Numbers to start with;
41 - days until the competition.
105 - approximate kilometres I have run/walked/dragged my sorry butt in the past 7 days.
9 - average kilometres I jog in each 1 hour session.
7 - average kilometres walked in my empty-tummy-morning hill walk.
13 - number of stiff-uppercuts I've had to give myself in order to get the cardio sessions completed.
42 - number of meals I've eaten in 7 days. It's all veges and fish but at least it's frequent!
120-150 - grams of the above-mentioned fish at each serving. Not nearly enough!!
42 - litres of water consumed. That's 6 litres per day. I've decided that I detest cold water and prefer tap temperature. It's funny how strong your opinions become when you are subjected to it too often.
3 - feet is the furtherest I can be away from the little ladies room due to the 6 litres of water!
As usual, you'll get honesty from me. This last two weeks has made every week before it pale into insignificance in the "hard" scale. It's been absolutely and utterly gruelling. Life has been one big bubble of eating, running, eating, walking, training, eating, sleeping and working. The intensity has been overwhelming at times. It has tested my ability to run work, family and training life and, at times, I have failed to make it all work.
I find that, as it becomes more intense, I become more controlled in my approach. I seem to lose all of the 'grey' and get a little black and white about things. Example: If my trainer says, "heavy weights with 12-15 reps, 4-5 sets", I will always choose 15 reps and 5 sets. I can't seem to let myself relax into anything. Just yesterday I completed a fairly (very!!) heavy hamstring workout as follows;
- stiff leg deadlifts - 75kg
- bulgarian split squats - 2 x 15kg d/b's
- hamstring curls - 25kg
all 12-15 reps, 5 x sets
Then I had a thought - why don't I finish off with 100 swissball roll-ins? Yeah! So I got my big red ball and started with great guns. At 25 reps I wished I could stop and my hamstrings were screaming in agony. Did I stop? Not a chance!! I popped out reps until the magic 100 was done. It was quite possibly a silly thing to do as I can hardly feel the backs of my legs today. But I had made the silly call and couldn't back down.
So while I'm a big advocate for reaching goals, there definitely has to be a time where common sense prevails and you give yourself a break. I just have to learn myself where that threshold lies. Or risk being put in my place by a smart trainer.
On that, the lovely Sammy called me this morning to see how I was going. As far as I was concerned, I had ticked all of the boxes. 2hrs of cardio per day - tick. 1hr of heavy weights per day - tick. 6L of water - tick. Posing practise - half a tick. Food on track - 3/4 of a tick - just a little bit of a fruit bust here and there. So I thought it was all good. I didn't mention to her that my temper fuse is shorter than it's been in years...and that I dreaded the thought of fish at just about every meal..and that I was feeling increasingly sorry for myself with regard to a lack of anything yummy or alcoholic...because I didn't count that as important. It was only important that I had completed my tasks.
At the end of the conversation Sammy said, "tonight I want you to eat carbs. Yep. Eat carbs. I can clearly hear it in your voice. You sound like a weary bear..all dopey". And as she said it, I could feel that I was bumbling in my thoughts and really struggling to have any zappiness - you know what I mean? Very heavy like I couldn't get a clear thought pattern going and I was choosing the long way around most things without realising it. I got off the phone really quick because I could feel some little tears stinging the corners of my eyes..and, of course, bodybuilders can't cry!! hehe. I processed that information and realised she was exactly right, as per usual, and decided I would follow her advice.
The only thing I modified was that she told me to have a carb dinner. I decided a lunch would be a better meal to eat on as it would give me the afternoon to 'recover' and I wouldn't go to bed on a full tummy and then think about it all night. So I had a royal feast for lunch!! I won't go into too much detail but I'll tell you it involved cheese (ohmygoditwasgood!!!), peanut butter, and chocolate. Not too much, but more than enough to make me feel full, spoiled and very happy!
Following my feast I jumped on that dreaded treadmill and completed 9kms followed by a heavy chest workout and, of course, my early morning walk already under my belt. I'm back on track now. The muscles have been fed a treat today and it's back into the regime as of now. I have another week on this dreaded deplete plan and then it's a see-saw game up until comp date. Now is when we start tricking things up with salt and water and it's very interesting to see how the body reacts to different manipulations.
So that's me for the week. I completely understand it now when told how hard it is to train for these competitions and I can't wait to be able to say I got through it all and came out the other side. The drive to succeed by achieving my goal is worth the pain..and my goal is just to participate. At this stage, I really have no more desire than that. But I want to do it with some style and that's why I'm giving it all I have.
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