I'm quite surprised to find out there were no Mono's in the Warm-up area.
My assumption would be that it was too tight to fit them in?
Congrats on the Meet, and I appreciate the Pic. Gene usually sends me a few, but lapsed this weekend.
The warmup monos were there last year. Yes, the place is very cramped but they did what they needed to do to fit them last year. Even with half of the turnout from last year (37 vs 70) it is still too small of a venue. Definitely not like the NY meet in Rochester or the IPA meet I went to in York PA. It is impossible to find a place of your own to camp out in and get your mind together The easiest way to get from the front of the building to the back was to walk around the building because it was so crowded.
The worst part was just like last year, there were no locker rooms to change in or rest rooms to poop and pee. We had one spot-a-pot to share. Well there were two, but the were marked male and female so there were lines a lot of times and my Imodium was slow to kick in (I never needed my backup singlet, so it kicked in just in time). There was a small restroom in the place, but only meet personnel were allowed to use it.
Gene said someone spread a rumor about the event being cancelled and that's why the turnout was so bad. I never heard anything about that but I'm not on facebook if that's where the rumor started. I have a feeling that it may be the venue conditions that is the cause for the bad turnout. If I had come in 100% to this meet ready to smash some records, I'd have been pissed about not having monolifts to warm up with. It's more than just having to walk out the warm ups. I'm not an average height person so more than likely I'd be tip-toeing the bar out of the rack or half squatting it out while warming up with females instead of raising and lowering a mono. I don't think I'll do this meet next year if it's at the same place. Maybe I'll sign up for Spring Supremacy next year instead. I've been considering going to the dark side and doing some USAPL meets too.
I would have liked to get more pictures and maybe some videos, but I kept my phone in my truck for most of the day since there wasn't much room for stashing stuff in the place and I was solo as usual. Some dude had a monster raw bench. Not sure what he got on his last attempt, but his 550 opener was easy as hell. That would have been a good one to get but I was warming up for deadlifts when he hit it.
