By Rhi Reynolds

Lately, these weeks seem to fly by. It feels as if it’s only been a fraction of a second before I am starting another week of training again. Lift some weights, work, eat, sleep – that’s it. It may sound monotonous to most, but for me, I’m living a dream. The time spent in between all of those tasks is productive time: organization, planning my next step in life, and reading books unrelated to weightlifting.

I’m already on my second week in a new training cycle. I can’t believe it; I feel like I just wrote the last one! So far, last week’s training was great. I worked up to around, but not over, 80% for my lifts on Monday and Thursday. I pushed hard on Tuesday, the upper body strength day. I also added in a mini WOD for conditioning, further helping with the weight-dropping process. Since I kept the lifting fairly light, I felt strong and consistent all week – not a single miss until the weekend.

On Thursday, I had another visitor. Her name is Julia Morris; a fellow 58kg lifter. Except she is 7 years younger than me (Wow, I feel old). She and I competed at the 2014 Larry Mintz Memorial in Garden City. I spoke to her during weigh-ins, and she informed me that it was her first competition. She later friend requested me on Facebook, and I invited her to a lifting session. She has since made two sessions, Thursday being the last before she had to pack up and head back to college for the fall. Julia was a great partner. She is strong, technical, and has a bubbly, positive attitude. And most of all – she LOVES weightlifting. We blended together well, using our rest time to get to know each other, and our lifting time for strictly lifting. Since she still has some growing to do, I can’t wait to see her get stronger. Her technique is beautiful and solid. She’s definitely someone that people should be looking at in the future. We both had a productive, motivational lifting session. Make sure to check her out at 2014 University Nationals in Albuquerque, NM!

Saturday is a test day. I use Saturdays to determine if I have been doing everything correctly throughout the week. If I went too hard on my other training days, my max-out session is usually not great. The only difference now is that I’m striving to be a 53, while simultaneously developing my strength at a lighter bodyweight. This past Saturday, however, was a huge confidence booster. I felt like myself again. I may not have hit a PR, but I was happy to lift within 2kg of my best competition total (158kg). I was thrilled that I worked up to 72kg in the snatch, and 88kg in the clean and jerk. I allowed myself 3 misses in the snatch (I was determined to get 72) but it wasn’t quite there. But what was monumental for me is that I had no misses in the clean and jerk: 88kg is the most I’ve attempted since before Nationals. I breathed a sigh of relief on Saturday; I am on the right track.