Chocks away - 2011 training - your time starts... now...
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Once your comp is done I have some questions for you!! not personal or overly deep and meaningful but I'm interested in what the exit strategy from BB is like for people.
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exit strategy. Get fat?<br />
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This has the startings of an article, as it is a major eating malady you get yourself into - don't want to use the word disorder!<br />
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As I say to people, I am the one who eats normal, 'normal' people fill themselves full of crap - how we eat now is lifestyle - fresh veg, fresh meat, there is nothing bad that goes into our bodies. Quantities may vary though!!<br />
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But as to an exit strategy, I think we'll always eat like this now, BB or not. LOVE my whole grain rolled oats, 3 egg whites and protein powder for breakfast (and miss it at the moment - 10 egg whites just not the same). You loosen up in the non competition season, but it'll still be eating pretty clean and lean for 6 days, and on the 7th God said BBQ and an icecream please!<br />
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There are SO many healthy alternatives out there to convetional treat foods, you just have to get off our collective lazy arses and fins them, and perhaps nmake them, as opposed to heading to countdown and getting 3 Moros for $3. -
True, true. I guess I was thinking about it from a body image angle. We hear about BB not being big enough or people feeling fat when they are bloody skinny etc. Then again you guys have the support and advice from the pro trainers and dieticians - keeping it all in perspective is very important I'd image<br />
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From the excitement and enjoyment you've both taken from the 'journey' so far I'd expect you'll continue for a while yet! Not intended as any sort of killjoy question, I just find the mental aspect of it really interesting. If you've been in that kind of shape what 'everyday' shape would you be happy with once you aren't competing anymore? -
yes, it is very weird to feel 'fat' at 85 kilos and maybe 3% BF - which you do after a comp when you weight in at 77 kilos, water depleted etc. But it's part of the package. Like when you play rugby, you know you're going to wake up Sunday morning feeling like you've been run over by a truck.<br />
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But is certainly MUCH more in the mind. Harder for women to get their minds around I think, hard enough for me. But think it helps with both Ness and I doing it, experiencing the same thing! -
good results from Harbour - me overall and open athletic, ness won 35+ and dipped out in the overall - but it must be getting closer, one of the judges came up and said to her that she had called Ness first in a tight tussle, so it gets better and better.<br />
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So two more sleeps before we fly to the Philippines and hit the boards in Cebu representing NZ. <br />
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Both primed and ready to go. Feeling good for the small amount of carbs we were allowed yesterday pre and during contest, was not the usual big carb up and post match feast.<br />
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Even though, post match some Burger Fuel Kumara chips, half a chicken from Nandos, diet coke from burger king, an Oh Yeah protein bar and on the way home from BP the only 'naughty', a caramel slice with our coffees (Ness a muffin, which I helped her eat)!!! -
check the nabba.co.nz for results etc! ON match day everyone looks the same to me, but that's classic. You'll also find pics of him if once you go to the NABBA site then look on the right hand column for muscle imaging, and even better - [url]www.gofigure.co.nz[/url] for lots of photos of backstage too!<br />
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we're back, and not a great week!!<br />
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Both placed 5th, me lucky to get there, Ness unlucky and should have placed at least in the top three.<br />
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I was flat, body did not respond to the normal carb up - too many competitions, flight, too dehydrated, fuck knows really, but was not sharp at all and lucky to be even a little bit competitive! Gutting, as a bloke from NZ that I have never lost too came in second - bugger.<br />
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Ness looked wicked, but fuck knows what the judging criteria was. Chick that came first was BIG (steroid big), but soft, second place was a Kiwi chick that was tall and lean but not ripped. 3rd place was ripped Kiwi, same physique pretty much as Ness, 4th place was another Sterioid freak, sharp looking upper body, fat legs. 5th Ness (who looked the same as 3rd place). So there was no rhyme or reason to the judging for her.<br />
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going to write up a bit of an article for this so stay tuned to the Adventures in Cebu!! -
Cool, look forward to hearing about it!! Pity the results weren't quite what you may have hoped for. But 5th is still nothing to sneeze at!!
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Yeah bro, cut loose! would be very interesting to read about that divide between 'clean' competitors and the juiced ones. Also sounds as though the politics re judging are ongoing : (
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A bridge too far<br />
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How to get thoughts onto paper when you have a weeks worth of jumbled memories to sift through, you're tired, back at 'work', and still have a case of Delhi belly that just won't quit - although at least the two hourly sprint is over - that was the first night in Hong Kong on the way home! But I digress, how to write about this, our first foray into a competition that is more than a couple of hours flight or drive away? So using my carb overloaded brain - I'll throw the experiences into categories, making them up as I go, and do a bit of analysis - a self debrief each time. This might prove to be a bit therapeutic in fact, as obviously the results were not what we wanted, and looking back now while the memories are fresh should perhaps help avoid the same pitfalls in the future.<br />
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So, we'll start with the travel, as you've got to get there eh, so start with the start, and finish at the end.<br />
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[B]TRAVEL[/B]<br />
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Auckland - Hong Kong - Cebu: I think we got this pretty right, took more food onboard the plane than most small families would eat in a week. Salad, veg, chicken for Africa, protein bars, canned fish and chicken, water, you name it, we had it. We'd also pre booked low sodium meals, so we were able to eat much of what the airline provided too. As per usual though, the seats were too small and after an 11 hour haul to Hong Kong, we were shagged! We slept the night at a friends place at the other end (after taking a train from our plane to immigration (the airport IS that big), and then a 2 hour flight to Cebu arriving the next morning. <br />
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I think on the travel for me I did not drink enough water - too worried about water retention from the flying etc. Probably the first step in my looking so flat on stage Thursday afternoon at the pre judging, bugger.<br />
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[B]ACCOMMODATION CEBU - PART I[/B]<br />
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Well, what a shit hole. No other way to describe the Motel, and the 'suburb' that we were in. It was real cowboy territory - a sign at the motel counter, no Dogs or Guns (in that order). The streets outside, think third world. We were certainly not in the tourist brochure areas, more like the Police Ten Seven highlights reel area.<br />
a few highlights of our general area of accommodation.<br />
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• Going into the local supermarket / shopping mall. Security at the door with metal detectors and side arms. And they would pat you down on entry, I kid you not. So instead of saying we're heading down to Countdown to get some milk (or whatever), it was I'm heading down to Patdown.<br />
• The lady lying on her cardboard box breastfeeding her baby. That was where she lived.<br />
• The kids sleeping on the sides of the streets. We went into the local McDonalds (Jellybee it was called or something) and bought them some little meals at one stage - it was just too heartbreaking seeing these little kids in such poverty.<br />
• Paul Mountfort's Mum having her ear-rings ripped out of her ears as she walked up the street. Hubby was ten yards back, so she was an open target for a couple of kids to launch onto her ears.<br />
• Air conditioning unit making you think you were sleeping under the wing of a Boeing 747 on warm up. Perhaps that would have been quieter on reflection...<br />
• A toilet that blocked, or required at least 8 flushings after even a wee, let along a number two!!<br />
• Beds to a standard that the NZ prison system should aspire too. They were hard, the pillows thin, it was more like a concentration camp than anything else.<br />
• This part I loved. The Philippine organisers provided 3 nights accommodation, and the 4th night you had to pay yourself. Sounds reasonable right? Well, yes, until you have to stop off at the local organisers gym to pay the extra money. Seventy Five US bucks for the night. Fine you think, no worries. Until you get to the Motel and check their rates. We only paid double what we should have! So they organisers (or rather organiser) successfully pocketed the other half of the money. How many bodybuilders were at that Motel I don't know, but suffice to say he's have made a buck or two out of that little scam.<br />
• Guards at the doors to banks. Two outside, one inside was the usual pattern. The two outside beside a speech rostrum thing, one with a pump action shotgun and side arm, the other with just a side arm. We didn't try to make a withdrawal...<br />
• At the Jellybee drive through also armed guards, but this time not good enough to just have the pump action shot gun. Nope, an M16 and a pistol on each hip. I don't think there'd be too much trouble after hours there!<br />
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Hmm, not a lot of talk about accommodation there, but you get an overview of our half star Motel and surrounds!<br />
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[B]ACCOMMODATION CEBU - PART II[/B]<br />
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After two days of the above we'd had enough, and on the Friday morning rehearsal (more on that later) at the something or other Sports Centre in the 'Remuera' area of town (they actually stopped at traffic lights in this part of town), we crossed the road to the Mantra. The Mantra certainly about a million star place compared to the half star we had been staying at. So we booked in for the Saturday night - we didn't want to get tan all over the place at the Manta - the Diplomat, it did not matter.<br />
Anyway, this place was superb, and if you do ever go to Cebu on a tourist trip, this is the sort of place you'll be staying, and it's attached to a maul too, but not as 'western' as the one mentioned above! If we had not had the first half of this accommodation experience I am sure we'd be extolling the virtues of a visit to Cebu. But we did, so we won't, and avoid the shit hole if you can! <br />
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So the Mantra was superb, and I love it, as did Ness. The bed that large you had to stop and ask for directions while navigating from one side to the other, and pillows, going from 1 paper thin pillow to 6 pillows so stuffed you needed to set up a base camp if you pile two on each other. <br />
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My favourite part was the bloke that bought the bags up. All put out when I helped him carry them in, and I think even more put out when I said, in the best Kiwi tradition, "Cheers mate" and shut the door. We're pretty sure he was wanting a tip, but he'', I'm a Kiwi, and I thought tipping was for extra good service. He carried my bags, I didn't ask him so, so sod off buddy boy!!<br />
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I lie, my favourite part was when signing slips for the mega breakfast Sunday morning. It left a part for 'tips' before you signed off. I tipped them off 'All Blacks to win RWC final'. Glad that didn't come back to bite me in the arse...<br />
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And the RWC final - we watched that in the lounge bar at the Mantra with Paul Mountfort's parents over a couple of beers. Listening to the anthems and the Haka before hand while on foreign shores made the experience all the more moving. You know you're getting old when watching a bunch of rugby players dance and hearing you nation sing makes your eyes water! And when the fulltime whistle blew too, that little tingle of satisfaction. We could not glory in it too long though, as we were already late for booking in at the airport. and we wanted to be out of this place!<br />
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[B]COMPETITION TIME[/B]<br />
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I had been worried pre this competition that maybe we'd bitten off more than we could chew, also adding in North Harbour before the Cebu trip. And so it proved, for me at least, to be a bridge too far. Vanessa though , she looked wicked, came in right, and we were pretty happy with how she looked - there was nothing more or less she could do. For me at any rate it was not good, with the body not responding as it usually does this time out. Just happened to coincide with the Philippines competition in Cebu - bugger! It's a law of diminishing returns though, X competitions, in Y amount of time, will give you Z condition for each competition. The only variable being the Z - how good are you going to look coming into competition? To start with each 'Z' is usually better than the last, until you push the body too far and then the diminishing returns kick in!<br />
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Unfortunate the X ended up too high, and the Y too short, meaning the Z, when in Cebu was nowhere near the norm. Flat was the word, and when you come off stage and your wife asks, "what's wrong, you looked terrible up there", you know something is not right!! I think the travel, too many competitions, and the body finally saying, nope, you're not going to do that to me again buddy-boy, I know you're tricks now, and you're not going to get me lean and mean this time.<br />
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Right, as the format of this competition was weird, I''ll add a few more headings, and explain the format (which we learned as we went, had no idea what was happening until the end of the first day). <br />
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So it was a two show format, like the standard NABBA show, but instead of morning and evening, it was Thursday and Friday. There the similarity ends. Thursday judging was for to select the top 6 in each division. But you didn't know WHO was the top 6 until you turned up the next day at the show and your section was called out on stage, all 10 or 15 or however many, and then you did a bit of posing, and then they'd call out the top 6, everyone else, thanks for coming, and tanning up, and waiting for five hours, but you can go home now... You then did your routine, a two hour posedown (or so it seemed), and they name the winners - something like that anyway. I am sure they were making it up as the went. On with the show though... -
Man, that was a series of interesting situations!! Politics (and a wee bit of embezzlement!) and sport aye... amazing how often real life ends up stranger than fiction! While you might not have chalked up the results you were after it sounds like you've learnt a lot more about prepping for comps. Tweaking your algebra a bit should see you hit the stage in mint form in the future. Lol that Ness bailed you up about looking flat! But that must be one of the great things about competing together - honest feedback ; )<br />
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Sucks that the juice monkey could flaunt the rules and still end up winning. You should have started a fracas onstage - bring a bit of WWF to it all!<br />
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CEBU sounds... interesting. An old school mate used to run a fitness centre there - probably worked for that gym kinpin dude you ran into!<br />
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Thanks for the write up Bart