Quad Cities Contest

First off, I want to say I had a lot of fun at this contest. I thought it was a good challenge, but very doable. That said, I am a touch disappointed with a 4th place finish, but I realize there is a lot of work left for me to do to achieve better placings against strong competition.

The first event was the press medley. I finished the first 3 in just over 17 seconds, I managed to clean the 280 log, but I realized that any attempt to press it up would more likely result in me going down as I was seeing stars at this point. I was actually very pleased with the split I got although Bryan managed to edge me out by .07 seconds on this one. This went far better than expected.

The second event proved troublesome. On the 280/hand farmers walked I got a good first pick, but 6 steps into it my left hand gave out. I ended up with about 6 drops along the 80' course and finished in a pathetically slow 48 seconds. I was really displeased with this because farmers walk had gone really well for me in training for this contest. I guess I have more grip work to do in the coming months.

The third event was the duck walk/sled drag medley. I got a decent pace on the duck walk which is the worst part of it for me, but got a really fast pull on the prowler sled drag. I finished in a little over 20 seconds. Not a spectacular time, but much better than I had done in training.

The fourth event was the one I was most looking forward to, the truck pull. I got off to a fast start and easily got down the course finishing in just under 27 seconds. I was not surprised as this has always been a good event for me.

The last event was the one I had dreaded most in training for the contest. It was the 270 atlas stone over a 48" bar for max reps in 60 seconds. I had only been getting 5 to 7 reps in training on account of my overly deliberate lapping and re-gripping of the stone. At the contest, however, I managed to one-motion 8 of the 11 reps I got. It was truly unbelievable. It felt like an out-of-body experience. All I could focus on was going as fast as I could, I just heard Corey yelling at me the whole time. I don't know what was responsible for my turn around on this event, but it felt good. I felt manly.

Overall, I was pleased to have done as well or better than expected on 4 of the 5 events. I was able to finish every event but the press medley (which I did not expect to anyway) and I had a great time. I want to give a sincere thanks to my teammates who helped me at the contest. Bryan, Corey, and Ian, you guys are awesome. I'd also like to thank Bryan's lovely wife, Cassie, for coming out and taking lots of pictures, and my beautiful girlfriend, Brittany, for all of her encouragement and support. I also owe a huge thanks to Jesse Jobe for allowing me to train at his gym and for his advice, support, and encouragement, and to the rest of the Steel Jungle crew for all they do to help in my training. I am very excited to build on what I accomplished and learned at this contest and to venture into new territory as a LW competitor this summer.