In response to comments I made in my weekly check in with my coach, he asked what I was most proud of myself for at Westerns. That is a difficult question for me to answer, not because I can't think of something but because there are just so many things that it is difficult to pick one to top the list. I even told my coach that my answer will likely change every time I might be asked that same question. The truth is that I am incredibly proud of it all-the big picture of Westerns and all of the little pixels that make up that big picture! There are a lot of pixels.
Competing at Westerns wasn't just about the four hours or so that I was wearing my singlet and stepping onto the platform. My Westerns experience really began many months ago with intentionally training to be stronger than I was before I herniated a disc more than six years ago. There was lingering shoulder and elbow pain to deal with and try to resolve. Late summer/early fall had me dealing with a bunch of dizziness that never really had a definitive cause. There was a weird and random minor injury to something in my shoulder or clavicle last December which had me worried might derail Westerns completely. And then there was so much drama and stress over my ability to even get to Westerns. A "last minute" date change put a massive roadblock in my way and derailed my carefully laid plans. There were challenges with communication to get that roadblock removed and, even once I finally did manage to get it removed, there were more communication gaps in having that properly acknowledged. Only a few days before Westerns was to begin, I was told that I didn't have the correct membership for competing at a regional event. The membership options were confusing and didn't specify the differences (that has now been rectified), so without knowing any better I had chosen the wrong one. It was easy to fix, but it was yet another cause of stress and anxiety. Both of our flights to Moose Jaw wound up being delayed. While the second flight delay really wasn't a problem, the first one stressed me out completely. All of these pixels often had me feeling like I would never actually even make it to Westerns, so I am proud of surviving it all and making it through the struggles.
Although I told my coach that it was difficult to pick one thing to be proud of myself for, I did say that, at least in this moment, I am most proud of my silver medal. In all of my previous competitions, I have always finished in first place. Sometimes I finished first because I was the only woman in my class. Other times there was one other woman in my class and I managed to come out on top. At Westerns, there were three women in my class. I went into it knowing that I would earn a medal no matter what as long as I made at least one attempt in each lift, but I also knew nothing about my competitors so my placing was not a sure thing. Squats didn't go as I had expected them to go. Even if I had nailed all of my squats, I still probably would have finished in second place, but it would have been really close. It could have been easy to fall apart after missing two squats. My history with my third bench attempts is abysmal, so it could have been easy to fail that one, too. While I wasn't in danger of finishing third, I still had to refocus, go out and lift heavy things, and prove to myself that I deserved to be on that podium. Because I'm in an age group that usually has only one or two competitors at many meets, most of my medals are little more than participation awards and that's how they feel. This silver medal feels different, even if I couldn't have done worse than silver, because of all of those little pixels making up the bigger picture.
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