only got about halfway up, and it was simply too heavy on this day. I scratched my third attempt.
Deadlift was taking forever (there was 4 flights in this meet, 48 lifters who had showed up, and I was in the last flight for each lift being a heavyweight male), and I mistimed my preWO so we were all just standing around, sweating, chatting on stims lol. But when warmups finally came around, everything was finally feeling pretty good. The warmup weights weren’t feeling heavy, my sinus had opened up, I didn’t feel spacey. However, the skin all over my hands seemed to be shredding some, which was alarming - my grip was not holding up. 505 was the last warmup, and I knew by then I wasn’t going to hang onto what I had the strength to pull. 540 opener moved well, but grip already felt pushed, so I jumped to a conservative 562 for my second. Had someone give me a terrific back slap, charged out fired up, set up perfectly…except at the last second I realized I hadn’t set my hookgrip: I had set my grip DOH! So I fixed it, but this cost me the mental momentum I had & threw me off. My grip started to fail as I neared my knees, so I actually pushed into a stiff leg to try to keep it moving but when it came back to my legs over my knees I knew I just couldn’t hold it, so I set it down gently. I had torn all the callus off my left thumb, where it always goes. Scratched my third attempt since grip was gone.
Being sick, being weaker than expected definitely sucked. I also had a tremendous amount of anxiety before squats, probably because I had no idea where my actual strength was between training variables but especially the virus. I have never bombed out (if you miss every attempt in one lift, you’re out of the comp, and remember you can never go down in weight selection), and I certainly didn’t want that now. But I met a few really cool guys I got to lift with; the guy who won the 275s is 36 and had lots of good training advice for longevity, and this meet gave me a ton of great ideas for how I can tweak my programming going forward. The best deadlifter of the meet (he missed 682 conventional due to up & down motion of the bar, made 655) was a 220lber, and we warmed up together and competed side by side all day and had a great bromance.
I’m really glad I went. My back feels great, zero injuries or tweaks, and I feel very proud for going into the comp & getting under the bar despite my fears of how bad I felt or getting crushed. Last year this time I could barely pull 501 at a meet with stabbing pain in my back, and 540 was a smooth opener now for me with a healthy back. Squats cause me no back pain, so I am excited to keep pushing onward!