Things Don’t Always Go As Planned

Usually I have to lose weight for my weigh-ins, but this time I actually had to gain weight for this year’s Junior Canadian Championships in Winnipeg for the 75kg weight class. As a strategic move, our team’s head coach decided to place me in that category the night before the competition (I’m usually a 69kg competitor and 75kg is the next class up). At that time, my weight was 69.5kg and the next morning, day of the competition, I was only 68.4kg.

At this weight I would not have been able to lift because I was UNDERWEIGHT!! Now that was a first!! If I wasn’t so worried about missing the competition, it might have been comical! But, it wasn’t. I had never faced this dilemma before. After your weigh-in time, you have an hour to lose or gain weight in order to lift in your chosen weight class. So here I was running back and forth from wolfing down breakfast at the restaurant to the weigh-in room. I was stuffing my face with lots food and even more liquid. Luckily, the competition venue was in the hotel along with the restaurant. There was 20 minutes remaining for the weigh-in and within that time I had weighed myself twice. Finally, by the third weigh session, I had made weight! Halleluiah!!! After struggling and at times panicking about losing weight for my 69kg weigh-ins, never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine that I would experience the stress of having to GAIN weight! Let me just tell you that neither is an easy experience to face. That was definitely one of the most interesting mornings I’ve ever had before my competitions.