The American Open: Aftermath

I'm not much of a resolution maker. But Jan. 1 is as good a day as any to restart posting my blogs. I spent last week finishing up a bunch of blogs to queue up to keep the momentum going.

So without further ado, here is a long needed blog post from the beginning of December:

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It's apparently a miracle that I not only made it TO Dallas, but there were no delays to my flights. My flights were so on time I almost missed my connection. Thanks to fitness, I could run, gasping, from one terminal to the other.

There were over 450 lifters registered for the American Open this year. It will be not only the biggest AO, but the biggest national weightlifting meet ever. They had to break sessions down to A through D and even had three platforms going on day 1.

My fan girl moment: two time Olympian Kendrick Farris. 

I really didn't spend that much time in the hotel. I had friends and family to visit and hang out with. But  I heard about the craziness from those that were still competing.

For one, they initially had some risers to put the platforms one, but they were four feet tall. First, the refs wouldn't have been able to see the lifter and second, it would have felt claustrophobic for the lifter so close to the ceiling. So those were ditched.

You'd think that platforms on the ground that basically consist of plywood screwed together would be easy enough. But one of the platforms broke halfway through a sessions. Broke! They had to stop the session for close to half an hour to fix it, the athletes had to warm up again.

Jo Ann Aita, me, Max Aita. Thank goodness they were there to help in the chaos. 

There were several instances of the bar either being misloaded, sometimes on only one side, or a plate or collar falling off mid-lift, that necessitated fourth attempts. The computer program that was supposed to show the lifter, the following lifter, and the scores was usually frozen. And there was so much chaos in the warm up area that wrong names were called and clocks weren't going or weren't stopped because no one knew who was supposed to be up.

And from California representing F-U Barbell, Kristin Newman.
From California representing Arena Ready, Sarah Hopping. 

They had SOME of that stuff smoothed out by my time. Last session on the last day, after all. However, on three of my six attempts I was yelling at them to either "stop the clock, this isn't my weight", "start the clock, I'm just standing here" or some iteration of that. I mean, I've never been in a situation where I could start a lift before the clock even begins, does that count? I didn't want to take those chances.

Despite all of that, my results, though not as grand as I hoped for (only on 6 for 6 does that happen) continued my upward progression. In the snatch I missed my first at 74 behind, made 74, then made 77 as a friggin power snatch. (Fuck that squat shit.) In the clean and jerk, I made all three at 100, 103, and 106. A total of 183, five kilos over my last competition total of 178. And while missing my FIRST SNATCH is disappointing because I felt like I had the pull for 80+, the overall result still felt great.

Jo Ann, Diane, Sarah, me, Rob

Next up: Nationals in Salt Lake City!