Until I find a new adventure, this will be the final post for a while.  

The photo CD arrived in the mail today. These are some of the mandatory poses each contestant is required to do. Mine still have many weaknesses, but the fact that I even know the difference between a good front lat spread and a poor one is amusing. This time last year I couldn't have predicted that I'd desire that knowledge. Makes me wonder what will be of interest in May 2010.  

A couple of weeks have passed between the competition and "once again real life." The days have created a solid beaver dam between then and now; there is no flow of reality between the two--Yesterday never really happened, but Today is screaming for attention like a restless toddler on a long road trip. 

I guess that is why we keep photos. They are proof our life existed yesterday even though our footprints crumble away as soon as we leave them.

Some photos...

The photo CD is on order, but here are a few shots taken by friends in the audience. More to follow.


The pose down.











The end of the journey.



Parting shot.

left to right: Jennifer, me, Tina, and Jorge (Tina's Sweetie).

"Take the picture and take us to In-N-Out!"

Epilogue: If a gal binges in the forest does anybody see?

Eek, it is Tuesday, three days after the competition. And I have not stopped eating since Saturday night. This phase of training may be the hardest one yet: turning the dial past "I'm done" and back to moderation.

By Saturday I had: starved myself down to 121 pounds, painted my body to look like an orange Oompaloompa, then oiled it; sat in a dressing room behind stage and listened to women discuss how to keep their tiny posing suits from slipping off their ample breasts (with a perfectly sober tone, one gal recommended a type of tile adhesive sold at Home Depot); taken first place in the masters class only because I was the sole participant in my age group. The day was, in a nutshell, surreal.

But now that it is over, I seem to be in locked in an eating frenzy that is beginning to unnerve me. I allowed it to take its course on Sunday. It was the day after and I had no intention of holding back on anything. My shrunken stomach did its best to process the pizza, chocolate, cereal, peanut butter, and pretzels I tossed down my gullet all day, and by the evening, my belly looked about 5 months pregnant.

I thought of the I Love Lucy episode, when Lucy cannot keep up with the candy wrapping at her new job and begins stuffing her cheeks with balls of chocolate to hide her ineptness. My stomach looked like Lucy's cheeks. I had to sit up and read a book until well after midnight waiting to digest enough food to finally get horizontal.

Yesterday I started the day off with oatmeal, and ate clean right up until 3 PM when a bag of brightly colored Easter candies, saved for post-competition started it all again. This morning, I didn't even try to pretend the day would go well. I ate the last Poptart with my morning coffee, and have plowed through anything savory or sweet that gets in my path.

This post-event state is an interesting place. My pumpkin-dyed skin is fading in streaks that makes my skin look plagued with scales and stretch marks, and my belly is bloated and drum tight.

Attractive.

And working out? Are you kidding? I would have scheduled a pap smear and a root canal this week just to get a break from the iron.

The only goal I have for the week is to crawl my way back into some balance.

I gave the welcome tour to a couple new gym members today, and I could see thier wheels turning: wow, must be hard, having a baby at her age... wonder if it was a planned pregnancy...

Apparently, I am not on this crash course alone though. This morning at the bus stop I pulled up next to the van containing my fellow bodybuilding buddy. We hadn't seen one another since Saturday night, when we parted ways at the end of the competition. She sat behind the wheel of her car and we both rolled down our windows and sported a cat-that-ate-the canary grin at one another. We didn't need to even recount the endless list of comestibles that we'd repectively consumed since our last meeting.

"Have you weighed yourself yet?" She asked.

"No way. You?"

"Yep."

"And?"

"Twelve pounds."

Bodybuilding: it is a world of extremes.

The Homestretch

Thursday is winding down. I am in a small state of triumph this evening, two days away from the competition, because I have just consumed my last serving of tuna for a good long time. Today’s last meal today ended the fish-centric protein blitz I have been on for the past several weeks. Tomorrow I get to eat oatmeal for breakfast, and then, every 1.5 to 2 hours I eat bit of granola mixed with strawberry preserves.

The idea is to carb load at the very end in order to bring loft back into the muscles. The carbohydrates pump the muscles and veins and make them more showy. Whatever. All I know is that I hit the grocery store this week and bought three kinds of granola in anticipation.

Earlier in the week as I swept the gym floor and daydreamed about Friday’s menu, I found myself humming It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, at the prospect of all that sugary goodness.

However, Tina raised that damn eyebrow at my elation and said, “Just remember, no water to wash all that down.”

“Oh, right.” I responded. Water Shmater, I thought, just bring on the granola and dump that stinking tuna.

That was then, this is Thursday. I have tapered my water intake each day, and tomorrow I get a mere six ounces for the whole day. Saturday, I don’t drink a drop until after prejudging, somewhere around 2 PM. The granola has lost some of its appeal. I am not certain how it is going to make it past my epiglottis.

And so my new obsession is water—a tall glass in real glass, not plastic, with ice cubes up to the top. I have resisted the urge to drink the abandoned glasses from dinner that sit on the table long after the rest of the dishes are cleared. I have also resisted licking the juice that dripped down my arm as I sliced a kiwi for Audrey’s lunch tomorrow. Each green oval glistened juicy sweet. I quickly put them in a plastic container, in the lunch box, in the fridge. There are now fortress layers between us. It is not that one drop of kiwi fruit or one extra sip of water will change the outcome of the competition, it is simply that once I start—one, sip, one lick, one taste—I will not stop. It has to be all or nothing. If I blow it now, months of work will unravel.

Not everything is torture in this home stretch. I was required to bath in citrus and Epsom salt tonight. The purpose is to, coupled with the dehydration, get the skin to lie flat against the carb-filled muscle. To take it one step further, as bodybuilding tends to do, I completed the bathing and then slathered hemorrhoid cream on like lotion to further shrink the skin. I am trying not to focus so much on that part of the experience this evening, though it is tough not to think about it—I am currently dressed in an old robe and am as sticky as flypaper.

Returning to the positive, it was the first time in YEARS I sat down in my own bathtub. Typically, my showering is done in record time, with a kid pounding on the door, or perched on the toilet stinking up the joint. Tonight I brought in a book to read and sat down in a steamy, lemon-scented heaven. I still ended up with a kid on the toilet stinking up the place, and I didn’t get to crack open the book, but spent the better part of the bath answering questions about fourth-grade homework through the closed bathroom door. It was a decadent experience none-the-less, and in the future, I plan on scheduling in a relaxing bath more often than once every 8 years.

As I wind down this evening, and get ready to lay my sticky body down next to my patient husband, I have a solid feeling of contentment. It may have been the bath, or the act of tossing the last empty tuna can into the recycle bin, or it may simply be the delirium of dehydration altering my mental clarity, but it feels like the journey is complete. It is all essentially over tonight. On Saturday the competition may trump me; the judges may squint in search of my muscles, and the audience may laugh me out onto the sidewalk, but when I reflect on this experience, it is bigger than Saturday’s outcome.

All my labels, the ones I have given myself: the quitter, the pudgy, middle-aged mom, the side-liner, they washed down the drain with the bath water tonight. When I get up on that stage, I will have finished something really hard. Next week I will go back to being a mom, a gardener, a reader, a business owner, a daughter, a wife…And I will like each of those roles a little better, because I am getting along with myself a little better tonight. Hemorrhoid cream and all.

Take that inspirational quote and stick it in your ear; better yet, eat it.

It is coming up on midnight, and when the clock strikes twelve I'll be facing the beginning of the last two weeks of preparation. For all the bodybuilders in the world whose pictures I have studied in glossy photos and web pages let me apologize for ever underestimating the mental walls you had to climb in the last weeks before a competition. There is nothing harder than the food battle that comes into play at the end. 

My current diet consists mainly of egg whites, tuna, and green apples now. I have been on this regimen for so long it has had phases: since I cannot salt anything, I have dressed the egg whites in experiments like Stevia and cinnamon. It was palatable the first few times but rapidly lost its appeal. I now just cook the damn eggs and eat them plain. Then there is the no sodium canned tuna. At first, I was so turned off by plain, unadorned tuna chunks that I gulped each serving down as quickly as possible and then got the hiccups a few minutes later. Tuna hiccups did not help me in my growth as a person, let alone as a tuna lover. 

Now I have a ritual. I get 1/2 a can every three hours with 1/2 a green apple. I slice the green apple thinly, sprinkle seven slices with cinnamon and cut the last two up into tiny chunks and toss it with the plain tuna. I eat the tuna as my meal and the cinnamon apples as my dessert. I is not bad, in fact it borders on pleasant. 

But don't get me wrong. I think about food all the time. I plan what I will eat once these days are ticked off. In two weeks I will pour a cup of coffee with a cascade of real cream that will come up to the rim of the mug in a soft brown swirl. I will sit at a Mexican restaurant and eat chips and guacamole. I will eat chocolate cake, and peanut m&m's. I will make two peanut butter sandwiches, one with jelly and the other with raisins, both with a tall glass of milk. 

That's my short list.  

Earlier this week I dreamt I was standing at a take out window on the receiving end of a mounding plate of french fries. In my dreamy thoughts I was rationalizing that if I sprinkled no salt seasoning on them, I might not bloat so badly, and I might just get away with eating them. Sadly, as I sat down to take bite, my daughter's voice pulled me from the dream.

"Mom, I can't sleep." Poof the plate of wonderful, greasy fries was gone. I trudged upstairs to rub her back. And for the rest of that next day I harbored a smidgeon of bitterness about my dream's interruption. 

The big problem with dieting is that when it comes to food in this nation, we are in a constant game of Space Invaders, whacking away images of Cold Stone Creamery ice cream cupcakes as they fly toward us in increasing numbers. When the temptations are incessant, our ammunition eventually dries up.  

Being so restricted in my consumption at the moment has made me acutely aware of the volume of food temptations we have to swat away. We don't just encounter a box of chocolate chip cookies in the grocery aisle, we get their cousins and second cousins, aunts and uncles, the ones with sprinkles and dipping sauce on the side. 

I think it is time for a new game plan.

The more enlightened cultures of our planet have menstrual huts for their women where they can retreat into a more meditative state during sensitive times in the hormonal cycle. I propose we develop dieting huts where earnest folks seeking better health can have a reprieve from the smell of Cinnabons, the sight of a Carl's Jr. commercial, and the chocolate impulse purchases at the checkout stand. Then we might stand a chance.

Yep, I need a dieting hut, I thought tonight as I sliced crusty bread and spread it with butter, handed it over to my child and watched her eat it. The crust she abandoned was torturous, it taunted me from the edge of the plate, a small smear of butter on one side and some soft inner still left on the crust. I silently repeated an Emerson quote: What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. 

Shove it man, was my next thought, what lies within me is a whole lotta nothing! 

But Friday morning has officially arrived now, one more day I can tick off that brings me closer to the end and that cup of coffee with real cream. 

Up for the countdown

Today ended Spring Break, that glorious week when schools close in order to take a deep breath and prepare for the final push to summer vacation. It is the week that, despite the inevitable fog that rolls in and keeps us impatiently bundled in our fleece, presents daffodils as evidence that easier seasons are coming. 

The close of this week also marks the start of the four week countdown to May 9th. It is a time I have simultaneously feared and anticipated. Since November Tina has shared tales of the four week competition countdown where your caloric intake is measured and timed scientifically while your already overtrained body is asked to push even harder. You stop being able to interact socially. You become an anorexic with muscles.

The four week countdown of hollowed out hunger includes bathing in citrus baths and slathering on hemorrhoid cream to help shrink and tighten the skin. This phase of insanity also includes painting on layers of bottled tanning lotion, tapering water intake, and posing through muscle cramps and light-headedness. These are the details that get doled out to you in small increments. If presented too early, they are the tidbits that would make a person choose to pass on bodybuilding competitions as an acceptable hobby.

"You won't be yourself," Tina warns. "You'll be forgetful from lack of carbs. You won't trust your own decisions." 

"I lose my car keys several times a week as it is," I reply as I hear her horrific forecast. 

"You'll be even worse."

At this remark I conjure up an image of people gathering in the parking lot of the grocery store to observe me as I dump the contents of my purse on the pavement in search of my car keys. As I squat down on the pavement to thumb through my assorted lip balms, tampons, gum wrappers, and paper clips, they tsk and shake their heads, "Poor dear, she is carb deprived," and they chase the spare change that rolls out in every direction from the tangled mound I am fingering.  

I blink away the image but what loiters is the feeling that I am completely unprepared for the mental challenge, the extreme dieting, and the hours of workouts that lie ahead. An odd realization because, since the first of November it has been dieting and hours of workouts. I have not had a single day without muscle soreness. You'd think I would be used to it all by now. I have lower body workouts so intense on a Tuesday, that my glutes are still cramping on Thursday--while doing  biceps curls no less. Since last fall, each body part has barely had time to recover before screaming for mercy again.

Never-the-less, this is where I am. It feels a bit like going into labor, where the fear of impending pain is mixed with the elation that, after such an arduous and long journey, the last leg of the trip will be like a Roman candle: explosive, intense, and then simply over. 

It is the place in every story where the weary warrior summons up one last bundle of strength and says, "Bring it on."

Earlier in this week, my ten year-old daughter and I had one of those days--the kind that turns instantly into a golden memory. After browsing thrift stores and snipping sweet peas from a hillside, we drove dreamily back up the mountain, and along the way we passed a group of tourists taking photos of themselves on the edge of a turnout. 

My daughter asked, "Why do people always take pictures of themselves in that turnout?"

"We all like to show we've been somewhere I suppose."

After a few moments she said, "But we're all somewhere. No one is no where."

I have reflected on her comment all week. If that is the truth, then as fearful as this place is, and as unqualified as I feel, it is somewhere. Even if I don't prove to be the weary warrior with one last bundle of strength.

And as scared as I am, it feels good to be here. 

All Bodies Great and Small

For a woman weeks away from turning forty-four, whose Irish heritage shows in glowing white skin, whose battle wounds include scars, stretch marks, and roadmaps of varicose veins, there is one thing more terrifying than opening the credit card statement, and the first mammogram combined: getting fitted for the competition posing suit. 

Yesterday, was that day.

First some backstory: competing in this bodybuilding competition with me is a 33 year-old, blonde beauty, who even after four children has the body of, well, a bodybuilder. She is lean, and muscled in that beautiful feminine way that, coupled with a smooth olive skin, makes me kick myself for encouring her to hop onto this train with me. Being ten years my junior, I knew we'd compete in different classes, but I did not anticipate how, once we trained together, my confidence would shrink like 100% cotton socks in a hot dryer. 

Yesterday we planned to meet Tina at the gym, lock ourselves in the heavily mirrored yoga room, and put together our posing routines. Later we were to meet at Fresh Peaches, a swimsuit mecca specializing in custom made posing suits. 

For our posing practice, Tina said, "I need to see your lower body too, so wear shorts or a bathing suit." 

Posing is an art. It is choreographed like a dance, and can be as exhausting as a full workout. The trick is to flex as hard as you can, position yourself in such a way that all that hard earned muscle actually shows, and then hold it for 30 seconds, all the while remembering to keep the rest of your body as tight as the lid on a jar of pickles. Seems simple enough.

What I tend to do is this: face the mirror, pull arms overhead into a double biceps pose, tuck thumbs into hands, bend wrists in toward forearms, lift elbows, glance and my lower body and realize I am not flexing my stomach, which is hanging flacid, like Homer Simpson's. 

I tighten my mid section, squeeze my quads, look back at my biceps which have since sagged, put them back in position, and then glance at my countenance. I am grimacing, and my tongue is sticking out to the side like a kid who is learning to use scissors for the first time. 

Thirty seconds is suddenly over and it is time to move into a side chest pose. The impression I have made on my imaginary judges is that I stumbled onto stage by accident while trying to locate the snack bar. 

Posing practice is important. It requires a sense of strength, confidence, and rote coordination. You can put your heart and soul into your diet and workout, but if your posing stinks, none of your efforts will show. 

So though I am not entirely prepared, Saturday morning arrives.

My young companion and I enter the gym. She is clad in cute camouflage short shorts, legs tanned and smooth, which confirms  my decision to wear bike shorts as a bad one. My winter white legs look like toothpaste squeezing out of a freshly opened tube.

I reflect on my three year-old's comment after I dressed and emerged from my bedroom this morning:

"Mommy, you look funny."

Indeed.

Posing practice is a small disaster. I mentally shrink into my self every time I look in the mirror, searching for all that muscle I have worked to grow. Instead I see the betrayal of age, the refusal of my lower body to response to countless miles of cardio, countless pounds of lifting, of endless walking lunges up and down the gym parking lot in all kinds of weather. The awkwardness of posing further shrivels my confidence, and when I finally leave the gym to go pick up the kids, I am certain I cannot face getting fitted for a bikini today. 

I cancel plans to go to Fresh Peaches and instead go home. I open the doors and windows for the first time since last year. I turn the stereo speakers toward the open window, crank up the Gourds and spend the rest of the day tidying the yard and hanging out with my girls. 

The yard, buried and frozen for the past several months, is finally becoming exposed again. The melting snow reveals the ravages of winter: a collapsed patio chair, two torn Chinese lanterns that didn't make it into the shed last fall, a Cabbage patch doll abandoned last November next to the swing set. I make a pile of debris to load into the truck and haul away. About 4 pm my phone rings, and I see it is Jennifer, my fellow competitor. I pull myself out of my cleaning zen.

She has just completed her fitting. "It was a great experience, and the people were really nice," she sounds upbeat. "But they're closed tomorrow, and she needs at least 6 weeks to make the suit."

I quickly calculate that I may have missed my window. Well, I guess I'm off the hook. There just isn't enough time for me to get a suit made then. I pull my mouth into a half-smile. There is a brownie with sprinkles on it calling my name. 

Score!

"Good news is that they are open until 7 pm. So you could still make it today."

"Oh." 

I thank my friend for her call, and mentally put down the brownie.  Then I look down at myself. I am unshowered, my jeans are covered in dirt and dog slobber, one child is napping with peanut butter on her forehead and a rat's nest of hair I intended to wash before we went public again. The other child has a friend over and they are playing Twister, content and happy where they are. 

I imagine loading my motley crew in the car and hurriedly entering Fresh Peaches. My vision includes being greeted by a tanned, toned 30 year-old sporting a bikini and a belly ring. She has a tape measure around her neck is and holding a clipboard. Our conversation would likely go like this:

"Hello, I need to get fitted for a posing suit for a bodybuilding competition."

"For bodybuilding?"

"YES."

"Bodybuilding??"

"Yes."

"Bodybuilding???"

"yes."

I look at the clock again. It is 4:20. Fresh Peaches is an hour away. I do what any one in my position would do, I call my mom. She offers to come with me (all women understand strength in numbers when facing combat situations) or to watch the kids. I change my clothes, take her babysitting offer, and on the way out of the neighborhood, stop by my friend's house. She is getting ready to sit down for her happy hour, but she throws on a new shirt and jumps in the car. Again, women understand strength in numbers.

An hour later, I pull into Fresh Peaches and take my sweaty palms off the steering wheel. We enter the building and are struck by a warehouse full of bright colors, endless polka dots, and tropical patterns. String bikinis hang upside down in long rows like festive bats, resting, wings folded. Behind a simple desk at the entrance a white-haired older woman greets us with a genuine smile. 

"Hello, I need to get fitted for a posing suit for a bodybuilding competition."

"Well, my daughter Carrie Ann can do that for you." She smiles. "Carrie Ann...you around?"

My eyes scan the rows and rounders until a figure emerges with a tape measure around her neck. Carrie Ann is beautiful, apple-cheeked, twinkling, and all of about 25. She is also big. Not just plump, but big in a way that makes her seem out of place among the string bikinis that frame the background. 

She is also confident, poised and gentle in her mannerisms. I am instantly put at ease by this woman nearly young enough to be my daughter. 

Carrie Ann is an artist and began making posing suits for bodybuilders when she was still in high school. I stand inside a fitting room, holding up a small pice of fabric, trying to decide if belongs on my chest or my rear, and she stands on the other side of the door offering calming advice about colors, fit, and style. I eventually emerge from the fitting room shivering and goose-pimpled in a sample suit, and she measures my backside and shows me how to adjust the straps.  

She senses my discomfort and tells me stories of other gals' first competitions, how worried they were that they would not be ready, and how much they transformed physically during the last four weeks of training. 

"You are right where everyone is at this stage." She releases me to change back into myself, but continues talking like a sage from outside the dressing room. "I don't know anyone who hasn't done a second competition. It gets addicting."

Rather than just a deposit, I pay for the suit in full.  The experience has been surprisingly positive, but I know myself and that brownie still have battles to come. 

I sit down in the car and my friend and I look at one another. "What a great human being! What a great place!" We drive back home awash in a discussion of how Carrie Ann's attitude AND her physique make her a success. 

My friend plans to return with me for my next fitting and pick out a suit for herself. Summer is coming and it is time to welcome the sun. It is time to see the magic in bodies, not just the perfect ones, but all of them and the amazing souls they house.