Road to Nationals Part 3:

Meet recap

August 6th 2016, I successfully completed my first USAPL meet. I took a close second place finish at the meet to the reining champion in the 63kg weight class. 

All in all it was one of the best experiences of my life in fitness so far. This I will touch on soon. 

As for a recap. We drove six hours to Lancaster Pennsylvania for the meet. During this trip I was completing my water cut to guarantee my placement in the 63kg weight class. Our eta was 6pm where I had planned to then eat dinner and relax for the night. At about 3 pm my coach informed me that I should start my cut at 5pm. Meaning I needed to finish all 3 gallons of water and all of my daily macros before 5 o clock. This posed a challenge for me to be creative and finish my macros in a car with only the food I had packed for meet day. As well as finish all 3 gallons while on a road trip! Bathroom stops were infrequent but needed to be frequent! That is a lot of water! 

When we got to the hotel my coach wanted my weight every so often and I was steadily loosing .2-.4 pounds per hour. I had already known I loose about 3.4-4.4 pounds over night daily so I knew right where I would be when I weighed myself before bed. I woke up .4 over my goal weight so I spent the morning trying to keep "going" and spitting into a cup to loose the last few ounces. The venue for the meet was so hot when we sat there for weigh ins I was sweating, I was thankful for this since I was slightly over and didn't have a sauna. 

I ended up weighing in 2.7 pounds under. This was the direct result of sweating out what little water I had left and spitting. 

Soon after weigh in I attempted to get my weight back up and body rehydrated. As a side note, I spoke about my weight loss goal in previous blogs. I had always had a number in my head that I wanted to achieve so badly and thought this was my excuse to make it happen. However when I weighed in I was happy for making weight but felt uncomfortable and un satisfied. This is a huge realization for me because I was excessively thin and I didn't actually even feel good about it. This just goes to show that the positive effects of a weight loss goal are short lived. I find it safe to say we will never be satisfied. As soon as you lose weight it won't ever be enough you will be happy for a short period of time and be on to the next goal. It's the same with lifting you will never be strong enough in your mind. There will always be something else you reach for. It's important to find happiness in life rather than creating a constant chase. 

The meet itself went well. I hit all of my lifts except my last deadlift.  I overshot an attempt to hit a goal I had in mind given I was locked in to my second place finish already. I finished with 249 on my squat, 149 on my bench and 365 on my deadlift. I qualified for nationals thus missing only one of my goals I set for the day (going 9/9). 

As mentioned earlier the meet was one of the best experiences of my life in fitness. The organization of the federation was exactly what I expected and more. The judges were so personal and fair. They by the time weigh ins were over they had already known me by name and we're happy to give encouragement and advice. It was a breath of fresh air. A bit of light on a sport that has an animalistic stereotype. I knew there was no reason to be raging, running around popping ammonia getting all "psyched" out before a lift and this shed the light proving this truth. The poise displayed by the athletes, coaches and spectators was exactly what I knew the sport to be in its best form. 


Lauren Ciurzynski