The Growth Principle

The absolutely most stressful part of most powerlifting competitions takes place a couple of months before stepping onto the platform, and that is the moment registration opens. The registration process isn’t usually a problem for a really large event like Westerns, because there is not a cap on the number of participants. For smaller competitions though, and especially ones located in the population dense area of my province, it is quite normal for a competition to reach its’ participant quota within 5 minutes of opening registration. Every time I want to enter one of those competitions, my heart starts beating loud and hard in my chest beginning the minute before registration opens and continues until well after I have submitted my entry form. This is exactly what happened last night as I waited to register for a meet. I successfully submitted my entry form within 2 minutes of registration opening, and the meet was full only a minute or two later! It’s crazy how quickly the meets fill up, but I am really happy to have made it in.

This meet is at the end of July, so 11 weeks less a day from today, and it feels as if I have a long way to go to prepare for competition. I haven’t exactly been feeling great for a while, not since Westerns two months ago. The body hasn’t been physically happy or comfortable with more aches and pains than normal, high levels of fatigue and less energy, fingernails peeling, and nerve pains not quite as tolerable as usual. Mentally and emotionally I have been feeling unmotivated and uninspired, blah and disinterested, and restless. With the increased aches and pains, gym training hasn’t been progressing the way it should. I have skipped a couple of workouts. I have skipped exercises or cut them short. My coach made some changes to the program to see if that would help settle the body down, and I appreciate that but also find it discouraging as the changes make it seem as if I am stuck in limbo. So as much as I was hoping to do this July competition, the last few weeks have had me questioning the wisdom of doing it and doubtful that I could.

Then last week my coach posed a question, asking if I had a current high, hard goal. I always have a list of goals that I am striving towards, but I knew that his question wasn’t asking about my goals to finish projects around the house or try new things or make a daily gratitude list for the entire year. Those are goals, but they aren’t the sort of goal my coach was asking about. As I have been chewing on that conversation over the course of the week, I am seeing more clearly how much I thrive on having a high, hard goal. I left Westerns feeling kind of blah. I think I have felt that way after a lot of races or competitions, and I have probably always assumed it was just the normal coming down from the high of competition. With Westerns, I did come home with covid, so that was also a factor for a while. However, I think that the lack of a new hard goal kept me feeling disconnected and adrift. As much as I love and enjoy competing, it is the process of preparing for competition that really keeps me focused and purpose-filled.

It is easy to look back on all of the challenges and struggles of the past 6.5 years since herniating a disc, so I sometimes lose sight of my athletic life in the years prior to that injury. The truth is that challenge and struggle has always been a part of my athletic life, and I could probably guarantee the same is true for any athlete! I cannot think of a single prep period, whether for a running race or a powerlifting meet, that has been smooth and perfect. There has been lots of pain, even before the disc injury. There has been fatigue and low energy. There have been doubts and injuries and obstacles in my way. Not every competition or race was perfect, but I was proud of every effort and result. And here’s the thing…growth doesn’t take place in competition but in the act of training every day for weeks or months. We may experience a growth or learning moment in competition, but the real growth comes from putting in the hard work, from banging your head against the wall of the obstacles in your path, from pushing through the tough times. Those days, weeks, months can be extremely tough but also extremely rewarding. We learn how to listen to our bodies and how to talk to ourselves. We learn how to persevere. When we make it through a tough workout, we feel encouraged and motivated to push through the next one. When we see our small victories in training, we feel joy and learn to trust the process. We become faster or stronger, not only because of our training but also because our confidence grows. Yes, I love competing, but I really do love the prep.

Wrapping Up April

It seems as if every time I sit down to compose a blog post lately I simply cannot come up with a cohesive train of thought. In some ways, life feels busy with not quite enough time to tackle all that should be tackled each day or week, and yet, I am often finding myself within a liminal space, twiddling my thumbs and biding my time.

Fatigue is a constant companion these days, possibly for nearly two months now. Even on the nights I sleep fairly well, I am rarely waking up feeling refreshed and energized. The lower half of my body has been grumpy in varying degrees for the past two months, and that has disrupted my training program as we are trying to figure out why I’m in more pain. I have skipped several exercises and a couple of entire training sessions because of pain, and I have to admit that those kind of days make a mess of my emotions and confidence. I made a comment to my coach about feeling as if I am always finding myself in the midst of some sort of challenge or obstacle to overcome. That was definitely a true statement, but I suppose it is equally true that everyone alive is constantly needing to work their way through a challenge of one sort or another. That’s just life.

Because of the fatigue and body pains, some things on my weekly to do lists have become less important and easily ignored. Ignoring tasks only creates more problems down the road, so I have been trying to be productive in little bursts scattered throughout the day. I am currently feeling more self-imposed pressure to be productive, because May 4th is a special day for Star Wars fans and it is my tradition to have a themed dinner. Since May 4th falls on a Saturday this year and I am not working that day, I have the opportunity to go bigger than usual with my fangirl celebrations. Of course, that means I have instantly added a bunch more stuff to my list of things I need to do, and I have to keep reminding myself that I no longer have as much time to procrastinate as I think I do.

It is really a good thing that I am a list maker, because it is very easy to be distracted with every random glance or turn of the head. I see the seedlings on the table that cannot be planted outside yet and think I need to remember to water them. A glance out the window reminds me that I want to scrub the deck clean, but then I see the the maple branches close by and know that they aren’t yet finished dropping their spring detritus. Before we even get to Saturday, I have normal meals to plan and prepare and all the regular household cleaning and chores. There are books to read and shows to watch. Several neighbours have been talked into joining together in a land assembly in the hopes of enticing a developer, which also means that this topic has been playing on repeat around here, too. There are baseball games and playoff hockey games to watch. We need to get the irrigation turned on, and I have to finish cleaning up the flower bed. I had a Zoom meeting this morning to clarify qualifications and requirements for attending Provincials, Regionals, and Nationals for the next couple of years, which proved encouraging to discover that my path to Nationals 2025 looks to be easier than I anticipated it might be. I am internally debating whether or not to go to a competition in July. My coach, chiropractor, and I all think it would be good to get another meet in this year. The problem is that there are not many options available, especially as we don’t want to travel far in the winter. Another problem is the current pain/body issues and wondering if I could or should. But if I don’t do this one (and assuming that I can even get a spot as these meets fill up within minutes), I likely wouldn’t have opportunity until Nationals next year. My mind is a very busy place right now!

April Showers

We’re midway through April already. Even though the start of Spring has been rather pleasant here, it seems as if life is bursting forth almost overnight. Our muckle plum tree was nothing more than bare branches a couple of days ago, and now it is a riot of pink blossoms. Our hedge has also gone from barren to green and lush quite quickly, and the maple tree will be making a mess with its’ blossoms any day now. I spied tight little lilac buds yesterday, so it won’t be long before I’m breathing in their gorgeous scent. Everything around me is springing to life, and here I am feeling like I am merely surviving these past couple of weeks.

My body is not too happy lately. My typically low and tolerable chronic nerve pain is still mostly low but not so tolerable with a few days of brutal pain to make me extra miserable. For someone who is incredibly consistent, I cut two training sessions very short and skipped two sessions entirely because of how my body felt. The nerve pain stuff can be more than enough, but both knees have been feeling unstable and achy a lot lately, the low back is a bit achy, and an elbow is starting to flare up. I feel more tired than I think I should, and I have been making more of an effort to conserve energy than to be productive. I am trying not to say that I’m being lazy though, because there is value in rest and I am still doing all sorts of things. I just think I should be doing more, at least until a body part aches or nerve pain crushes my foot. It’s been a rough start to the month physically, and that takes a toll mentally.

Westerns in Colour

Three weeks after competing at Westerns, I finally have my official photographs. I think this was my first experience with Nyshe Media, so I was pleasantly surprised to have the ability to choose which of the many photos I wanted as part of my package. While it was nice to choose my 15 photos, I did find it difficult at times to figure out which photos were each attempt as the camera angle didn’t always clearly show the weight on the bar.

One thing that I am disappointed about was the lack of candid shots. Of course, the main focus is what is happening on the platform, but it is also nice to get the occasional shot in the moments right before or after a lift. Another lifter with experience with Nyshe told me that they don’t do many candid shots, but I noticed that there were quite a few such candid shots for the first flight in my session and none at all for my flight. Browsing through photos for the earlier sessions that same day also show some candid shots, so I really don’t know why they stopped taking them for my flight. It is what it is, but if you’re a photographer, please take candid shots!

Pixels in Silver

In response to comments I made in my weekly check in with my coach, he asked what I was most proud of myself for at Westerns. That is a difficult question for me to answer, not because I can’t think of something but because there are just so many things that it is difficult to pick one to top the list. I even told my coach that my answer will likely change every time I might be asked that same question. The truth is that I am incredibly proud of it all-the big picture of Westerns and all of the little pixels that make up that big picture! There are a lot of pixels.

Competing at Westerns wasn’t just about the four hours or so that I was wearing my singlet and stepping onto the platform. My Westerns experience really began many months ago with intentionally training to be stronger than I was before I herniated a disc more than six years ago. There was lingering shoulder and elbow pain to deal with and try to resolve. Late summer/early fall had me dealing with a bunch of dizziness that never really had a definitive cause. There was a weird and random minor injury to something in my shoulder or clavicle last December which had me worried might derail Westerns completely. And then there was so much drama and stress over my ability to even get to Westerns. A “last minute” date change put a massive roadblock in my way and derailed my carefully laid plans. There were challenges with communication to get that roadblock removed and, even once I finally did manage to get it removed, there were more communication gaps in having that properly acknowledged. Only a few days before Westerns was to begin, I was told that I didn’t have the correct membership for competing at a regional event. The membership options were confusing and didn’t specify the differences (that has now been rectified), so without knowing any better I had chosen the wrong one. It was easy to fix, but it was yet another cause of stress and anxiety. Both of our flights to Moose Jaw wound up being delayed. While the second flight delay really wasn’t a problem, the first one stressed me out completely. All of these pixels often had me feeling like I would never actually even make it to Westerns, so I am proud of surviving it all and making it through the struggles.

Although I told my coach that it was difficult to pick one thing to be proud of myself for, I did say that, at least in this moment, I am most proud of my silver medal. In all of my previous competitions, I have always finished in first place. Sometimes I finished first because I was the only woman in my class. Other times there was one other woman in my class and I managed to come out on top. At Westerns, there were three women in my class. I went into it knowing that I would earn a medal no matter what as long as I made at least one attempt in each lift, but I also knew nothing about my competitors so my placing was not a sure thing. Squats didn’t go as I had expected them to go. Even if I had nailed all of my squats, I still probably would have finished in second place, but it would have been really close. It could have been easy to fall apart after missing two squats. My history with my third bench attempts is abysmal, so it could have been easy to fail that one, too. While I wasn’t in danger of finishing third, I still had to refocus, go out and lift heavy things, and prove to myself that I deserved to be on that podium. Because I’m in an age group that usually has only one or two competitors at many meets, most of my medals are little more than participation awards and that’s how they feel. This silver medal feels different, even if I couldn’t have done worse than silver, because of all of those little pixels making up the bigger picture.

Decompressing Covid

It has been just over two weeks since I competed at Westerns and a bit more than a week since I blogged about it. While I stand by what I have already written about Westerns, the reality is that I typically require some time to decompress and process all of my thoughts and emotions after a competition, and I am still very much in that stage. When I wrote about Westerns eleven days ago, I knew I was sick and thought it was just a bad cold. The next day I saw another Westerns lifter post on social media about coming home with Covid, so I thought it would be a good idea to pull out one of the Covid self-testing kits and it was positive. I am still not sure when or where I picked that up (I had no contact with that other lifter), but hindsight can now explain why I felt so tired and found food so unappealing before I actually felt sick.

Some of those early symptoms started the day after competing. Nasal congestion started to creep in two days after competing, and I woke up on the third day feeling most definitely sick. No fever. Not much of a cough. Just very tired and no energy, headache and brain fog, nasal congestion and lots of nose blowing, no appetite and nothing tasted good. That Sunday and Monday were the worst days overall, and Tuesday, the day I tested positive for Covid, found me with almost all of the same symptoms but feeling a bit more energetic and on the upswing. I may have had Covid, but it still basically felt like a bad cold, at least until Tuesday evening for a few hours.

I had eaten a bit of dinner, not much but something, and then I was just chilling in the recliner watching television with my husband when the room started to spin and it was really bad. At one point I needed to go to the bathroom and needed my husband to support me down the hall or I would have toppled over. Even before I was back in the recliner, I was breaking out in the kind of cold sweat that always precedes vomiting for me. I had my husband bring me a bucket, knowing that I wasn’t capable of making a dash to the bathroom, and then I sat there watching the walls spin, sweating terribly, and feeling my stomach beginning to revolt and then it did. I hadn’t eaten a lot, but it was obvious that not everything came back up and there were some dry heaves. With that finished, I laid back in the recliner and basically had a nap for an hour or so. The vertigo was pretty much gone by the time I was done my nap. It was only 2-3 hours, but that was a wild time! I have had vertigo before but never so bad it made me vomit.

Since that night, my symptoms gradually decreased while my energy increased, and a retest came back negative for Covid last Saturday. I think today is the first day I haven’t woken up with a headache, but there is still some nasal congestion and stickiness in the throat. My appetite seems to be back to normal. I am back to my normal inability to nap no matter how tired I feel, but my sleep at night hasn’t been good since Westerns. The brain fog has decreased a lot, so I am finally starting to process everything and work at decompressing all of the pressures and emotions leading up to competition.

Also, this competition was a bit different than most when it comes to how I feel about my performance after the fact. With Westerns being so far away, I only had my husband there to watch and cheer me on, and he was busy coaching me rather than cheering and filming me. While I know a few people did watch the livestream, I also know that a lot of people didn’t. My lifting on a weekday early afternoon our time meant a lot of people were working. It’s a bit disappointing but understandable. This level of competition has strict rules. One is that your coach cannot take photos or video from the sideline as you lift, which means that I had nobody there to film my lifts aside from the official media providers. I did purchase a media package, but I am still waiting to receive it. The company has stated photos will be 1-2 weeks (did I mention it has been 2 weeks since I competed?) and videos will be 2-5 weeks! With the company also doing media at the Eastern regionals this weekend, I have a feeling their supposed deadline will be extended. Even though I am happy and proud of what I did and I have a shiny silver medal to show for it, in some ways I feel like I haven’t actually celebrated and savoured my moment and that is compounded by being sick and isolated and my girlfriends all being away for spring break. I don’t have pictures or video to share yet, so it kind of feels like I did something awesome and most people don’t know or care to know. I know that isn’t complete truth, but it is something I feel.

I have journaled more this week than I usually do in a month, and it has all been about unpacking Westerns and I know there is more to come. I expect that I will blog a lot of those thoughts over the coming days.

Westerns 2024

I did not bring my laptop with me to Moose Jaw for the Western Championships, so any sort of recap had to wait until after we returned back home last Saturday. Today is now Monday and I am here to provide a recap, but my mental capacity to do so adequately is questionable as I am now most definitely sick. I am not sure if I caught something before or during Westerns, but I am thankful that the worst didn’t hit me until we got back home. My head hurts and feels very fuzzy. There is some nasal congestion and off/on ear plugging that is worse than my normal. Several of my joints ache and I feel very tired and shaky. I do have this week off work, so I have plenty of time to rest and recover.

Our trip to Moose Jaw required two short flights, both of which ended up being delayed. The first flight delay caused me a great deal of stress, because we only had one hour before our next flight left and the new arrival time was after boarding would begin. That anxiety dropped significantly upon landing and learning that our next flight was delayed an hour. Although we had arranged for a car rental in advance, we had a lengthy wait to receive our car at the Regina airport. When we finally stepped outside the terminal, we were blasted with icy wind. We experienced quite a range of temperatures during our stay in Saskatchewan, but the absolute worst was outside the Regina airport both times. The wind was just so bitterly cold and biting that -9 Celsius felt so much worse. In comparison, we walked out to -20 C in Moose Jaw each morning and never felt it was as painfully cold. The drive between Regina and Moose Jaw was roughly 45 minutes and uneventful, and I personally enjoyed how simple and straightforward it was to get to where we needed to be.

After checking into our hotel, we ventured over to the convention hall where the competition was being held. This was a good time to check out the rack and bench for my settings and to see where my body weight was sitting on an official scale. I showed my husband around the warm up area and the platform, telling him details he would need to know for handling me. We picked up a few groceries and had dinner before returning to the hotel. With my weigh in time being in the afternoon, I tried staying up as late as I could, but I was feeling very tired and couldn’t stay for long. For a few days leading up to travel and then our time in Moose Jaw, I did not sleep well or long enough.

The day of competition was a bit weird as I am not used to waiting so long to begin. My weight was low enough that I had room to eat, but my appetite was gone and I couldn’t eat as much as I should have. I tried to nap mid-morning and think I managed to sleep a little. We arrived at the venue a bit early, watched some lifting and then waited for equipment check and weigh in. I weighed in less than what I had been the night before, not a big deal but I did have to try to eat some food for energy. Powerlifting meets involve a lot of waiting. After weighing in, we had to wait until the earlier session was done lifting, then I had to wait for flight A to begin lifting before beginning my warmup. We are there for hours, but my total time on the main platform lasts less than 9 minutes.

Squats are always first, and my opening attempt was 105kg (231.5 lbs). It was a successful lift. My second attempt was 112.5kg (248 lbs). This attempt was more of a struggle than it should have been. It was slow and grindy. Although I did successfully finish the lift, two of the referees gave me red lights for downward bar movement, so it did not count. I stayed at the same weight for my third attempt, but my upper body pitched forward at the bottom of the squat which put me in a disadvantageous position and, after the grind of the previous attempt, I didn’t have it in me to fight the squat. This wasn’t how I had expected my squats to go, so that was disappointing but I had no choice but to let it go. There was still lots of lifting to do and I needed to keep my focus forward.

Bench press has long been my weakest lift, and it has been very rare for me to bench what I am capable of in competition. I don’t know if the problem was more mental or if I just ran into technique problems in competition, but my coach made a small adjustment to my technique a couple of months ago and my bench press has been feeling really good ever since. And so, one of my main goals for Westerns was to be successful on each of my bench attempts and to press a weight I haven’t done in competition before. My first attempt was 57.5kg (126.8 lbs) and my second attempt was 62.5kg (137.8 lbs). Both moved smoothly. My third attempt was 65kg (143.3 lbs) and I never once doubted that I could press it. It felt smooth and maybe easier than a third attempt should feel, but I am so happy to have achieved that goal. My last successful third bench attempt was in 2017, so this was a long time coming!

Deadlifts were up next, and I opened with 125kg (275.6 lbs). My second attempt was 135kg (297.6 lbs). Both moved well. My third attempt was 142.5kg (314.2 lbs), and this was a genuine personal record attempt. It moved well, very well according to my husband who thinks I should have gone heavier. You see my coach had given me a list of my attempts, which included two options for my thirds. The first option was reasonable and reachable for a perfect meet, while the second option was for if things were feeling super great and I wanted to go for broke. In this situation, I wanted the reasonable and reachable for a perfect meet. Obviously my squats didn’t work out that way, but I still wanted to be perfect for bench and deadlifts. Could I have deadlifted 145kg for my third? Possibly. But I am perfectly happy with going 3/3 for bench and deadlifts, breaking through my bench plateau and setting a new deadlift PR, and to finish in second place.

Kane did a good job of handling me. He did misload the bar for one of my warmup bench sets. The bar felt unevenly weighted when I unracked it, but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t manage. He definitely isn’t used to being on the other side of my competitions, but I am grateful that he was willing to act as my coach for the competition. I may not have been able to mentally detach from the externals in the same way as if my real coach was there to take care of the details, but I would rather have Kane do it than doing it myself. The downside to having Kane as my handler was that I had no one to take any videos of my lifts, but I am waiting for official photos/videos from the media team. I have watched the recorded livestream to see how my lifts looked. For anyone who watched the livestream, the commentators had some inaccurate comments. My first squat was not a personal record. I did submit a list of my personal records, so I am not sure if they got their notes mixed up or something. That was the most glaring mistake, but I think they also made one when talking about my deadlifts. It’s not a big deal except possibly confusing. A friend congratulated me on my squat PR, and I was confused, knowing that I had failed my final two attempts and hadn’t even got close to my actual PR.

Westerns is officially done! As of right now, I don’t have any plans or goals for competition. I will have a chat with my coach tomorrow, where I imagine we will debrief and also talk about what is next. There are no competitions on the horizon for me as of yet. I am keeping an eye on Nationals in Regina in 2025, but there is a lot of time between now and then.

4 Days

I am here in the liminal space between beginning my vacation a few days ago and flying out to my competition in a few days. There is uncertainty and restlessness, eagerness and a touch of anxiety, the need to be productive and the constraint of not being able to do it all right now. Undoubtedly, I will find myself in several liminal spaces over the course of this week.

This morning I packed our carry ons to see if we would need to bring a checked bag or not. My list of things needing to be packed looks quite lengthy and the carry ons look so small, but somehow it looks like everything will fit between the carry ons and a backpack. Then I had to partially unpack, because I still need some of my equipment for my final two training sessions before we leave and we’ll still need access to some of our toiletries. I also need to wash my knee sleeves after using them tomorrow morning.

Since we are not frequent flyers by any stretch of the imagination, I have scoured all of the relevant information on Westjet’s website multiple times and posed various questions to those who actually do fly. This is only moderately reassuring though, because I simply do not have my own personal experience to make me feel confident that I know what we’re doing. But it is a domestic trip and two relatively short legs each way…should be easy.

The weight cut continues to go well, and I am now officially striving to maintain my current weight. It has been fairly consistent for the past few days, and I am checking my weight both in the morning and around the expected weigh-in time to see how it changes through the day. Things are looking good there, so I am not too concerned about making weight. The only issue will be eating while travelling and the morning of competition, but I think that is just something to be mindful of without stressing out over. Obviously I won’t be ordering poutine and wine, at least until after the competition!

I am in the gym tomorrow and Tuesday for quick and easy deload sessions, and then my next time touching weights will be in warm up for competition on Thursday afternoon. I am still waiting to hear from my coach as to what my attempts will be, although I can make a rough guess of what they might be based on my last heavy singles in training last week.

Those last heavy training singles were something else. For the first time in many years, I am able to say that I have set new personal bests without saying that they are post-injury personal bests! Last Monday was a really good training day. My top squat single was 255 pounds, the most I have ever squatted. My previous best was 253 pounds, which I last did in November 2017 in the same competition where I herniated a disc. Monday’s top deadlift single was 310 pounds, which beat my previous 308 lbs best from Westerns in 2016, almost a year prior to the injury. The road to healing and regaining strength has been so very long, hard and full of potholes and roadblocks, that I sometimes thought I would never get to this point right here. I am super stoked about what I did in the gym on Monday, especially that I did it in the gym because gym PRs are often tougher to achieve than they are in a competition environment; however, there is still hard work to come later this week and I kind of just need to mute my excitement and stay forward focused. Competition PRs might be easier than in the gym, but that doesn’t mean that you will always achieve those PRs in a competition! The hard work I have put into training and nutrition and recovery is about all that I can control. I cannot guarantee a specific performance at Westerns (or any competition), so I am really just wanting to do my very best whatever that might look like on that day. Although I would be quite happy to set a personal in-competition PR in bench press! My gym PR for bench is 145 pounds, but I haven’t managed better than 137.8 pounds in competition. Bench press has been feeling really good lately, so maybe this is the year of the bench.

13 Days

I am sitting at just under two weeks until I step onto the platform at the Western Regional Championships in Moose Jaw. I have been asked or told several things over the past couple of weeks. How are you feeling? Are you ready? Go after it! You’ll be great! Don’t hurt yourself. Most of those questions and statements are completely normal and expected, but the one about not hurting myself is a slight irritation which is a rant I don’t want to get into today.

I am feeling pretty good considering where I am in my training block. The last few weeks of competition prep can be exhausting as the weights get heavy and closer to personal bests. So far though, my energy levels are still decent and I’m not feeling too run down. My sleep isn’t perfect, but I am having the best, most consistent sleeps and averaging at least 8 hours a night.

Since I have been working on dropping weight since late January, my nutrition has been extremely cleaned up and regimented. This is producing the results that I need, so making weight shouldn’t be any problem; however, I am looking forward to post-competition when I can enjoy food again and eat what I want without micromanaging every bite.

Am I ready? As ready as I can be this many days out! My list of things to do before we fly out is fairly lengthy, although not everything is very time consuming. My list of things to pack also seems kind of long, but most of the stuff is what I need for competition (equipment, appropriate clothing, ID/membership card, etc.) Our plan is to pack the bare minimum outside of my competition stuff, but we do have the option to check a bag if we can’t fit everything in our carry ons. Some of the items on my to do list cannot be done until I have finished specific things, like my last day at work before my vacation and my last day in the gym. Some items are appointments booked for later next week. Most of the packing also cannot be done until the day before we leave. So while I am feeling ready, the truth is that I will be in a perpetual state of not quite ready up until we head to the airport.

Back to how I am feeling…physically I am feeling decent. There are always little aches and pains and moments where a body part feels a little funky, but there isn’t anything major going on right now. Nothing out my ordinary. Mentally…I feel quite chill about it for the most part. I am definitely excited and looking forward to competing, but there is a fair bit of nervous energy swirling inside, especially when my brain is not otherwise occupied, and that kind of energy will likely grow as the countdown draws me closer to the target. There are a lot of things that I cannot control as we head off to Moose Jaw. I cannot control the weather or any potential flight delays or other issues. I cannot control the environment in the venue, the distraction of two platforms running at the same time, or the calibre of officiating. I have no control over the flight order during competition or what my fellow M2-84kg lifters are going. Naturally, the things I cannot control are the very things that make my brain go wild, so I am trying my best to distract myself from running down those rabbit holes. Nothing good lurks there.

20 Days

I am now three weeks less a day away from the biggest competition I have been a part of in my ten years of powerlifting. There are 479 athletes registered for this 4 day event. While it isn’t my first time competing at Western regionals, this will be my first time competing with two platforms going at the same time and my first really significant competition since herniating a disc in 2017. Actually, there will still be a lot of firsts for me, even though I am an experienced lifter. There are two other women in my age/weight class, which is something that I don’t think has ever happened for me. Usually I am the only one in my group or there is one other woman. Assuming that something catastrophic doesn’t happen to me, I still have the opportunity to come home with a medal, but it isn’t automatically going to be for 1st place. Honestly, I don’t even know if finishing first is within reach here and that’s okay. This will be the farthest I have travelled for competition, having never competed outside of my own province. This will be my longest flight, although I have only flown once, a round trip roughly 25 years ago with only an hour in the plane each way. This trip isn’t terribly long, only a couple hours each way, but it will still feel like a first time flying experience. My weigh in/competition times are the latest I will have ever had before. It is looking like my husband will be my handler, which means he’ll submit my attempts, chalk my back, help load weights in the warm up area, and basically act like my coach. He’s never done that before, and I am not sure how it will go or how I will feel about it in the moment, but at least I don’t need to worry about doing all of that myself. This won’t be my first competition without my actual coach in my corner, but there haven’t been many such instances and I really wish I could fit my coach into my carry on and bring him along. With my husband behind the curtains with me, that means for the first time ever I won’t have someone specifically cheering me on amongst the spectators. Wow. Typing out that sentence hit me harder than I thought it would. When I am on the platform, I don’t even look at the crowd, barely even look at the judges. I focus on what I am doing and not much else, so it has never actually bothered me if I had many supporters there to cheer me on. During this competition, it is quite possible that I can beat my all-time personal bests from when I injured my back. If training continues to go as planned, then I can break those personal bests in the gym. It is all terribly exciting, amazing, and terribly nerve-wracking.

The deadline for changing weight classes was last night, and I made no change. I will remain in the 84kg class and continue to track my calories and macros to ensure I come in under that at the time of my weigh in. As much as I am not loving the process of tracking and I am definitely growing sick of certain foods, my efforts are producing the results and I am currently sitting rather pretty in my weight class. Since the late weigh in is the biggest obstacle, we want my weight to get low enough to allow room for eating prior to weigh in. So far my weight loss is tracking well and that allowed me to feel confident about ignoring the weight change deadline last night.

Training is going well. The weight cut is going well. The body is feeling fairly decent right now, although there are always little (or not so little) aches and pains and discomforts. My sleep has been good and my energy is still reasonably high. The last few weeks of competition prep can have you feeling tired and beat up, so I am pleased with how decent I am still feeling at this stage.

With just under 3 weeks left to go, I am slowly beginning to plan and prepare for the days leading up to competition and the travel there. Of course, that means I began with writing out a couple of lists. I have packed my gear into my carry on to make sure it all fits, and I have been measuring bags and backpacks in an effort to ensure we have properly sized carry on and personal items, so we do not need to check any bags. Travel sized toiletries are being piled on my dresser in anticipation of packing into a ziplock bag. I have been mentally figuring out what clothing to wear during the flight and how little clothing I can get away with needing to bring. I have reviewed the carry on baggage information several times, and I wonder if I will be permitted to pack a small screwdriver for adjusting my lifting belt. If not, it’s not a big deal, but that’s an item not directly mentioned on the website, maybe because most people don’t need to fly with a screwdriver. There are a lot of things that can’t actually be checked off my to do lists until closer to departure, like washing my knee sleeves (mandatory for equipment check but pointless doing it until I am finished training).

Mostly right now, I just have intangibles to stress over. The sun is shining here today, but what if there is a delay with our flight when we leave and we miss our connection? What if I can’t access a scale in Moose Jaw until my weigh in? For the record, the weigh in scale will be available but only when not in use for competition weigh ins and the schedule for my day doesn’t allow for very many opportunities. How are the last couple of training weeks going to feel? Am I going to be able to perform as well so late in the day? What will be attempt selection be? How is Kane going to do as my handler? How am I going to stay focused with announcements for two platforms at the same time? What if I don’t do as well as I hope? Too many what ifs and too much time to be distracted by them.

So I need to pull myself back to this moment right now. Did I want to eat my salad for lunch today? Absolutely not. The thought of eating another slice of deli turkey or cottage cheese or chicken breast or an egg white omelette is enough to make my stomach turn, but I had my omelette for breakfast and my salad with turkey and cottage cheese for lunch. Because I can do hard things. I can do what I need to do to reach my goals. This morning I had a really good training session that I am quite proud of, because my bench press is moving well and feeling good and making me feel like 2024 might be the year of the bench press for me. Actually, the entire training week was really good. I am right where I need to be.