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Just plain tough

You wimp. Really. You probably think it would be hard to flip a 700-pound tire 80 feet in 25 seconds. You probably cringe at the idea of lifting five stones weighing a total of 1,265 pounds and placing them on shelves 5 feet off the ground.

    OK, so chances are you have not even pondered whether it’s possible to do those things. Either way, you are not Dave Ostlund.

    “I’ve got two tires back in Minnesota, an 850-pound one and a 1,000-pound one, that I train with,” said Ostlund, who lives in Minneapolis. “And I’ve got some 400-pound stones I use. If you train on heavy ones, it makes these feel like pebbles.”

    It’s all right, though. There is no need to question your manliness. You are probably just not meant to take part in strongest man competitions.

    This past weekend, 17 men from around the Midwest rumbled into Fargo for North Dakota’s Strongest Man competition. Cheered on by friends, family and a crowd with access to alcoholic beverages from an on-site bar, these men grunted and groaned for four often-painful hours. They lifted absurdly heavy and odd implements in order to win the right to advance to nationals, where they will lift even heavier and odder objects.

    Anyone with ESPN and a reason to be up at 2 a.m. has probably seen the world’s strongest man competitions. Giant men, with Viking-like names of Magnus Ver Magnusson, display their power in front of awed European crowds.

    “I just watched it on TV and saw the pros,” said Fargo’s Reese Olson, who along with Jeremy Melting put on Saturday’s competition. “I was looking online, saw that they had contests and signed up.”

    Television was a primary recruiter for many of the competitors, and the rest were probably just sick of only using their strength when buddies needed a couch or entertainment center moved into an apartment.

    And, no, couch flipping was not one of the events, but it would not have been out of place. There was, however, the previously mentioned tire flip and stones events, along with the log press (200 pounds pressed as many times as possible in 90 seconds), power stairs, husefell carry (a 300-pound mini-coffin-lookingapparatus hauled around for as long as possible) and something called the farmers walk.

    During the farmers walk, the men, strong men that is, lug around a pair of 225-pound objects for 200 feet. They look like bomb squad members scurrying out of a building before it’s too late. It looks strange. It is strange.

    “There’s a lot of guys that lift weights in the gym that are real big and strong, but it’s a totally different form compared to lifting these big, awkward objects,” said Fargo’s Bob Brunner, a co-worker of Reese’s who was in his first competition Saturday. “A lot of the events, you need cardiovascular endurance as well.”

    You also do not necessarily need overwhelming size. Yes, Brunner’s physique resembles Sylvester Stallone’s in Rambo II, and Ostlund – who is likely going to turn pro soon and won the heavweight and overall titles – is a god-like 6-feet, 7-inches tall, 270 pounds. But there was also St. Paul’s Jeff Peterson.

    Peterson, a 21-year-old who attends St. Thomas University, is a mere 5-10, 225 pounds. He looks like he should have had sand kicked in his face by some of the behemoths. Instead, he won the lightweight division, placed second overall and has the appearance of a little brother who’s all grown up now and ready to beat up big brother.

    “The first time (in competition) I was definitely intimidated,” Peterson said. “There were a lot of people over 6-6, some over 400 pounds. But now, if you practice it, and you come in good shape, you can feel pretty confident when you come in.”

    Peterson, though, was also Exhibit A Saturday when it came to showing that strong man competitions are not without danger. During the log press, the first event of the day, Peterson fell to his back while lifting, dropping the bar and drawing concerned gasps from the crowd.

    Another competitor, Lenny DeCoteau of Belcourt, N.D., who is about the size of Earth and goes to North Carolina to be trained by professional Harold Collins, ripped his calf muscle “in half ” during a tire flip last year.

    But neither have any thoughts of quitting. Not when there are cars to be tossed and stones to be thrown.

    “It is torturous, but it’s fun, too,” Olson said. “Partly it’s mental, to put yourself through that. You gotta get the gumption. There’s a pretty good crowd out there, you don’t want to embarrass yourself. You gotta have the guts to try.”

    Yeah, wimp.