Leadup to the comp

Pics: me in coach Jon's office after first coat of contest colour, our approved water for loading, comp prep supplies!

Ali and I are still on quite a high from Saturday evening :) we expected to be quite tired the next day but instead woke up early with the most amazing sense of freedom!! It was like a cloud had been lifted, suddenly we are able to relax, take our time doing things and let the stress levels come back down!

This is because the final two weeks of comp prep were TOUGH. Got through depletion alright, and had been looking forward to loading- carbs at every meal! I was surprised though being so hungry for each meal which is what happens when you up your carbs and down other macros- digest quicker! 

Everything in the 'peak week' must be done with utter precision, think you were being anal before? (lol!) welcome to a whole new level! The water and sodium load/deplete seemed to get me in particular. The day before comp, I had a water quota I had to fill before a certain time in the day and boy did I struggle. I literally sat on the couch in jon's house for a couple of hours forcing it in while staring at the walls. I felt nausiated and dizzy. This is going to sound stupid (and nerdy) but just picture Dumbledore drinking from the pensieve! (6th book in the Harry Potter series).  Ali was doing better than me at this time so picked up the slack and ran around organising things for us on his own for a couple of hours.

We had a whole list of things we needed to bring ready to eat the night before or morning of the show, just in case! this is such a science! I in particular was looking really flat after depletion, so my carbs just went up and up! it is all SO interesting- its not about your weight, calories any of that, its about what foods are going to act fast in your body to get the desired effect- dry and muscles that are pumped and pushing out against the skin. 

I really enjoyed the presentation (beauty) aspect of competing and was actually glad when I decided to take a simpler approach to some things. We didn't start tanning until Friday morning so the only thing I got waxed was my upper lip (too much info? lol!) because I did not want the dark makeup to cling to any hairs there, shaved my bod including arms. I had my jewellery planned fairly early and was happy with the choice. When it came to hair and nails, I originally had big plans but ended up just relying on a good haircut and my trusty GHD. As for the nails, I had fakies on for the photoshoot but had not bothered to get them refilled so ended up just pulling them off and painting the nails myself. I thought this was more of a touch that would make me 'feel' glamorous' rather than contribute to the look onstage. Unfortunately cost was also very much a factor at the late stage, all this stuff adds up!

Which brings me to the tan- expensive, messy and quite difficult to get right! We had underestimated how much contest colour we would need for the two of us and had to buy additional bottles as we went along. Even though Ali is twice my size I was the culprit in using it up- as coats were sprayed on and attempted to dry we found that the natural oils in my skin instantly rejected the product and it gathered on my skin in patches which was quite frustrating!  Luckily Dream Tan is such a great product for darkening and evening out the final colour, it was slapped on nice and early and touched up right before going on stage. It was all worth it as I was so happy with the final result and agree how important a good tan is to overall presentation. 

Friday night we had anticipated getting very little sleep but we were so exhausted that we ate all our night meals quite closely together just so we could get to bed in an attempt to get as much shut eye as possible, managed a solid 7 hours which was so great for getting us through the big day Saturday!

So after about 14 months total preparation including 20 weeks on a comp prep diet we were finally ready to compete. Next post will be all about how the day unfolded, according to me! :) 

Next post will be all about how Saturday unfolded.