The Long Cycle Challenge the 7th of December: Sweden's first GS competition

This weekend the long cycle challenge initiated by Finland and Australia took place. Participating countries were also Denmark, Norway, and, finally, Sweden. France lifted during the weekend but as part of a charity event for children, so they could not do it within the challenge structure as planned.

Sweden got a nice team of four people from different places. Lennie at Omniathletics in Malmö, did a great work gathering a team. He is also a friend of David who has helped us out with practical arrangements and, not the least, the computor part.

Lennie competes in olympic lifting and fixed so that we could dispose of a section of the MAK weightlifting club (Malmö Atletklub) for competition and preparation.

So we had a real pro-place for the event - wooden lifting floor, warm up area, kettlebells, real scale... There was also the possibillity of getting a coffe, sweets etc.

Saturday we met up. First we visited the gym, had a light a training session and rehearsal of the lift and rules. After that we just shared som kettlebell ideas and did some planning for the next day.

Saturday evening was carbo-loading with pizza. As competition was to start at 11 o'clock at Sunday, it became quite an early evening.

The Swedish GS team, by the way, approves of Rut & Ragnars hostel for less expensive lodging of lifters who need to sleep deep:

Sunday morning we went to the gym and set up the stuff. Weighing in started at 9.30.


We did one more repetition of the one arm lccj lift and started warming up. In me, a light and positive, nervousness began setting in.

This time, the single lifter in the veteran category (+40 yrs) started. Then the order followed increasing bodyweight of the lifters.

Monitors
Our monitors deserve extra mention as the solution can be of use at other competitions. With a lap-top and an old spare screen we arranged two monitors for time and points. One for the judges and spectators (they were very few, but still a few), as well as one screen for the lifter.


Points on top - time in the bottom field.


The lifter's monitor:



We had one counter saying out the numbers loud and one who entered them into the computor so they appeared on the screens.

More on the lifting will follow when the final results are compiled.