8 days out!

8 days out! Can you freakin’ believe it? It seems like only yesterday I was changing my diet at the 12 week mark. Time flies by so fast!

Overall, yesterday was a good day. I did start to feel tired just before leaving work but it seemed to pass before I got home which was good. I was wondering where the energy was going to come from for my work out? But I found it once again.

I didn’t go to the gym. I went from work to home because I had some stuff like cooking, that I just had to do but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t work hard. Actually I may have pushed myself harder...

Work out was as follows:

I have 3 floors in my house so I ran 2 of the 3 sets of stairs 50 times. After reaching the last stair in a set for the first 20 I completed a burpee equaling 20 burpees in total, for the next 10, I completed clean and press with each arm, the next 10, I did bent over rows and the remainder I completed holding the weights either overhead or in farmer’s carry style. By the end, I was dripping with sweat, felt great and was no longer tired.

Tomorrow is my last day of work before taking time off for the competition and I am actually only working half a day. Super excited to be off, to get away from 4:15am mornings and to really get into enjoying full competition mode.

Goals for Saturday onward are to:

1)      Rest, relax and enjoy everything leading up to the competition as well as competition day itself

2)      Practice, practice, practice posing (suit and theme wear), walking and quarter turns until I am at least semi comfortable

3)      Training daily and do cardio twice up until Wednesday, after that there will be no more work outs before the competition

I am still having a bit of a hard time getting rid of the butterflies, nervousness and self-consciousness but I think it’s natural to be that way with anything you are doing for the first time.

I have to just focus on taking deep breaths, coming up with something to tell myself to get me over the fear and on giving it all I got on stage. I have worked to damn hard to get here to waste all my efforts because I don’t know how to get past my own self-consciousness.

It has been suggested to me that I write a mantra and read it over and over to myself, that I find a couple of songs that really make me feel good, motivate me and play them over and over until I step on stage. When it comes down to it though, it’s all about loving yourself and taking pride in what you have accomplished; I just have to learn to feel that way.

I saw this video on another blog this morning and I think it suits:

Remember, Love yourself!