Lean Bodies - Noel Clark

I have a few more stage pics and then quite a few candid shots from this past weekend in chicago. 

Here are a couple that Jody took while I was on stage during the night show. 

Right after the awards..Jody took this shot!

My birthday cake that Scott got for me.  It was a very pretty cake ( but tasted so bad LOLOLOLOL )

Erik and TIm (Jody’s husband) Were sooooo excited for the pizza.  Me? I had a cheeseburger LOL

After stuffing my face LOL

“second place!!”

I know Erik has more on his camera.  Hopefully there are a couple of him and I after the awards :)  Can’t wait till November.

I still haven’t gotten the pictures from Erik, but I did upload the ones Amy and Jody sent me..so thank you girls!  Here is some of the fun we had:

me getting my make-up done by Laurie St.Michael.  She is fantastic if you ever need a make-up artist at a show and it doesn’t hurt that she is incredibley sweet!

This is Jody and I outside our hotel room after Saturday morning pre-judging. 

This is me, Amy and Jody

Amy and I on Saturday-I have one right after this that is Amy and I making a silly face..but i gotta get pic approval for that one

Me and Scott

Here is Erik wanting to be a figure competitor and then me laughing at him in the next shot

I have tons more so I will post up again tomorrow.  Some of my birthday celebration and then some of the night show and post show yummies.

What a weekend!

Hopefully I will be able to get some pictures that Amy or Erik or Jody took to post up later, but we had the best time.  Erik did a great job of posting details on how the weekend went on his blog.  If you haven’t read about it you can check that out.

Friday night was one-piece prejudging.  I was definitely nervous for that one.  I didn’t do as well in my one-piece as my two piece.  We will try to sort that out for Nationals.  We then went out to have my fat load for Saturday.  That food was so good LOL.  Then Saturday morning was two piece prejudging.  Two Piece definitely went better.  I ended up getting straight 1st place votes for my two piece.  Then all of us went out to lunch-Jody, Tim, Erik, Amy, Scott and I.  I haven’t mentioned that I got a chance to meet Jody (Mrs. Michigan) another one of Erik’s clients.  She was a lot of fun.  This was her first National show and she did really well.  Not to mention that her and Tim kept us all laughing the entire weekend.  From there we just hung out until show time! 

The night show came and it was chaos LOL.  And I just mean there was no waiting around…all bazillion of us Figure girls were lined up in our one-piece to go on and be introduced and then off again to get into to our two-piece for the awards.  Now this was a different experience for me.  I actually got to go back up for awards (yay).  My goal this time was to place in the top 5 if possible.  So when it came down to just me and one other girl I was so happy.  I ended up getting second place and couldn’t have been more excited.  Here are a few pics that I do have from the competition.   

Here is Two-Piece Saturday Morning:

Here are a couple of shots getting the awards:

Hopefully I can get some of the backstage stuff up soon.  Overall it was a wonderful experience.  Best I have felt, best I have done!  Time for a break then plans for Nationals here in Atlanta in November!

Hard to believe that I will be flying out to chicago for the Jr Nationals on Thursday.  These last 5 weeks have flown by.  I am definitely as ready as I can be for this next show as well as the break that comes after it.  There are some changes that I have made these last few weeks and I hope that they help make the difference for me.  This is definitely a much larger show than the Jr USAs (if that is possible) and I am sure the competition will be that much better.  Hopefully I can just continue to improve the package that I bring as well as a higher level of stage presence to show off my hard work.  I have been wearing those heels all over the house in hopes that it is just THAT much easier on stage.  I will have another great support system there because I am lucky enough to have my hubby coming as well as Erik and Amy.  They were all able to help out at the last show and I just am so thankful that they will be coming along to Chicago as well.  I know that we will definitely be doing a little celebrating after the show (my birthday was Friday and I missed out on cake :(  )  Keep your fingers and toes crossed for me that I get through these last few days of what I would say has been the most difficult diet and training thus far.

First off, I am back from my trip to Vegas.  The conference was overall a good one.  Met a lot of people and learned some interesting things.  I was DRAINED when I got home to Atlanta on the red eye yesterday morning.  I arrived at 5:20 and went straight to teach boot camp. I was dead.  After that I had to get my own workout in, get home to yads of laundry and grocery shopping PLUS work. LOL.  BUT I did get 10 hours of sleep last night and feel like a new human being! 

If you read my blog you know that I leave a week from today to go to Jr Nationals.  I have been basically dieting now since mid January.  Can anyone say –TIME FOR A BREAK.  I keep telling myself, one more week, one more week.  BUT I will say that my body has had enough.  I think that if you do compete you need to keep in mind how many shows  you do, as well as, where they fall during the year.  Dieting for too long with no breaks is NOT a good thing for your body.  I am showing signs of overreaching.  The thing is, Erik and I knew this would happen but with the dates of these two shows, we thought we could do these and then take a nice break before coming back HARD for Nationals which is not until November.  At the beginning of the year I was thinking of doing North Americans again but that falls right in the middle of Jr Nationals and Nationals.  This would allow very little down time for me and I think that my body would really suffer.  I just really think that it is important for those to remember that getting really really lean for these shows is not good if you don’t incorporate breaks…both dieting breaks as well as training breaks.  I am going to be taking 2 full weeks off from the gym after this show and we will slowly up my calories.  I don’t typically have rebound from competing but I think that is due to better planning for after the show. 

I am getting really excited about Jr Nationals.  Like I have said before, we have made some adjustments to both my diet and training these last 5 weeks and I think we are accomplishing exactly what we were after.  Keep in mind, you can’t do a TON in 5 weeks, but I think that our goals are being hit.  I am headed to a Physique Critique this weekend with a National Judge here in Georgia to see what he has to say about the progress.  It should be informative and helpful coming into this next show.

Hopefully I will get some pics up soon. 

In the last newsletter that went out from Leanbodies Consulting I talked a bit about the importance of picking out your one and two-piece suit for your competition.  Like I said in there, the way the suit fits can make a huge difference in how the judges may see you AND how it makes YOU feel in it as well.  I have seen quite a few competitors have such horrible experiences with suit designers lately that I really hope everyone that is competing does their homework on this subject.  The absolute last thing that you need right before our show is to stress about your suit!  or if you are going to even get your suit in time.  I have say that I have had such a wonderful experience with my suit designer.  Just to give you an example of an incredible person and company (because there are more than one out there) is Berns from Passion Fruit Design.  Not only do they make top notch suits, but their customer services is incredible.  I had the pleasure to meet Berns at the Jr USAs in Charleston.  I had ordered my suits from her last year-unstoned and did the stoning myself.  I was actually getting my make-up done when she walked in and someone said my name and around the corner she came.  She remembered my name (first AND last)  and told me that if I needed any help backstage she would be helping out.  THEN, she invited me back to her room to see some of her new collection of suits.  Amy, Elizabeth and I went to look.  There was some absolutely beautiful stuff.  Definitely some that I could NOT afford.  But that is the other neat thing about her stuff.  Her price range ranges from low to very high and the fit is still great!  I saw one suit that caught my eye that I would have never ever picked out on-line for myself.  She told me I should go try it in (really????)  So I went and tried it on and she adjusted it a bit and BOOM- Fit like a glove and I absolutely loved it!  Her words to me were…do you want to borrow it for the show.  After I picked my mouth up off the floor I said yes.  I felt wonderful in that suit that day and ended up purchasing it.  So I will be wearing it at Jr Nationals in a couple of weeks. 

So I wanted to thank Berns and Passion Fruit again for everything…you all are wonderful. 

So I took about a week off from the gym after Jr USAs and I really needed that.  Unfortunately I had to go to do a bit of cardio because I only have about 5 weeks between these two shows.  But last week I was back in the gym lifting and dieting full force.  Erik and I have made some changes to my prep these last few weeks.  Very different stuff for me, but we have some goals that we want to hit for this next show.  The diet has been the most difficult for me yet, but I did get a free day yesterday that got me through the week and hopefully will get me through these last two.  I ended up dropping 7 lbs last week.  Yes, some was clearly water that I was holding but I ended up sitting about 2-3 lbs below where I competed at Jr USAs.  That was the goal, but we didn’t think I would hit it that fast.  The all day cheat brought my weight back up this morning, but as my body has shown in the past, I will drop the water this week and look better by weeks end.  I just hope that I can get through this week LOL–this diet is a killer. 

On another note, I am headed to Vegas this weekend to get my CISSN (Certified Sports Nutritionist by the International Society of Sports Nutrition)  and go to their conference.  It is going to be a long weekend ending in a red eye back home early next week.  It should be fun though.