there is no spoon

of late i've started to notice how live is actually a lot like the matrix trilogy... or maybe it's just my life? when the final movie came out alot of people were disgusted to find that it essentially ended exactly where the first one began.

i can see how as an audience we are frustrated by not having a story that was tidied up nicely. but i can see to that many of us live in circles. what was old, became new again. lifestyles put behind us are embraced again.

i live in my own circle. the more i change the more ultimately, i stay exactly the same. i've always lived a very 'safe' existance. now those of you who know of the years skating, skiing, alpine racing, snowboarding and now motorcycling riding... well you might feel the need to challenge that statement but trust me, it is true.

perhaps one of the many things that may have kept me from the upperechelon of rollerblading was my inability to step too far outside my box. i skated safe and in by doing so, i never really had the 'success' that i might have. in rollerblading fear breeds failure... or at the very least it can get you hurt! when i was racing my 'success' stalled when i was unable to 'push it' enough to get to the next level.

what about now? well there are those who believe that i am capable of far more than i have achieved thus far on the gym floor. that i can move much more weight than i give myself credit for. that may veryily well be true... it would be classic miche. even when i look like i am leaping far outside my box... it is a measured risk.

so if i myself cannot leave my past behind... then i can not be suprised when others can't leave their pasts behind either.

my friend in jersey is proud of me for many things, one of which is venturing outside of my box. i wonder though, am i really outside of it? or is it that i am just pushing the walls a little... so that the box itself is getting a little bigger?

i am not a religious lass... but i do hope that there is something in this universe that will protect us all from the choices we insist on reliving.

please be safe

oddly enough...

ya know when i was restricting my calories, cutting my carbs and/or removing them entirely i was not as b*tchy mcnasty as i am now. i'm having more calories than i ever have, carbs by the boat load and my mood is distinctly foul. the best i can come up with is that i was equally perturbed during show prep but since i wasn't getting the carbs and calories i needed i just didn't have the energy to do more than feel pissy. these days it is taking everything i have and then some to keep from slapping the taste out of somebody's mouth.

thankfully i have thursday and friday off of work. i was hoping to spend some time logging some more km's on jade but sadly mother nature looks like she has other plans.

catching ya up

i went to a bodybuilding show this past weekend. i got to see ifbb pro autmn raby guest pose. due to the funky nature of this sport i rarely get the opportunity to see pro fbb’s pose. saturday was a nice change of pace. i found autmn to be very engaging, she really interacted with the crowd… i liked that. she crawled around on the stage more than i would have liked but… well ya can’t have everything.

ever since i missed the opportunity to meet and talk to lenda murray i have made more of a concentrated effort to meet and or talk to other fbb’s. so i went over to autumn, got a signed picture and told her that i enjoyed her performance. she was very nice, and she wrote that she couldn’t wait to see me up on stage. i told her that i was currently bulking for next year and as i walked away she wished me luck. i’ve met pro athletes who know what it means to be a pro and sadly i’ve met others that haven’t a clue.

much to my immediate displeasure i have been given a new client at the gym. i know what your thinking. but miche when do you have time to fit a new client into your schedule. well i don’t so i’m really not too impressed about this recent turn of events. but i guess i have to suck it up if i want to keep things comfy at the gym. the new client starts tomorrow. he has purchased 36 sessions, two times a week, tuesdays and thursdays at 5:30 a.m the time is non-negotiable. so for the next 5 months i will only be able to sleep in on saturdays. so much for fawkin growing.

i have to buy my plane ticket for miami today. i already have my ticket to the show, the 2006 npc nationals. and now i have two athletes to cheer for; elena seiple and andrea gahan. i will also be rooming with andrea, so that’s going to be both interesting, entertaining and a tad scary all at the same time.

on my mind

lately there is always so much on my mind. i wonder if its a good thing or a bad thing that i spend so much time alone. because lately i spend so much of it thinking. thinking would not be bad if the thinking resulted in action or decisions but currently it just seems to result in... yup you guessed it, more thinking.

the online training thing is not easy. it's open to interpretation and i often wonder if i am doing what i am supposed to be doing or if i misunderstood. on one hand training is training but on the other i really want to make the most of this arrangement, while i have it.

work is clearly becoming a negative situation. i spend too much of my day unhappy, coupled with less days in the gym i find i am more easily agitated.

i am still trying to work through that trust issue i mentioned a few posts back. so far things are going well but it is early and i guess they could go to sh!t as quickly as they seemed to have gotten better. i am also trying to decide how i am going to spend this weekend. and more importantly will i be able to live with myself whatever i decide to do?

one of my friends is leaving. it is a shame because we barely hung out, but she has been there for me, in ways that some other people haven't been. i will miss her, but she feels that its time for her to head back home. tomorrow her and i will go for lunch. i intend to pick up the tab, to thank her for all she has done.

like i can afford to lose anymore friends. bah!

go speed racer

it's hard to get over the change that overcomes my friend when you add a few hundred cc's. she tends to show a more quiet and reserved exterior but get her on her bike and watch out!! she becomes animated to the enth power. she talks a bit louder, the gestures more emphatically, she figdets on the bike, she wriggles her legs on the pegs, she sticks her legs out to the side, when she is not on the bike she paces like a toddler that has to go potty and she makes these grandiose statements that crack me up. why? well because she is completely serious when she says them.

here are a few of my favourite speed racerisms:

once while trying to decide where to ride speed racer declared that we should 'just ride where the road takes us man', of course complete with the far and away hand gesture.

and today, again while trying to pick a direction to ride in she says 'we have all this...', a broad sweeping hand motion from her left to the right side of her body, '...and all of this', pointing to the restaurant directly behind her, 'but we dont have this'. i collapsed over my tank in a fit of giggles. i dont know what the fawk she was talking about but i've never seen anyone so serious.

zombie by day, vampire by night

now before you go running off to sharpen the stakes and/or clean the local grocery out of garlic allow me to explain. i've been experiencing sleeplessness or just all around poor sleep patterns of late. not much seems to be able to shut the neural activity off and my nights are full of tossing and turning. before its long its morning and i have to be up, only problem is that's when i am ready to sleep.

i am suffering and my training is affected as well.

i am really quite concerned about one of my friends, a very bad, very challenging situation continues to escalate. i am really not sure how much more my friend can take. even my friend is starting to feel well past the breaking point. when it gets dark like this my friend tends to cocoon and is very hard to reach. since i know how dark and desperate things are... i worry.

i had my mid-year review a couple days ago at work. suprisingly it went well, alot better than i expected. i basically was expecting as bad a review as last time. i have to admit the impending review contributed to my sleeplessness a bit as well.

today i called the placement agency i used when i was freelancing. i have to admit that i am truly not happy at work. i can't help but think that my decision to accept full-time employment there was a mistake. since most mistakes can be corrected, i am currently trying to explore my options before deciding upon my next step.

but the question is... will i sleep tonight?

to err is be human...

i am human, no really i am and i make mistakes... sometimes lots of them. i've made a couple recently and do you know what happens when i make a mistake? well i start agonizing over it, regretting it and wishing that i could undo it. but alas what is done is done, so without a delorean and a flux capacitor there is nothing i can do save learn from it and try not to do it again... and of course in my special case, sleep poorly.

i said something stupid to a friend yesterday. it was not meant in any sort of malicious way, i was trying to be funny i just didn't realize all of the implications behind my joke. i am sure she has probably forgotten about it which since it was offensive to her is good, i however will feel like an azz for some time.

on the weekend i sent a 'hey, hope your having a fantastic weekend and what do you think about this...', email to jennifer and last night i read on her members blog that things have been rough in her family since last week thursday. and again i wear the azz hat.

okay so we have covered my ability to err, what of my ability to forgive? well that is the other part of my recent bout of sleeplessness. can i trust someone who has let me down before? should i forgive and forget? and can i? i guess the answer is how would i feel if my friend from yesterday held my stupid comment against me??

can ya be too nice?

apparently the answer to this question is yes. and i for one find that odd. i have always believed that you put out in the universe what you hope to get back. so i tend to be nice, but some have told me that i am too nice. so what is the accepted level of 'niceness'?

if my friends have problems, need a friend or a shoulder to lean on i am there for them. well as long as they aren't crying. i don't do tears. hey... maybe i'm not that nice after all??

i do want to do something nice for my coach and his woman. i've recently heard from a fbb who had to change coaches mid show prep. considering how close the show date is, that's got to be rough. this trend as terrifying as it sounds in not that uncommon, particularly when one is being prepped by a competitive athlete. i spoke at length with another fbb who had a similar experience. she felt completely abandoned by her coach 8 weeks out from her first show. rather than get a new coach this fbb tried to gamely go it alone. doing all of the final prep herself.

i think she needs to applaud herself for her bravery and forgive herself for not 'coming in', in the shape she wanted to. as she was basically 'guessing' and going it alone she is a winner in spirit and internal fortitude.

my coach had a whole wack of sh!t going on in his life particularly in the final days before my show. but push to shove he was there for me. all my calls were answered or promptly returned and all my fears and/or concerns were addressed. his lady helped me alot as well. she was instrumental in my stage presentation. for my make up, stage colour, hair and oil she was there. i am sure i would have looked a royal mess without her.

i need them to know their efforts were appreciated. especially in light of my decision to 'offseason' under jennifer's guidance. i want to ensure my coach knows he is still my first choice and that come next year... i want the same people in my corner.

change will do you good?

todays marks the third new workout, that i have implemented since i've been working with jennifer. it is still too early to tell if things feel any different. the only concern i have is how long my knee's will be able to hold up. 10 years of falling out of the sky has taken there toll on my knee joints and some of the stuff that i need to do to bring about change is hard on the knee's.

i somehow managed to hurt myself tuesday and i had to get in to see my sports physiotherapist pretty quickly. that meant that wednesdays planned workout (chest/triceps/calves) had to be swapped with saturdays (back/biceps/calves). i am sure my poor back and hamstrings are wondering what the hell is going on. switching from the way i was training to this method happened over the course of a weekend. i had done my typical quad workout on the friday and my normal back workout on saturday. i was off sunday and started the new way monday with shoulders/hamstrings/abs. of course then i hurt myself and wednesday i was hitting my back again. oh well stuff happens like that, you just deal and move on.

yesterday was my second off day for the week and it was difficult to say the least. i was quite the bear. everything annoyed me i was angry, frustrated and i really wanted nothing more than to haul off and pound on someone. around midday i got the brilliant idea to go for a walk to 'cool off'. probably not my best decision. the elevator stopped on every floor on the way down. at the last stop 8 people got into an already occupied elevator, which of course set off my claustraphobia. as soon as the doors opened i wanted OUT but that group of 8 moved, 8 abreast and walked at the pace of congealed molasses. i practically exploded through the revolving doors in my haste to get out of the building. my walk was ineffective to make a long story short, the kilted dude who plays the bagpipes on the corner came this close to having to have his pipes surgically removed from his nether regions.

i sure hope this cranky behaviour doesn't continue

brand new battle plan

as i mentioned jennifer is helping me with my offseason program. as i feared her first order of business was to hack away at one of my training days. so i am now only training 4 days of the week. she suspects i might be a hard gainer and require more rest to grow. she also recommends that i nap on the weekends which i did successfully sunday and that put me into a bit of a pickle.

she also thinks i need more food to grow as well and has bumped up my daily caloric intake by heaps. getting it all in is tough. the nap that i attempted to take on sunday turned into a 5 hour sleep. i woke up 1 hour before my bedtime with four meals left to consume. needless to say i was up for hours!

today was my first training day. the split is different, the rep scheme is different and we will be introducing some new exercises as well. its going to take some getting used to as i suppose change generally does. jennifer likes to keep the workouts varied to shock the muscles and keep them guessing. i tend to be a creature of habit so constantly doing a new workout is going to be a challenge in and of itself. good thing i like challenge.

i learned during my last offseason that cottage cheese tasted very good when added to muscle milk strawberry protein powder. i learned last night however that it does not go with muscle milk's chocolate mint flavour. i don't really enjoy eating cottage cheese but until i get some new protein i guess i will be soldiering in the 1/2 cup at night.

the things we do for mass.

before i forget... again

an interesting thing happened this morning at the gym. i almost forgot about it in the excitement of setting a new squat personal best. first you have to understand that when i train i have the mp3 player on with the ear buds buried in my ear canals. i'm told there is a look of intensity on my face as well. so then why mid workout do i have people coming up to complain to me about the radio station?!!

some random member comes up between sets and starts squawkin about there being too much talk on the radio. now there was a guy who was actually working... well he would have been working, if he would remember to get out from behind the juice bar and i dunno clean something up or put something away! oops did i just type that?

anyway back to the random member, so i politely listen even though in my head i'm thinking "fool, why are you bothering me?". i can't remember all what he said at one point it was just lips flapping and then he said something to the effect that i "didn't have to go change the radio now." sometimes i wish we were allowed to strike rude and or stupid members.

wednesday morning my workout was also interrupted. that time by a female member who is a fan of my old training partner. she will often stop me to ask questions about what the old training partner is up to, so usually when i see her in they gym i try to play 'keep away'. i'm not trying to be mean, i just have a job to do. i patiently entertain all of her queries in the locker room. you would think she would tire of hearing me say "i dont know" and "i havent see her". so the next time i see my old training partner i am supposed to tell her to email this woman. that poor woman doesn't understand... i can't tell her to do anything, and i stopped trying a long time ago.

sometimes the only solution is to train somewhere else. last week saturday i went and trained at a gym that one of my friends from the board goes too. it was nice nobody complaining to me about the stereo, because somebody was on the step mill too long,...

speaking of step mills... what is wrong with you people. i got on that machine from hell a total of 4 times during contest prep, i prolly should have been on it more... but i hate that fawkin thing. why da fawk would ya go on it when ya weren't trying to get down to single digits in body fat? and further why the fawk would ya stay on it too long?? what are these people smokin!!!!

random thoughts

while at the gym this morning i happened to notice the new signage in the womens' bathroom. mediacom or somebody puts up lifestyle advertising at the gym and its changed from time to time. so i'm in a stall and i'm staring at this ad for summer's eve feminine wipes. not exactly the most entertaining of reading but there wasn't a whole lot of choice and i was a captive audience. i am also in the advertising field, so i couldn't help but scan the ad. it was the tag line at the end that really got me thinking 'enjoy being a woman'. okay i have one question... exactly what the hell is in those wipes!!

i took the bike into work yesterday and i have to admit that i don't feel as 'safe' at work as i once did. i walked into the building wearing a joe rocket motorcycle jacket, boots and i had a motorcycle helmet in my hand. the guy who is at the desk, who's job is building security, says to me "do you ride a motorcycle?". this is a multilevel office tower, there are countless people wandering in and out of this building all day. this guy is my last line of defence. i think i'm frightened.