Ok OK... I figured I better get blogging right away so all my friends can hear the details of the show so I can move on with life and put this show and training season behind me and move forward into my new training cycle.
I don't have to go back and talk about the anxiety that I had going into the show. It's old news that I didn't meet my goals and felt like I still had way too much body fat to compete. No need to recap those feelings. With that said, I'm going to make a short statement so some of you can log off and get back to what you were doing. I did not place. I was way out of my league and although my upper body may have been competitive, my lower body pulled me out of the running to place.
If you are not interested in the details, you may leave now. **wink**
I learned a lot today. This season in general, I made a lot of mistakes with my diet mostly, and plan to rectify those mistakes starting on Monday. I will also take the week off before the show. It was way too hard to teach, train, give massages, try not to stress, get in my workouts on zero energy, babysit my figure girls (not in a bad way...they just got a lot of my attention) be a mom and all that goes with that. I felt it was too much and I was very unfocused the last week. Since I was so far from my goal, peak week was more of a "practice run" anyway, but next year, I'll be a force to be reckoned with and will want to have better focus. (It's a very selfish time). I also learned that, although it SUCKS that Mike was TDY for the whole week and missed the show. It took me about 4 days into the week to realize that it might have been a little easier to diet hard without the spouse at home. The kids don't care to eat the same food all week (the 2 meals that I prepped on Sunday) so I never had to smell food cooking and they don't snack after 7. It's not Mike's fault. He is an endurance athlete and eats way more calories and carbs than me. But I can hear him eating potato chips from half way across town and it can irritate me when I am strung out on peak week! (Love you baby!) As for "show lessons", here are several...
1) Italian women do not follow the "no thongs allowed" rule. I was the ONLY female bodybuilder with OUT a thong.
2) Italian body building shows, apparently, allow the females to wear bejeweled suits, big jewelry, and of course... the dreaded... stripper shoes. (no need to recap this nightmare)
3) Italian woman have absolutely NO modesty. This I actually already knew, but here are the details.... So... the locker rooms were labeled "male" and "female". This I am sure of because my client Tammy is Italian. Besides Donna and Uomo are two words that I know in Italian. So we three American woman enter the woman's locker room. There stood about 6-7 Italian woman, naked (with thongs) with their MALE trainers patting them down (with their HANDS) with bronzer. Re-cap... half dozen naked woman and half dozen men in one big LADIES locker room. There was a second "space" that had open showers, but there was a door that opened that the 3 of us hid behind and quickly changed into our suits. Tammy was mortified, I was all like, 'hell no', and I think Sissy was just in shock, or maybe I was in shock because I don't remember if she said anything at all. She was the only one in the room with implants (trust me... I am MOST sure of this, as all the naked woman had tiny tater tot boobies just like mine) She might have been thinking that these women might go into shock and AWE at the sight of her Ds! (They are very flattering, Sissy... you look beautiful).
4) They did not supply any weights to pump before going on stage. I had intended on bringing a band but forgot it. LESSON LEARNED!
5) Lessons for me personally... on the front relaxed pose, I need to bring my hands/arms out more, Nair worked way better than shaving, and Karin's Island Tan solution was prettier than ProTan and only one coat. It also dried faster and felt less sticky. I'll be using that next year and promoting it to my clients. And finally... if I'm not ready to compete on show day, I'm not going to.
Now... Let's just address the stage and get that out of the way. Here I just have to talk a minute. Get this straight in your heads.... especially if you are a local friend. I DON'T THINK I'M FAT! I can walk thru the gym rockin' the spandex with confidence, and have a strong self esteem. I have LONG come to except the shape of my body and know that I will NEVER have a size 2 behind, and I'm OK with that. I like my shape. Please remember these words as I continue with the facts from the show. A body building competition is not only about muscle mass and symmetry. It's about SEEING the muscle and being lean is a big part of the game. I know you all think I look great, etc., but here is the truth. I was truly and without exaggeration too fat to compete on that stage tonight. I was out of my league and that is the truth. You can not look at the pictures or video (which will only be for MY own eyes) and tell my that I did not look fat. My upper body was competitive, although not quite as lean, definitely equal mass if not better mass that at least half the girls, but, again, because they were more lean, they LOOKED bigger because the cuts were better. My posing was confident and graceful, although is was incredibly hot on the stage! It was way hotter than my first competition. I barely broke a sweat last year! This year I was dripping before we even finished the quarter turns! But after the first round of mandatories, I was moved to the end and that is where I stayed. For those that don't know, the center is where the winners stand. You never want to be on the end.
I need to write a little blurb here. My kids and sister were sitting right in the front row, very near the judges table. Hunter kept yelling to me "I love you number 43", and the announcer let him yell that into the microphone. :-) It was so sweet, of course I about started to cry, but held on by a thread.
After the mandatories were over, we all left for a little bite to eat. (skipping ahead to shorten the story). Sissy's youngest son got sick and she had to take him to the Vicenza clinic. She was not going to make it to the night show. I had JUST watched the video that my sister had taken of the mandatory round, and I was literally feeling like I was falling into a black pit. My mood was going from pink to black and I was on the verge of tears. The kids were complaining that they wanted to leave (actually Tianna is exempt from this statement), and honestly I think Megan was bored too although she was neutral about "whatever". Tammy said, "Do you want to leave? I don't really care either way." So all these things within a 10 minute time frame and I was in the pit. At that moment, the last thing I wanted to do was get back on the stage. Although I loved the night show last year and had a great time with my routine. Even the kids enjoyed the night show last year although it did get a bit long in the tooth and we left after the body builders were done and all the "T and A" started (aka... bikini, swim suit model, Miss Fitness, etc.) So we went back to the venue, found out that the show was going to start 30 minutes later (which almost surely means 1 hour later) getting us HOME well after midnight, and to continue with the short version of the story, we left.
Of course as soon as we walked out of the building, decision made, I was regretful and a bit angry. Neither of my girls got the full experience of a show. The night show is the fun part! And not only did they NOT do their T walks, they didn't get to watch the entertaining part! The morning show is boring, even for the contestants! I felt like a quitter and that's not who I am. AND I really would have enjoyed staying just to watch the show, even if I was too much of a coward to go back on stage. (ouch.. it hurts to say it like that... but it's the truth) I'm the mom and the trainer and I could have easily said, "Suck it up buttercup. We are staying" But I was feeling bad because my kids were bored to death, Sissy was with her kids and Tammy didn't care and was desperate for a shower (so she said). I know that Sissy and Tammy were not in the top 6, so they had no potential to place, they just missed the experience.
Hence lesson #6) Next year I will drive separately, and either get a hotel, or NOT bring the kids. Leaving before the show is OVER will not be an option. Period!
There was an aweful lot of talk today about the end of the world. I can tell you this... there was judging... I FELT like I was in Hell... but I'm still here. So you will see me at the gym on Monday!
1) Side relaxed pose. 2) Abs/thigh pose. This is a hard pose for me and I always have a constipated face. I'm always trying so hard to show my better feature (the abs obviously), but trying 3 times as hard to save the weaker feature (the legs). 3) Rear Double Biceps, by far my best pose ... IF I could somehow do with without facing the rear... hmmm... Again, although the back is great, the bottom half is my absolute worst feature and standing to the rear is the worst position for the worst feature. (hence the cropping) Actually.... Kaelyn was my photographer and since she KNOWS how I don't like my legs, picture #1 is the ONLY one she took that shows my lower body. Side relaxed and side chest are the best poses to show the legs. So you really don't get to see the view that gets me all riled up. 4) finally we are all on stage, I think I had just been moved to the end and was just getting back into my front relaxed pose. It's looks like I'm not quite "there". But you can see that my competition was all pretty fierce.
Me and Tammy at lunch. Putting on a happy face.
