Aus KB Club Championships

On Saturday was the first Australian WKC endorsed kettlebell comp. I had wanted to enter a KB comp for ages and the last comp clashed with a race so I was really happy to give this one a go.

In order to compete with a heavier weight than the lightest one available, you have to have made Rank for the level below. I wanted to compete with a heavier weight so in the months beforehand I had to get ranked. Because my snatch sucks, that meant I would not do biathlon (10 min jerks and 10 min snatches) so that left long cycle to compete in (10 min clean and jerks).

I originally submitted a 12kg set for ranking but failed on technique. After a few months I realised that I was not going to make it at that weight so resubmitted an 8kg set for Rank 3. So glad I got it! But they did comment on my overhead lockout and suggested some shoulder mobility work. This meant I could aim for Rank 2 by competing with the 12kg.

Just a few weeks before the comp, the whole ranking system changed. Now the lightest KB weight for female long cycle is 14kg!!! So it’s heavier than what I was even planning to compete with. On the up side, you don’t have to do as many reps (I think about 5 less per hand, which is significantly easier to nail technique). So then I had the dilemma of: Should I compete at what would be a sensible weight for me? OR should I take my Rank 3 for granted and try and aim for Rank 2 with the 18kg?

Well, I figured I already had Rank 3 so why try and do it again? Competitions are for pushing yourself and what better way to do that than lift a weight that is way beyond my capabilities, throw my technique out the window, get my heart pumping so much I feel sick, and possibly not even be able to complete 10 minutes? Oh… and put my name to shame since I would also be bringing 2 clients with me for their first comps, and we’d all be wearing matching T shirts representing Wild Fitness. HA! – Great way to make an entrance into our first KB comps!

I had done some vague training. Like, a couple of sessions where I’d do 4 minutes at 16kg and 2 or 3 minutes at 20kg. I think I did that twice. So I had the tempo right for 54 reps per hand to get Rank 2. I just didn’t consider that 10 whole minutes with 18 heavy kilos is a lot of work. And 2 training sessions doesn’t cut it. Essentially I was relying on my strength from powerlifting and my cardio from running to get me through.

Long Cycle 18kg

My tempo was right on target for the first 90 seconds or so. After that I just felt sick. It was so damn heavy. I wasn’t fast enough. My shoulder was fatigued. My terrible shoulder flexibility and inability to lock out my elbow threw my technique completely out the window. I realised I was not going to make Rank 2 so no longer had to rush through the set. When 5 minutes was up I was relieved to switch to my right hand. It got a bit easier for 30 more seconds but it was still very exhausting. Towards the end I was taking longer rest breaks in the rack position and struggling to lock out properly in the jerk. I was shaking my head and was told later I may have been influencing the judge not to count those reps. I did notice the judges were very lenient. All I could do was shake my head and laugh at my sloppy reps. I could not finish the set so just let the bell swing at the end so at least I was still in the game.

I walked off the platform beaten, shaken and totally wiped out. I had also entered the strongsport comp with the aim of 4 minutes at 20 kilos. I have to say thanks to one client who was going to do this one too. Unfortunately she made the smart decision at the last minute not to compete due to injury, and this was my cue to sit it out too. I was totally spent and had nothing left in me.

Previously I had already watched a client in the pentathlon event. So now we were both wandering around shaking! btw her technique was excellent until she burnt out. I am super proud of her and if there were prizes for best technique in pentathlon then I’m pretty sure she would have won that.

Later on I had a couple of stints judging. The judges were too lenient for my liking, but I felt I had to go along with their standards. It definitely wasn’t at the standard required for ranking but I only gave one no-count – it should have been a lot more though!

I decided to sit around for the rest of the comp to watch. There was a mix of standards – everyone was very strong and fit, but quite a few rushed through the sets and so were not to WKC standards. My clients and I watched and learnt from the people with good technique, and critically discussed those that needed to improve. Technique is everything with kettlebells. Even if it is not to WKC standards, there is a steep learning curve to make sure it is safe and effective. They were going to be giving out prizes at the end and I wanted to see who they thought deserved prizes based on good technique.

To my surprise, I got best female lifter in long cycle! So although I felt my technique was shoddy, it clearly didn’t look as bad as it felt. I also won my weight class in long cycle because I lifted the heaviest weight! I was completely shocked and surprised! And of course, totally stoked that I won something sporty.

I was hoping after this I could get back to powerlifting and running, but they may do another comp in September with Fedorenko and Denisov judging and that is something I don’t want to miss out on. At first I was thinking I will just do strongsport because that is only a 4 minute set. But now I am re-considering aiming for Rank 2 at long cycle again. Unfortunately I will have to train properly for this, so I really don’t know.

Here is the vid of my set. You are welcome to critique it and tell me how dodge it is! I am fully aware my elbows don’t lock out very often – it’s always been a struggle for me – bench press is ok, but overhead press is not. And my arms just don’t like to be directly overhead especially with elbows locked out, and especially right side. I can’t even raise my arms above my head properly without any weight. I know I tried a few too many times to get those reps in at the end. I am also well aware of my less than stellar rack position towards the end. This is a good example of ok technique disintegrating into a bunch of nonsense

Kinda pathetic, but at least I gave it all I had.

To The Top Of Mt Wellington

I was in Hobart over Easter so on Friday I did the obligatory trip up the mountain.

We started at The Springs and head up the Ice House Tk to the top…

Rocky track

It flattened out a bit…

… then we went down via the Zig Zag Tk.

Straight down

It wasn’t as windy up the top as I expected, and it was actually pretty warm in the sun.

Link to walk is here.

It was surprisingly not as steep as I thought it would be, although the next day my calves told me otherwise. It was also pretty short. I wonder how far down a mountain you are supposed to start if you want to claim you walked up a mountain? And if you start at the bottom, where exactly is that defined?

I wore my Inov-8 195s. These are really comfy light-weight sneakers with good grip. I also had on Inov-8s little gaiters to stop rocks and sticks getting in. They were perfect.

Two Bays Trail Snippet

I wanted to head out on Friday for some trail action, but was a bit too disorganised. Lucky it was a long weekend this weekend so we were going to Mornington anyway. I had a look at my trusty guide book to select a walk.

The walk officially starts at the start of the Two Bays Trail, but I figured A wouldn’t appreciate the first 3km uphill. I’ve done it once before and didn’t need to do it again so we started at Seawinds Gardens. This is a surprisingly nice large gardens area with a couple of great lookouts and some William Ricketts sculptures. From there we hopped on to Two Bays. I have done the full track once before, but this was nice, although kinda odd, to go at walking pace.

 

As I remembered, the trail is perfectly undulating. We came across quite a few kangaroos and a bazillion birds.

 

Biggest Fly Ever

We headed for a few km down to Kings Falls. I didn’t know there were any waterfalls down this way. We got there, and although nice, were nothing particularly notable. What was notable though, was the biggest fly ever! It was at least an inch in diameter. The picture is blurry because my phone camera sucks but it was pretty freaky.

We don’t like out-and-back routes, so after retracing our steps for a bit, we hopped on some back roads and discovered the biggest locust-y thing ever!

Biggest Locust-y Thing Ever

After a while, we were sposed to hop over a stile and get on a fire trail back into the bush. Instead of a stile, there was a locked gate that we had to climb over. We weren’t 100% sure that was correct, but it was located in the right spot on the map. It was amazing here. Suddenly there were thousands of butterflies everywhere! It was incredible! We have never seen so many. They looked like millions of pieces of glitter dancing amongst the bracken and the gum trees. I wished we brought our good video camera for this.

We were pretty close to the start now, and came across a bunch of people walking towards us. You know when people are looking at their map, then looking at you, that they are pretty lost.

They asked if they were going the right way to the Falls. I said yes, but there’s no stile ahead, so you have to climb the gate, or they could probably just stick to the firetrail and it’d probably end up on the Two Bays. Then I checked their map, and they just had a Melways version of it! One of them thought they were on the Two Bays Trail, another thought they were on a road, and I had to explain they were nowhere marked on their map. So I explained it all again and sent them on their way. I still think they were confused though as they didn’t look the type to just climb over fences and fudge their way to where they want to go. When we made it back to the start, we realised they probably never even got onto the trail they wanted in the first place. Oh dear.

Anyway, the whole thing took us about 2 hours. I reckon it was under 6km. We stopped many times to say hello to kangaroos and giant bugs. It’s a very pleasant easy trail. Hopefully I can do the Two Bays race again next year.

Sri Chinmoy 5km

I’ve got a few goals for the year so I decided to enter this race last weekend as 5km has always been my ‘fitness test’ kind of distance. It’s my base measure.

So… I have been running approximate once every 10 days or so since November last year. Until today it was all a run/walk type of thing. So I knew I’d do kinda crap, and I exceeded my expectations.

I woke up early so did a lot of foam rolling on my calves. For some reason, no matter how early I get up, I never seem to leave the house when I intend to so as usual with these races, I arrived with about 3 seconds to spare and had to run to the start line. There were so many people here I think this could be the most packed I’ve seen this particular race.

I seeded myself in the middle of the pack. I wasn’t surprised to see quite a few people wearing Five Fingers. I was wearing my TrekSports and thinking how interesting it is that this is no longer abnormal.

When the gun went off I was a little annoyed that everyone around me was moving so slow. I thought maybe all these extra people here today were slow people. This awkward start hurt my stupid ankle a bit but after overtaking a bunch of people I could run properly. My form was great, my legs and feet were relaxed and I was moving close to my former 5k pace – stupid thing to do, really.

After 1km my lack of running caught up with me and I couldn’t maintain my pace. At 1.5km the people I overtook earlier were overtaking me. At 2.5km I was counting down the kms left. At 3km I let myself slow even more. At this point the heat did start to bother me a bit. It was 28 degrees already although it felt more in direct sunlight.

For some reason my triceps were sore. They were the only part of me that was totally relaxed and it felt weird. My legs were moving fine and strength wasn’t an issue there, but I couldn’t keep up with them.

5km suddenly felt like a long distance run and I realised my cardiovascular fitness wasn’t up to scratch. 50km is so much easier than 5km. Every time. I just had to remind myself that after being injured for so long I shouldn’t even have any expectations of my finish time. This race fits in with my goals this year and serves as a test so I know how far off I am from where I want to be.

With 400m to go I picked up the pace, but my Garmin was out quite a bit and it turned out that there was really 600m to go so I had started my kick too early. I was expecting to finish in around 26 mins, although secretly hoping for closer to 25mins. I couldn’t believe the clock when I ran past – I think this was my 2nd slowest 5km ever at 28.18.

Km splits were: 4:56, 5:07, 5:32, 5:57, 5:53
Plus there was 0:52 extra somewhere in there too as my Garmin measured long.

I stuck around to see what the winners in my age group did. And wow are these people getting faster! I have to totally thrash my PBs if I want to get a placing again.

In the past I would usually have a pancake afterwards, and always would have at least enjoyed the smell of them all cooking on the bbq. But since I have not had any sugar this year, the smell of them made me feel nauseous! What is the world coming to?

Bestest friendliest atmosphere of any road race. Pancakes provided.

First Powerlifting Comp

**Just moved the blog over to WordPress, so excuse any crap formatting from this date and earlier**

Yesterday I entered my first powerlifting comp. I have been training at Melbourne Uni for a couple of weeks and it just so happened that there was a novice comp I could enter. At the start of the year I started losing weight so I could compete in a lower weight class, but then when I started proper training they said there’s a comp in 2 weeks so I realised I wasn’t going to have enough time to do that. I decided just to enter this one to see what it was like and then I can lose weight slowly for whenever the next one is. Just as well I didn’t make it to the weight class below anyway because I was the only girl in <84kg so I won it!

Weigh in was at 9. I was at the lower end of the weight class but I had no competition so it was no big deal. I was told the lower you are, the better your Wilks score is so that was good. I had to bring my opening card to the weigh in. I had no idea what to start with but I wanted to get PBs or equivalent on everything, so I decided to open so that everything was a warm up for my 2nd attempt would would be what I wanted, and 3rd attempt would be a bonus.

We had some coaches help up get our warm up right. Basically reps for each lift were 5, 3, 1, 1. My final warm up single for the squat was 75kg. This was so light, and I was opening with 85. I don’t usually go up in 10kgs at that % of 1RM but they said it would be easy. So far in powerlifting I have left everything to the coaches and so far it’s worked and they were right. I opened with 85 and it was easy. 1 red light for depth but I got it so I was happy. My 2nd attempt was 90. This is equal to my PB at home, but at home I was wearing lifting shoes, and they made me ditch them when I started training! So this was going to be tough. 3 white lights and it was in so I was happy I had got to where I wanted. My 3rd attempt was 92.5. It was heavy and I was too slow. I knew it was not low enough and 3 red lights confirmed. The squat is my favourite lift, but when it’s heavy, it’s definitely the toughest.

A. arrived during the equipped lifters squats so he could video the rest for me. This was actually really useful as I can see I need to arch my back a lot more on the bench. The good raw lifters were able to maintain a big arch, meaning they didn’t have to move the bar much at all. The good thing about my benches is that I am really steady when the bar is lowered so I didn’t have to wait long for the command to press. My first attempt was 45kg. I knew this would be easy, and it was. My 2nd attempt was 50kg. I knew I could get it, but it was a PB so I knew it might be tough. It felt heavy, but ok. My 3rd attempt was 52.5 and I failed that. Didn’t bother me as I already got my PB.

I haven’t done many heavy deadlifts in the past 12 months and I have been stuck on a max of 105kg for so long so I felt like I had a huge mental barrier to break through. Although I have pulled much more than that off blocks and again at the strongman comp last year (14 reps at 108kg) I just haven’t been able to pull from the floor very easily. Last year I did most of my deadlifts sumo, but my coach told me to go with conventional for now so it’s been hard for my weak core to get used to this after sumo. For these reasons I opened with 102.5kg. It was easy. 2nd attempt was 107.5. This was easy too! 3rd attempt was 112.5 and this was fairly easy too! I was really happy with my new PB although in hindsight I should have started at 105 and finished with 115.

I haven’t given up running, but I’m walking without limping and I want to keep it that way! At the moment there’s a fine line between being ‘just ok’ to breaking myself. So I’m sticking to the shorter stuff, just once or twice a week.

Medal for being the only one in my weight class