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.