Day IIAAU world push/pull championships
24 October 2005If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Mid-afternoon on Saturday Zebulon John showed up. He is a buoyant, upbeat type of guy with a southern accent as thick as molasses and through powerlifting for less than three years he is already one of the best in the country for his age and weight. He competes in raw (no supportive gear) drug-tested competitions that utilize super-strict judging. The lifting Saturday was all-good: everyone I worked with basically hit it out of the park. In quick succession I handled El Gato as he tore 440 to completion on a record setting 4th attempt. Not bad for an over-50 attorney who only started powerlifting in the last two years. His 2.5 times bodyweight pull resulted in an emotional demonstration of rampage-style triumphalism gone buck-wild: he raised his arms and smiled…what a crazed wildman. When Pavel missed his 4th attempt the lifting day was over. Vondah broke the 200-pound barrier, Ellen and Michelle made nearly all their attempts and Bobcat had had a perfect day. Pavel had entered his first national championships and done well and liked it. I went back to the hotel room and chilled, took a shower and played Zeb John a Roy Buchanan CD which hit John like a bolt of lightning I knew it would Roy was the worlds greatest unknown blues guitarist whose sonic approach was Hendrix-like before Hendrix. Unlike the space age compositions Jimi favored (BB King on Mars as one critic quipped after hearing Red House) Roy was blues all the way. Thunderstruck,
John memorized Roys spoken word intro to The Messiah will come again (the stumbling, mumbling, barely-intelligible Roy-words followed by the soaring glory of his strangled telecaster) and Zeb the Reb swore that that Roy would be the only training music he played in his homemade training shed for at least for the next two years. The lifters wanted to eat at Outback Steak house and we rendezvoused and amazingly got seated almost immediately. We had two tables with 8-10 people per table. The conversations were lively and as I noted Friday, the coconut shrimp tickled my palate big time. Next morning the big guys swung into action and I helped two lifters: Zeb John and the great Marshall Peck who decided to make a comeback at age 49. Marshall is my oldest training partner; the two of us cut our teeth as stable mates in Hugh Cassidys basement in Bowie in 1979. We met twice a week for five years and got strong as hell. Marshall and I shifted from Hughs basement to Marshalls basement when he built his country home. I first met Kirk Karwoski at Marshalls basement gym. Plenty of 500 benches, 700-plus squats and deadlifts in Marshalls power den. We shifted from Pecks basement to Chaillets new gym over the auto parts store in Temple Hills when Mark moved back from Dayton where he had been working for Larry Pacifico. We stayed at Chaillets for five years before I moved to Connecticut and began training with Kenny Fatano at the Muscle Factory in West Haven.
Marshall and I have a lot of history but we live 100-miles apart nowadays. His appearance was a total surprise: Kirk and Larry Christ knew but they wanted to surprise me. I was shocked speechless and was further shocked at how incredible he looked and lifted. Weighing a ripped 198-pounds Peck bench pressed 418 and just missed breaking the national raw record when 429 stopped three inches from lockout. At 5-5 and 200 he looked powerful, compact and dense as a ball of plutonium. He indicated he would be back in late January to take care of unfinished business, getting that record. Zebulon John is built for powerlifting; bones as thick as a dinosaur, equal length limbs that make him equally adept at squatting, bench pressing and deadlifting, John made three bench presses in succession: 363, 374 and 381. I should have called 391 for his record-breaking 4th attempt but he was so strong I put in 402 and he had a close miss. The deadlift had been his worst lift when he commenced lifting a few years back. Not anymore: John pulled 424, 446, 463 and finally 474. If he could have had a 5th lift with 500 he would have made that too. I owe it all to Roy. He said only half-joking as he picked up his trophies and medals. I told him with all sincerity that if he and I had crossed paths twenty years back hed be a multi-time IPF world champion by now. With his genetics and work ethic (he is a student of the game) had John gotten involved in powerlifting years back hed be a powerlifting household name. Still, at 46, he has another decade to go and within two years I see him squatting 550, bench pressing 450 and deadlifting 600.
Pavel and I gathered our gear, said our protracted good-byes and jumped into my wifes SUV for the three-hour ride back to south central Pennsylvania. We drove though horse country and Tsatsouline was enjoying himself immensely. The time flew by as it does when the conversation is good and by 3pm we were back home. We walked directly into a TV reality show filming session that had been going on since noon. Kirk Karwoski was directing the Cat Herd though their lifting paces as the TV cameras rolled. We walked though the door and I felt like one of the soldiers in George S. Pattons 101st Army being forced marched 100-miles and thrown directly into a pitched battle to break the siege at the battle of the Bulge. Where are we? What the hell is going on? I whispered only half-joking to Pavel between film takes. Being the seasoned camera pro that he is, Pavel on camera is smooth and practiced. Howling Wolf, the great blues singer, once said that a particular brand of whiskey went down smooth as Baby Jesus in silk pants and when the film crew asked Pavel to say a few words the guy delivered a spontaneous speech that would have done Richard Burton proud in Hamlet. The film guys were ecstatic, the Cat Herd glad the marathon filming session was over and I was damned glad to be home. It had been a jam-packed three days and we further jam-packed the next two days that Pavel stayed with us: we hit a great local restaurant, took long hikes into the mountains, grilled excellent Black Angus steaks from a local butcher and on Tuesday morning he showed the Cat Herd some tricks of the lifting trade. Tuesday night Michelle from Richmond visited and a very heavy hitter in governmental counter-terrorism dropped by to kibitz with Tsatsouline. Wednesday I drove him to Dulles for the plane ride back to Julie and LA. Pablo Picasso once said a man need occasionally be jerked from his complacent torpor in order to shake loose bottled-up creativity and blow the carbon out of the corroded mental pipes: I had been jerked pretty hard out of my torpor.
Tomorrow: Bob Cats take on events.
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