Second Strongman Event and National Qualifier!

This past weekend I took the four hour drive out to the Double Diamond Athletic Club in Reno to compete in the Northern Nevada Strongest Man. This was my chance to qualify for Nationals, as the next opportunity would have been immediately after Burning Man, and I'm sure we can all guess how that would go down.

Weigh ins were the day before, and we (training partner Jesse and myself) went to the wrong place first, but Gary Montoya, the promoter, was kind enough to stick around and let us show up five minutes late. My weight class cut off was 180.4, and I stood at 180.0 with my lightweight lulu pants and sports bra on. Phew! Time to eat!

The next day started off with the Axle Press for reps. As a middle weight woman, I was to press 140 lbs as many times as I can in 60 sec. Since I got my registration in first, I got to go last and knew how many presses I needed to take first in the event.

Coach Jon Andersen and I had already worked out a plan, where if I needed more than 9, I would do 7, put the bar down and rest a few seconds, then do what ever else I needed to take first. I'm so glad we had that game plan, because every woman that went before me, if they dropped the axle due to exhaustion, they bombed every press attempt after that.

Then came the deadlift, on tires at 275lbs. Since I took first in the axle event, I got to go last in the deadlift. The woman before me did 26 reps, and woman before her did 13. So there was quite a spread. I wasn't sure if I would be able to get 27, but I had to try. I ended up getting a very painful 23 reps.

After that was quick change over to the farmer's handles for 80 feet at 150 lbs per hand. I took this one for granted because it was so light. But as I was going I was second guessing how fast I could go without bouncing too much. And once I clipped my heel on the back plate as I started to open up my stride. Sprinting with heavy weight is something I'm going to have to practice apparently.

Then a bottle neck at the truck pull. For every other event there were two stations going, but there was only space for one truck at a time here. The women pulled a diesel duelie Dodge Ram with some big ass men in the back. My screw up here was that I've never worked with a lead rope before. When I got started and pulled on it, it took the slack out in tension and my brain interpreted that as the truck moving and I took a step. Only it was just rope slack and I got stuck and had to take time to reposition my feet and start again. Towards the end as I had some speed up, my hands couldn't move fast enough to grab the rope. I actually missed the rope and couple of times and let it go at the very end. Ugh.

After a loooong break as they went through all the men (I even got a nap in here), it was time for stone over bar. 60 seconds for max reps of a 180 lbs stone. I was to go third of four women in my weight class. I was one point ahead of third place and 2.5 points behind first. The only way I could take first here is if I took first in the stones and the person in first did really poorly and took third. Either way, I needed to get as many reps as possible. That ended up being 13, but I should have just gone for a 14th rep even if I timed our halfway through the rep. First place ended up tying me with 13 reps.

So there were definitely some places that I could have done better on the fly. And there are places where I will have to practice some specific technical work. Either way, I had a great time and per my now tradition, took a bottle of whiskey with me, some disposable shot glasses, and made some new friends after all the competition was over.

The winners of the middle weight class.