I haven’t updated much recently, but this past weekend I had the opportunity to compete again at my home gym DMH SPEC in Decatur, IL. I haven’t been lifting here THAT long, but the time I have has been amazing and probably accounts for more of my progress as an athlete than any other period I can think of. Since Nationals, my buddy Jerry and I decided to make the jump to 242 and test ourselves there. It was never meant to be a long term change, just something to try. I had been walking around just barely over 220, so I decided to try to gain a little so the handicap wasn’t quite so bad. I weighed in fully clothed at 235 the day before and showed up competition day at 232 as the lightest guy in the class. To up the ante even more, 242 which are usually together in USS events were also combined with the super heavy weight classes 308 and 308+. I will say that I wasn’t really nervous about any of it, since it felt like having the odds stacked against me so much kind of took away any pressure. Another thing that really helped my nerves was that my wife was competing in this one and half my focus was on coaching and encouraging her. Before I get into my results, I should say that she did an INCREDIBLE job and I couldn’t possibly be prouder of her. She hit significant PRs in literally every single event. You can check those out in the video above. Her log press and stones were the most impressive, I think. But she already posted her recap on Facebook, so I won’t do that for her here. On to my results. The first event was the 715x50′ yoke. Yoke has always come fairly natural to me and I had a good showing with similar weight at USS Nationals two months ago, so I decided not to focus on this in my training nearly as much. I’ve done it twice since then and only for speed. I didn’t set a time PR, but it was a little heavier than I’ve gone before, so I guess it still counts. I finished with a few hundredths over 15 seconds, which landed me second over all and first in the 242s. The weight felt about right, but I will say that training indoors on perfectly level ground spoiled me a bit. The very slight dip in the pavement had me focusing more on balance than accelerating and this could have been better. Still, I’m not unhappy at all with the result. The second event was the 15″ tire deadlift for max weight. I had a lot of my training eggs in this basket and I think it paid off. I opened with a conservative 640, then 670, and my final pull was 700 lbs., which was spot on for my goal at the beginning of the training cycle. This landed me first at 242 again and second in the HW/SHW overall. In hindsight, I probably should have opened with 670, then 700, then attempted to match or beat the heaviest pull of the day which was 720. I’m skeptical that I could’ve gotten it, but sometimes it’s worth trying. The third event was the armored Humvee pull and I must have been first in the overall for this because I was the last athlete to do the event. Time was just over 13 seconds. Again, I placed first in the 242s and second overall. No regrets at all here, but I wish the event would have had a heavier vehicle and been 100′ long instead of 40′ish. It was significantly easier than the 1600 prowler pulls I’d been doing in the gym and it was over too fast. Leading into the fourth event, the log press, I was still in first at 242 and overall HW/SHW, but knew it wouldn’t stand. My weight was 260 and it had to be cleaned every rep. I’ve had a rough time with this in training and hadn’t even touched 260 yet. The last heavy set I was able to hit was 250x3, so I knew it wasn’t going to be spectacular. I was hoping to get on the board and that the damage wouldn’t be TOO bad. I managed to barely squeeze out one rep and it did end up hurting me quite a bit. I got 2nd at 242 and (ouch) 7th in the overall, which dropped me down a several places in the overall rankings. The final event was atlas stones and I while I did have a good showing, it’s hard not to watch the video and look at the places I could’ve shaved time. I made it through the first four stones ( 230, 260, 300, 335) in 31 seconds, landing me 2nd by about 1.5 seconds in both the 242 and overall. The stones were brand new and had been sanded down rather thoroughly, making them slick and tacky not as effective as any of us would like, so no one was able to get the final 360 stone. I don’t know if a first here would’ve helped my overall or not, considering how abysmal my log press was, but I did what I could at the time, so I’m not worrying about it. The final tally ended up landing me first at 242 and third overall, oddly, behind Jerry who was second to me at 242 but moved way up the overall due to his bad ass log press performance which tied him for first in the event. The only man to beat us both was 290 lbs. so I don’t feel bad about this in the least. The only downside for me was that 242 didn’t come with a trophy, so I guess you guys will just have to take my word for it. -j