Wednesday’s Woking success

Cathal Byrd agreed to shake things up and write the report of the day’s training and he clearly shows the benefits of the love of language. Here it is:

Today was our final session of the London training camp. As expected, after a tough four day, we were all pretty beat up; but nonetheless we decided to go for broke and make the most of the training environment.

Paudie was particularly fatigued as well as being ill for most of the week but he still managed to produce a gutsy snatch of 67.5kg, only 2.5kg off his all-time best snatch. I continued my vein of successfully snatching over 95% with quite a gruelling 105kg. I also went to just over 90% in the clean and jerk with five singles at 130kg, dedicating my power jerks to Lord Murphington. Chris Chea made an outstanding 113kg snatch pb and wasn’t too far away with 115kg. He then clean and jerked 140kg after the jerk gave him trouble on his first few attempts. Chris is looking to lift a total of 260kg @69kg this year to qualify for the 2010 Commonwealth Games for England. Going by the evidence of the last few days, 260kg is very attainable for Chris who is a truly gifted athlete.

Barry snatched 102kg which was very routine. Only for particularly tight hip flexors, most likely caused by the heavy loading over the five days of the camp, Barry would have made the 107kg that he attempted a few times. His pull was strong, but his catch position was a little off. In the clean and jerk Barry made amends with an extremely easy 138kg. There was a bit more there on the day in my opinion, but like all of us Barry was clearly quite fatigued and he made the sensible decision to hold back a little. Like myself, Barry snatched successfully to quite high percentages which is a sign that his consistency and technique is ever-improving.

The most impressive lifting of the day was produced by Sami Dowling. He came very close to a new pb of 103kg in the snatch, just losing it on his way up from the squat position. Sami also attempted 105kg which was not far away at all. 100kg+ snatches will be quite mundane for Sami very soon. In the clean and jerk Sami made an outstanding pb with 130kg, and then also easily cleaned 135kg and fought hard to save the jerk. 2010 should be a very progressive year for Sami if he can keep his current vein of form going.

This was our last day training and there are a few videos to come over the next week. Well done to Zag and bring on the Limerick Open on February 6th!