Friday – the day before.

Wow. I cannot believe that it is almost here. It has been a really long journey to this point.

I left home yesterday around noon to make my way here to Vancouver. The flight left around supper time and landed at midnight my time. There is a 3 hour difference, and I am really hoping the transition won’t be too hard. Going west is OK for me, but coming back home east is the tough part. But I will deal with later. Even if I do have jet lag I am going to have to suck it up for the next 24-48 hours.

The flight was uneventful. This is a good thing considering how stressful flying can be, and probably is for most people. I did start coming down with a sore throat on Tuesday, and then it turned into the sniffles. You really know if you are sick when you take a plane. My ears have that ‘hollow’ feeling, and everyone sounds muffled, and it feels like I have ear plugs in. Maybe this could be a good thing too. It is annoying, but manageable.

A good friend of mine, Sherry-Ann Boudreau was so kind in picking me up at the airport. We stopped at the grocery store on the way to the hotel. The hotel is quite nice, near a farmer’s market, and right on the water. I will be going down later to check it out and see if they have cheesecake for tonight. I cannot wait to eat my fat loading meal…bring it on!

I did see a few fellow fitness/figure types last night, and this morning. You always tend to look around and see who is here, but really most don’t come out of the woodwork until the general meeting with everyone tonight. They have the ‘look’ that you just know that they are here for the show.

Later on this afternoon I have to start tanning and getting prepped. The stress, excitement, maybe a bit of ‘sizing’ will start.

A.

2 days till I leave.

Here are some quick pics I took last night.

Sorry they are so poorly done, but I have not resolved my issues with my computer.

This thing (the computer) is quite frustrating. We have wireless, and it is not working, so I cannot use my laptop.

I think I am looking ok. I am feeling very depleted. I am watching everything I am eating, counting calories, and macros. I leave on Thursday to arrive in Vancouver later that night. Tomorrow I will do a routine practice, posing practice, and make sure everything stays in place when I move.

While I am there I am to do a few shoots with various photographers. I always love taking shots when you are in shape, as you never really know when you will be in shape like this again.

I have noticed a trend with photographers lately – they are all charging for photoshoots. I have only one question–why? Everything is digital, so their cost to take the pictures is virtually nothing. Sure they have to pay for their equipment, expenses to get to the show, etc, but, I ‘the model’ have expenses of my own. I think this issue was brought up on various message boards that I frequent. Questions like: does the model have a fee? Or, does the photographer charge for their time?

I have to say that I have never paid for a photoshoot and am very reluctant to do so. I hope that if not too ‘diva’ of me. Perhaps I could justify it and make it a gift to myself for all my hard work. But then again, the whole competition experience is one VERY big gift to myself.

Who has paid for their own photoshoots? Did you get the results you wanted?

What did the photographer do with all the other photos he did not give you?

I will update before I leave on Wed/Thursday to let you know how I am feeling, and what my goals are for the weekend.

It is so close now…..

A.

Not cranky, and 5 days till I leave.

The last few days I have been feeling very tired. I tried practicing my routine a few days ago, and well it did not go so well. I felt as though I had run out of gas. I did take 2 days off, and had a cheat meal this past Friday. My ‘cheat’ meals are not what others would consider to be cheat meals. I have a sandwich and some peanuts. Just enough to take the edge off, and give myself a bit of a break. It did help on Friday. I rested all day on Saturday, and got my hair done. I can sense today that I am in much better shape emotionally, and physically and will practice my routine again today.

Erik reassures me that to feel ‘crappy’ right now is normal. I know I can get through my routine and do all the moves properly and ‘sell’ them, but when you have an off day this close to the show, you wonder – ‘Am I really ready?’ I practice the posing quite often. It is really hard to flex your muscle like that under the hot lights, and make it look effortless. This is a mistake I made last year. I did not really know what I was doing and just went into last year’s Nationals with no expectation for myself, so did not really prepare that part. It is worth 66% of the score, so hindsight is 20/20 and this year I made sure to practice.

I have been dieting for 10 weeks, since around the end of May. I had a few things lined up in June, so that is why I started my diet a bit earlier. For the Arnold I only dieted for around 46 days. This time, it is upwards of 75 days. Each week I do make changes to my diet to keep my body changing.

I wanted to update pics here, but I am having issues with my internet. I have a PC but it takes forever to download my photos there, and I usually upload from my Mac.

I will see what I can do.

A.