One week left! I have one week until my competition. I’m excited, exhausted, and a bit anxious, but overall, I’m just feeling weary. Lately, I’ve been having these unexpected tearful moments. My sleep is definitely off and I’ve dropped weight (125.4 lbs, I was 128.6 in my last weigh-in). All of that probably contributes to hormonal changes. Not to mention I haven’t eaten anything except cod, eggs, egg whites, avocado and rotisserie chicken for 3 months.
Fun fact: I’ve discovered I might be allergic to avocado. As soon as I eat it, my ears itch and my throat tickles a bit. I realize I probably shouldn’t eat it if I am allergic, but they’re so good. More importantly, I don’t have any reaction if the avocado has been made into guacamole. Therefore, I have decided I will continue to eat them.
Fun fact #2: I increased my magnesium and potassium intake because I’ve been having random, excruciating foot cramps. Luckily, the cramping has stopped since I added more minerals. Unfortunately, I take them before bed and I just realized that taking them means I’ll have to pee more. I literally have to get up three times in the middle of the night, it’s like Niagara Falls. I need to start taking them earlier, so I can sleep through the night.
In my last post, I said that I would update you on the recent costs, so below are some of the things I had not prepared for.
- Hair cut: $25 (I’m blessed with curly hair, which means I don’t have to do much for competition, just get a trim).
- Spray tan: $175 (two separate coating sessions, touch ups all day, and oil)
- Physique coach (to help me create a routine, then several sessions to get feedback): $175
- Eye lashes: $65
- Tanning base: $10/month (I got mine done at my gym so this is just my membership cost)
- Massage: $70, total (I will be getting two, since the quarter turn is killing my back)
- Makeup: $40 (my daughter will be doing it for me, but my “entourage” needs to have a ticket to get backstage with me)
- Manicure: Free! Well maybe closer to $5 since I had to buy a color to match my swimsuit. I’ve decided I’m going to paint my nails myself since I have such long nails at the moment. (Don’t judge me, there’s only so much money to go around)
Struggles:
I still do not enjoy the last ten minutes on the StairMaster. By fifty minutes, I start to think, “I’ve practically done an hour, what’s so important about those last ten minutes?” I’ve mentioned before that I strongly prefer to exercise based on distance and not time. If I’m working out based on distance then the moment I feel “over it” I can just do it faster and be done sooner. But when I work out based on time, like the StairMaster, I have to complete a set time and I can’t make it move faster. I guess what it comes down to is hating the lack of control…no surprise there. Please know that I do complete the full 60 minutes.
I’ve also realized that sometimes processing more complex things can be quite a strain on my brain as I’m training. My trainer calls it “5 Second Fred.” When I’m trying to do math, for example, I struggle to calculate and remember things. Normally I’m very good at math and I really enjoy it, but there’s an added level of difficulty to do it while I’m training. The lack of food is the issue here.
Another example of 5 Second Fred is when my trainer wanted me to do leg raises, then single leg squats. I just looked at him blankly. I could not for the life of me remember what a single leg squat was. He laughed and demonstrated it for me (here’s what it looks like, if you’re curious).
Another sad fact about my processing issues is that it causes me to drop a lot of things. It’s almost like I don’t have the energy to grip anything. That’s even worse than it sounds because if I had leg-day recently, then bending down to pick anything up feels like such a long way down (even for someone like me, who’s only 5’2”). That’s a new level of annoying because apparently I make a lot of noise by dropping things all the time, according to my children.
Not surprisingly, I am also really over the whole “eating the cod” thing. It’s not that it tastes bad, but by Monday I’m already starting to fantasize about Saturday’s reset meal. I appreciate having a variety of food. Recently, my cardio buddy, April, and I spent much of our StairMaster hour talking about food. My birthday is this month and we spent about ten minutes discussing possible cake ideas. Then we transitioned to why we do not like store-bought cakes. That led to a conversation about what we would like to have for dinner and what veggies we would have as sides. It was a wonderful discussion.
Curiosities:
A little while ago, I started going to bed at 8:30pm. I need a lot of sleep for such intense training. But I’ve still been exhausted most days. Working out for 3-4 hours every day will do that to a person, I guess. Usually when I sit down next to my daughter, I immediately fall asleep. In fact, not only do I fall asleep, I go directly into a REM state, instant dreaming. Strange, but interesting, I think so anyway.
I am curious to see how my body will look this week. Will it be cut? Will all the huge muscles pop out? Will I be pleased with the work I’ve been doing these past few months? I actually got a glimpse of an answer while I was travelling recently. One day, I wasn’t able to eat very much because I didn’t have access to what I regularly eat. The next day, my muscles were very defined. I was appreciative of this bit of insight. I found it interesting that it wasn’t even with much instruction from my coach, just a day where I just couldn’t eat much.
As I’ve been traveling in these past few months, I’ve tried many different StairMasters machines and and StairSteppers. I definitely have favorites in relation to where the handles should be or, more importantly, where the emergency stop button should not be. On more than one occasion, I accidentally hit the stop button and the whole machine stops. Then it will refuse to restart and the whole machine has to reset, that’s been frustrating. So, if anyone needs help designing a StairMaster, I’m practically an expert by now.
Concerns:
I hope there are enough competitors in the categories, because if there aren’t, I’ll have to compete against 5’11” women. I might have more muscle than her, but having long legs takes the gold every time. I’m definitely praying that there will be enough women in each category so I have a fair shot regardless of my height.
Something that I found funny while registering for my category is the names. My category is actually called “Grand Master.” That’s the name of the 50-59 age group of women. You may all feel free to refer to me as “Grand Master Law” from now on.
Final Round:
A few things have come to an end during these 3 months.
- My workout gloves recently ripped. They’re probably only 18 months old.
- All four pairs of my shoes need to be retired. They’ve each reached about 200 miles which translates to retirement age. I have four pairs because I used to run a lot and you really shouldn’t run in the same pair day after day. I do rotate them, but since I was doing two hours of cardio a day, that meant I was wearing each one every other day.
- My Garmin keeps dying, it locks then just dies. I think it’s just as tired as I am.
- Speed: I had to let go of the idea of moving faster on the StairMaster. My left knee is angry, so I had to say goodbye to a level 10 pace. I’ve had to adjust to staying at a level 8 or 9 for the full 60 minutes.
Thanks for reading. Let me know your thoughts!
Vintage Vitality 