Every good recap starts long before the actual part about the meet itself or maybe I'm a food blogger? I digress. I'm going to start all the way back at 2018 IPF Worlds. I knew that was going to be my last meet at 57. I knew that I would not be making an appearance at Worlds in 2019. I made a very calculated decision to go up to the 63's and take the summer off. The saltiness begins because what I expected to happen and what actually happened didn't align. A recipe for dissatisfaction. Cognitive dissonance has been haunting me ever since my third deadlift at 2018 Raw Nationals hit the ground.
2018 Raw Nationals ranks quite high in regards to performance and satisfaction. I finally managed to hit lifetime PR's on lifts. On my third deadlift, I was pulling to break a 500kg total. It would have been a hell of a get, but I just couldn't quite lock it out. I ended the meet with an American Record squat (also an unofficial World Record) and a 490.5kg total with 8 made attempts. My first real training cycle as a 63 set the standard HIGH. My expectations for training and numbers afterward followed suit.
Training was going fairly well up until about January and it just kind of fizzled out. I did The Arnold in March with a bench that left (read: I lost about 7.5kgs off my best), a stagnant squat, and deadlift that had sky rocketed only to slide backwards before the meet. I was pretty devastated and a lot salty. I most certainly did not want to do The Arnold much less The Grand Prix. However....I also do not want to be an ego driven lifter who only shows up when they think they can win or cause an uproar with records and such. For The Arnold our strategy was simply to get all 9 lifts and not chase any particular number or record or placing. I was in no mood to load numbers for the sake of loading of them when they simply weren't there and took it as an opportunity to practice restraint and maturity as a lifter and team. And we did. We went 9 for 9 and totaled 485kgs, 5.5kgs less than my total at Nationals.
Training after Nationals still didn't pick up much but it at least seemed to be holding steady, except for bench...it was still dragging it's feet. Even though training wasn't super exciting and at times my motivation was pretty low...I kept telling myself to keep showing up and to keep my effort in check. Still pretty salty just about ALL OF IT but, showing up.
In June, just before we went on vacation, we made an offer on a house. This is why I wanted to take the summer off. Even though I knew this was our plan, making the offer happened a little bit sooner than we really expected. Another thing that I didn't quite expect was the amount of FOMO I felt watching IPF Worlds.
We get back from vacation and I AM READY to hit the ground running. I am ready for training to take off and I AM READY for this house business to be taken care of. Well. Neither one of those things exactly took off. My focus was in about 238475937 places at once. Nonetheless, time only moves forwards and that's what I did.
When we actually moved, the physical part of moving, which coincided with school starting (#whyamilikethis), I believe is when we got behind the fatigue curve a little. I was tired, and hungry, and thirsty and my life and schedule were in shambles, but I made it to training...wearing the clothes I slept in the night before and with paint in my hair, but I showed up.
All of the aforementioned parts of life added up and were reflected in my training and how I felt. My knees were killing me. Waking me up in my shitty sleep killing me. With the lack of progress, and painful knees I thought I was old and had osteoporosis and this was the end. I had my day in the sun. However, after talking with a PT friend, I (she) figured my osteoporosis was patellar tendonitis so all hope was not lost for the long term. But I'm still salty...and showing up.
I keep waiting for the turn around. I am also looking at the calendar and I know I'm running out of time. Once we get over the big hump of moving and home improvements and start to get settled into the new school year....I start to settled into the idea that this meet is not going to be what I thought it would. I decide to adjust the goals. I tell Wade and Aaron that I'm just going to shoot for a PR total and a silver medal finish.
I'm about 3 weeks out and to be honest I am starting to question whether or not the adjusted goal is even attainable. I am salty about it. But I keep showing up. On the bright side. Bench starts to peek through the darkness. This takes a bit of the edge off.
I had been having some issues with sleep pretty much since we made the offer on the house. Just too much going on for my mind to just freakin relax. If you've been around a while, you know I train in the mornings before work. This makes for a pleasant combination. Wade was going to South Africa to compete in his IPF Worlds and I was happy and proud of him for making it there. It also happened to be my heaviest week of training. Call it divine intervention. Call it coincidence. Call it luck. Call it whatever you want. I had to switch my training to evenings for this last heavy week and I think it may have been what saved me.
This last week of training was a big ol breath of fresh air. I felt like myself again. I felt strong again. I also felt salty because I just couldn't help but think it was too late. I kept thinking, MAN, if I had one more week of this I could see PR's on the horizon. I can't control that though so I sack up and decide to ride the high of that last week.
ENTER: Podcast previews. ENTER: TRUCK LOADS OF SALT. Now. I do try to limit my ego. But let's be honest....having an ego is a prerequisite for powerlifting. My feelings were hurt. I kept running the numbers in my head. I'm thinking, I take one summer off and everything I've done has been erased. I felt left out but I let it fuel me (shout out to Matt Gary for having my back though).
Enter: Jennifer who won those titles and set those records. Let them sleep. I have done the work. I have set the appropriate goals. We have made the plan. That is what we do. We do the work, we set the goals, we make the plan, we execute the plan and the goals take care of themselves.
Ok, meet day details:
Surprise! I didn't sleep a wink the night before the meet. "Woke up" feeling like a steaming pile of week old garbage. I went for a walk with the hubs and we goofed off and make jokes and took pictures and it was enough to shake it. At some point I tried to think of how I had slept before any other meet. I couldn't remember. At that point I said to myself....it really doesn't matter. All that matters is what actually happens, so let's actually fucking go!
Squats:
The bar felt good. Everything else felt like garbage. Scanlon is opening 12.5kgs heavier than me. Embarrassing. I remind myself I had a plan and to only worry about executing MY plan. The outcome will take care of itself. I was very tempted to ask to drop my opener. My attempts were slightly more aggressive than my usual style. We knew I could hit the numbers and we were leaving the door open for an unexpected great day. Before the opener I told myself it was just about hitting it. It wasn't about it being super fast. Just get it. You've done this weight countless times. Opener was 170kgs and good. I repeat this talk to myself for my 2nd at 180kgs and it is good. For the third, I thought for sure the call would be 182.5kgs. Wade comes up to me and tells me that I'm going to have to dig. At that point, I knew he had called 185kgs. I LOVE a good affirmation. From the time I finished my second attempt, I repeated to myself, "Jennifer Millican goes 3 for 3 in the squat, lift is GOOD for Jennifer Millican". And it was. Wade and Aaron made the perfect call and I am feeling good about being able to deliver. We closed out squats in the number 1 position.
Bench:
WELL I'LL BE if bench didn't feel like I could have hit a life time PR. I complained about my bench nearly everyday. I made adjustments. I changed my training. I changed my set up. I changed my grip. I did literally everything and I never stopped trying. I was so pumped about my bench from that incredible meet a year ago and I refused to let it go. I hit 107.5kg in training a few times. I wanted 110kg SO BAD for my last heavy session but 107.5kg didn't move quite fast enough to warrant the call. So I hit 107.5kg for my final bench in training and would have been over the moon with 110kg in the meet. I hit 112.5kg in the meet and I'm not lying when I tell you it was better than the only other time I've hit it...which was at 2018 Nationals. Bench is still a bitch and I love her. Going into deads we are in 2nd place which I expected. But nothing can bring me down from the momentum I'm feeling.
Deads:
Deads felt like deads. Not super great but not horrible. At this point, it's just about securing the goals. Going into 3rds, Wade tells me I've got the silver place position and he is going to load 195kg to obtain our 2nd goal of a PR total. I knew I could get it. I knew it could be hard. When deadlifts are SUPER hard, I tend to gyrate (you heard me) which tends to make judging difficult. So I did have enough stress to constitute another affirmation. "Jennifer Millican goes 9/9 and takes the silver medal position".....and I did. Gyrations were not present (I think they are very fatigue related).
I went 9 for 9, totaled 492.5kgs and took silver. Scroll back up and re-read my goals, I'll wait.
I may have been salty, but I showed up. Ima take all this salt and use it to season this next training cycle.
Much love to Wade, Aaron, my husband, all of my team, family, and friends for sticking with me and refusing to quit believing and reminding me when reminding was needed.
#letsactuallyfuckinggo
