Chasing PRs

Last Sunday, Lee competed at the 19th Annual Power Challenge: Boston.  Although late summer and early fall is a very challenging and busy time at our house, he was able to get in some really good training and had high hopes going into the competition.  After attending a wedding in New Hampshire on Friday night, he left his parents' house at 5:30 am and drove down to Boston to weigh in on Saturday morning. He then drove back to Connecticut and early Sunday morning (another 5:30 am start), we drove up to Boston.  Despite going one for three in the squat, he got a new personal best of 610 lbs.  Bench has been his Achilles heel for a while and Sunday was no exception - he also went one for three, benching 375 lbs.  He was able to pull 590 lbs, good enough for a new personal best in dead lift.  His total of 1575 lbs. was also a new personal best.
Although he was initially disappointed, Lee has come around to the fact that it wasn't a wasted day.  He fell short of the goals that he set for himself, but yet still did better than he'd ever done before.  During the meet, our friend Nick pointed out that when you are always chasing PRs (always trying to do better than the last competition, never settling for what you've already accomplished), these competitions are extremely difficult.  On Monday morning, Greg Panora (one of the greatest powerlifters of all time), who lifted as part of The Refuge on Sunday, posted a great line on Facebook: "Powerlifting is not a sport of how much u can do, it's a sport of how much can u do on that day."  Regardless of what you can do in training, it all comes down to what you can pull together over 9 lifts on one long day.  We are incredibly proud of all that Lee has accomplished.

Lee actually missed his opener of 575 lbs. (the judges said that he didn't break parallel) and in a genius move, Nick stuck with their plan and moved him right up to 610 lbs.  "We didn't come here to lift less than 600 lbs."