Life, Lifting and Loss of My Father

The photo above is my mother, Earleene on the left, My father, Frank in the center and my mother's younger sister (my aunt), Joyce, on the right when they were very young.

My mother died from cancer in 2009 and my father died of Leukemia on Sunday, July 14, 2013. Joyce is still here, kicking in Las Vegas, I spoke with her today actually.

If you have followed my blog over the years you know all about my mom and my friend Emily, who died from cancer only last year. I feel I have had way too many close encounters with cancer and death, and the loss of loved ones. 

I also had a bout with skin cancer a month ago, below you can see my chest after the cream treatment caused it to flare up. The side effects were so strong they ended up surgically removing it. I have a nice scar now the size of a lopsided quarter on the center of my chest to remind me to wear my sunscreen.

I am fine, it's actually my second cancer experience, and I have my whole body checked every six months for more. 

Needless to say, the last several months have been a bit stressful for me and my family. My father learned about his leukemia in February, he emailed me when I was vacationing in Mexico.  He endured several months of chemo again (it was his 3rd form of cancer in just as many years), and finally he decided he was done with the blood and platelet transfusions. 

My brother flew in from Europe (where he lives) and my sisters and I all cared for him, taking turns doing all of the things one needs to do. Joyce was there almost round the clock.

Here I am, in MyRedRocket (my convertible BMW), eating chocolate as I drive to my father's, he lived down the coast about 3 1/2 hours away (according to him, but none of us ever made it there that quickly).

I got out at Starbucks in King City, only to find chocolate melted on the butt of my light gray yoga pants, and chocolate on my face.....

I joined another gym at my father's place, in a city 13 miles away. In my opinion, nothing should stop you from training and my Dad would have felt the same way. 

Above I am posing at In Shape City in Santa Maria, California. I think I was a bit of a novelty to them, a new gal sauntering in, buff to the max, acting like she owns the place. I was greeted the very first day. A big guy comes in and introduces himself, shaking my hand. "You are in great shape!" he said, "You have all the guys back there talking about you." I thanked him and laughed, and explained I would be around for the next month or so.

I enjoyed my new gym immensely! I spent a lot of time there, Dad slept most of the day and mornings were quiet.

I brought a great deal of my own food, but since my brother, Derek wanted to train and learn to eat the "Kristy way", we did shopping and food prep together. He ended up losing 9 pounds I believe and will go home looking lean as can be!

I did some extra cardio everyday as most of the time at Dad's I was sitting and not particularly active. In Shape had something called a Jacob's Ladder that I loved, it was the most difficult form of cardio I have ever done. Take a look below!

After intervals for 14 minutes. Of course this was leg day too and I had done heavy squats and lunges previously. 

It's important to remember that we need to take care of ourselves when faced with a FUBAR. Do you know what that means? Many people use the acronyms SNAFU and FUBAR and have no idea what they mean. Less common but just as fun are TARFU and BOHICA. It's military speak (Dad was a marine ) -

Fucked

Up 

Beyond

All

Recognition

I go  into "I'm gonna train and no one can stop me" mode when something like this happens and I get lean and mean. Many others revert to old bad habits, alcohol, drugs, smoking, over eating. Not me, I want to take care of myself.

Below is Dad's duffel bag, moldy smelling but I love it! I found it in his closet as I cleaned out his clothes.

I found these great big silky shorts, I don't recall ever seeing him in these! 

Here is my brother, Derek (left) and my son, Cooper at dinner at Jocko's in Nipomo. Three nights after Dad's death, after we had cleared out much of the house, we all went to dinner to celebrate his life, relax and unwind. Death is a very stressful event. I felt like I had been holding my breath for weeks. I enjoyed a gin Gibson; one drink and I was dizzy.

I am at my home gym, Gold's Campbell here. I came home from Dad's a few times, but was too exhausted and stressed to go to work. I was on Family Medical Leave and missed a month of work. It's OK, my staff are very well crossed trained, very capable and I kept up with emails.

I continued my quest for legs, big, muscular legs and you can see that I am getting there. Two months after my last competition I am up 8 pounds and still lean, I am quite pleased with how my physique is coming along. David keeps looking at me saying "Your legs look great!" and he isn't into all this bodybuilding stuff at all! 

I am doing fine, while losing a loved one is never easy, Dad had us laughing until the end. Well, honestly at times we wanted to strangle him, but then we would huddle in the kitchen, comply with his crazy demands and get on with the care he needed, and appreciated even at his grumpiest moments.

Sometimes I looked at the morphine and the lorazepam and considered taking it myself! But I didn't, it was my way of vocalizing the stress I was feeling.

David and Cooper were very patient, holding down the fort at home and taking care of things I had to have done. Roy was amazing, changing my training schedule at the drop of a hat to accommodate me with my weird schedule in between cities for the last month. 

Sakura sent my father a card for father's day that made both he and I cry, the words were sincere and loving. 

Friday, I was at home, I trained with Roy and then David and I went to lunch. I had a glass of champagne and some wonderful (non-dietetic) food. 

I take Derek to the airport on Sunday, he will return home and to his studies in Paris. I go back to work on Monday and catch up to a month's worth of 'stuff". My sister, Karen also goes back on Monday, she too took a month off to care for Dad. 

Then on Thursday, Cooper and David will move Cooper back to Chico, into his new apartment and I lose another loved one, but hopefully I will see him frequently. 

it's been rough, it's been difficult, it's been stressful and tiring. But I never gave up, never, I am not a quitter. I love life and death is part of life, a very difficult transition, but one we must all come to terms with.

I will miss Dad, but every time I use a microwave I will think of him (it's an inside story that only his caregivers will know), and I still have his striped socks to wear when I go back to finish clearing out his home before the house is sold. 

I will also remember how he marveled at my passion and told me many, many times how proud he was of me and my accomplishments.  I have saved all the emails where he would reply to all my blogs, he read every single one. 

Oh, and the meaning of the other "military slang acronyms"? Check them out HERE! 

My First Women's Physique Competition

I did it! I competed in my first Women's Physique competition. I have been delaying writing this because I have so much to say, and so little time to say it! 

So I decided I need to do what I do in life everyday, and just jump right in! I have lots of pictures to share, and then I will write more each week about certain parts and events.

I must start with the fact that this was so different than Figure, words can barely describe it. Figure had become easy to me, it wasn't a challenge. Sure, I always had to work on my physique, try to look better each competition, but I knew what to expect each time, there was not much of a challenge.

This was a big challenge, the posing (real posing, not just "model" turns"), flexing, a routine to music. And it's odd, but I moved up in the hierarchy! Not something I intended to do, it just happens I guess.

Bikini is at the bottom, then Figure, Women's Physique and then Bodybuilding. Many women look at each as a step up, you add more muscle and move up the ranks. Now not everyone wants to move up, I have no desire to be a Bodybuilder or as big as one, and many women have no desire to be a Physique competitor, but they all know how much more work it takes to get there, they respect that.

Some of the women, women I have known from previous competitions, would look at me in awe and ask how it felt to be a Physique Competitor! There are not many of us you know! Below are pictures of my class. Class "A" which is up to and including 5' 6". No age group. I felt very proud to have come in 3rd, especially considering I am old enough to be the mother of most of the gals I am standing next to! 

Unlike Figure and Bikini, where they compare and also judge individually, they only line us up together, to compare us all, we never pose on our own, that is reserved for the posing routine at night, and it's purely for entertainment. 

The mandatory poses are Front Double Biceps, Side Chest, Back Double Biceps, Side Triceps, and Ab/ Thigh. The head judge calls them out and we pose, it's hard, you need to be sure everything is flexed and showing at it's best, it takes a great deal of practice. I had fun as we would pose I could see the other gals out of the corner of my eye, and we would each flex harder and harder. 

 You can see how much more muscle we all carry if you compared us to a Figure competitor. These gals here are ripped! (Oh! I'm one of them!)

My absolute favorite part was my posing routine a the evening show. I had so much fun performing it. I had the music mixed by Mastermindz Productions and the routine was choreographed by Michelle Brent. Michelle has been a Bodybuilder for 26 years and she has a protein cookie business too! Both my music and routine were upbeat, fun, and entertaining. I am not overly fond of slow routines, but super fast would be hard to perform in a depleted state, so I think I had a happy medium.

Here is a Youtube of my routine, crank up the music! (Email subscribers will need to navigate directly to the blog link at the top to view the video).

Here is a link to all my photos from my Facebook  album.  You do not need to have a Facebook account to view these. Click on the first picture to make them all larger and click on through. You will see my day as it progressed  Sakura (in a red suit) is in many of them.

If you have any questions, ask away! I have so much to tell to recount the fabulous time I had with my friend Sakura and other women I met and interacted with along the way. I hope to find some time to write in the near future  until then, enjoy the pictures! 

Three Weeks Out till Women's Physique Competition

Yes, I am still here! Busy, busy, busy! When I post this it will really be only two weeks from my competition, but I just got around to doing this. It's been a fast and furious few months in preparation of my first Women's Physique competition, I almost feel like it's my very first show, but it's not, I should be calm and collected, but the thought of this new REAL posing and a dance/posing routine to music is starting to make me a bit anxious. 

I spend as much time as possible practicing my posing, videoing it and critiquing myself. There is always room for improvement. Luckily I have some awesome people nudging me along and checking in now and again. It's exciting that my friend Sakura Barrientos and I will be sharing a room the night before. We have our tans scheduled together and we can talk and laugh all evening long. Usually I am all by myself, posting pictures on Facebook of my cheesecake that I am eating, which drives all the other competitors absolutely crazy! I get lean, super lean and that's my "secret" to filling out the night before. That  along with a huge baked potato and steak. Then I eat the same thing in the morning. The fun is just about to begin.....

I have maintained my weight higher than usual on purpose. In these pictures I am 124 pounds, but as I write this I am at 122 and have been for almost a week. I will drop only a little bit more and hopefully, will look perfect once I dehydrate. That will make the skin tight and hard looking, it already looks thin. In fact, Wednesday night as I sat attempting to breathe (after Roy had me doing squats with a whopping 162 1/2 pounds!!!!), he looked at me and said "Your skin on your arms and chest is paper thin" yes, it looks white, translucent, delicate and....thin now. The only part left is the abs and upper hip area a bit, but it will go shortly.

I have not curtailed my lifting, at least not intentionally. No weights have been lowered, but Thursday at 5:00 a.m. as I trained hamstrings and lower back on my own, I felt so fatigued, that at times I wanted to crumple to the ground and just cry.

Then I thought of my dad who has been struggling with real fatigue, brought on by his Acute Myeloid Leukemia (bone marrow cancer). His will not go away when he rests or eats a cheeseburger, mine will. It made me cry a bit thinking how selfish I was being and reminded myself that I hate whiners. I pushed on and finished my training, at the dictated reps and weights. I know I was making a lot of noise as I performed set after set of back extensions on the Glute Ham Raise, while holding a 50 pound dumbbell to my chest, people were looking, but I didn't care, I never do.

I have been training two, and sometimes (often) three times a day. I don't do a long bout of cardio, the 20 minutes on the stairmill or treadmill has turned to 30 minutes. Then the stairs at work, usually 3 times a week, but not for long, I don't have the energy to run up and down, and jump rope for more than 20 minutes.

So any free time I have is spent grocery shopping, preparing food, eating or sleeping. That's about it. 

And there is the lifting, the part I love, every single day, sometimes twice a day just to fit it all in. My shoulder training has changed a bit and I have added in cables to round everything out. So on Tuesdays I have to go back to the gym after work to finish up shoulders. Then on Fridays after I train shoulders with Roy, I eat and make sure I have fuel, then it's back into Gold's to finish on my own. It's not a good idea to train for a long extended period of time, just like fasted cardio - you are just making your muscle eat itself all up!

My suit bottoms should be back to me Saturday, so Sunday I have to take some video of myself posing in my suit. It does make a difference and I haven't had it this whole time, so I am only guessing how I will look. I sent it back to Celeste Harsa of Suits by Celeste who made my suit for me because....my glutes have changed. They have gotten bigger (this is a good thing) and more muscular, so when I lost bodyfat they pretty much stayed bigger than usual. My suit did not care for that, it wanted to be a permanent wedgie and those are forbidden in the rules! The funny thing is, most of the suits look like wedgies anyway!

So I have been wearing some "boyshort" undies when I pose. It doesn't seem to bother anyone and allows me to see my body better.

I am also very fortunate to belong to a gym where so many people support me. It's almost all men, there are very few gals at the gym (who lift) first thing in the morning. But they're all encouraging, tell me how great I look, offer advice and are generally fun guys to be around. 

Below is a video of my posing, if you are an email subscriber you will need to click on the blog link at the top to go directly to the blog to view this (that means you dad!)

Phenomenal

A friend sent me an email on Sunday, she was telling me about some new clothes she bought. The color? Black and she said "I know, not your thing. You like the bright colors, you like to stand out, to be noticed, to grab everyone's attention."

Yup!

I do love to be the center of attention, and I love to walk by and see heads turn, maybe that's why I am successful competing. You cannot be very shy and stand up on stage, especially with almost nothing covering your body.

You need to feel confident, comfortable in your own skin, and proud. I am very proud of myself, I like what I have created.

I think that's why I work so hard in the gym, why I devote so much time and energy on my physique.

A trainer came up to me on Sunday as I was on the Low Cable Row. She said she wanted to tell me about a friend of hers who was visiting from out of town, and she was in the Gym with her the other day. She was going "ga-ga" over my physique, she thought it was 

phenomenal (her words). She then said "I hope you don't mind, but I took the liberty of sharing your age, and when I told her you were 50, she refused to believe me."

Ha Ha Ha, I threw my head back and laughed a huge belly laugh, "Mind? Not at all I am very proud of my age"

She said she thought I might enjoy the unsolicited compliment, and I said yes, indeed, I loved it so much.

Then Sakura sent me an email after looking at Saturdays blog picture, saying "HOLY COW. Do you realize how phenomenal you look? Actually, quite a difference from when I first started reading your blog, Mama! But a good difference. :) 

Two "phenomenals" in one day! YES!

We all go through periods of self doubt, questioning if what we are doing is right, is it working? Am I eating correctly, training correctly? Am I devoting the time to the body parts that need it most? The list is endless. Although it may sound funny, my husband gets tired of me standing naked in front of him asking how things look (really, it gets old).

These two compliments will keep me motivated for weeks, I felt so good after hearing both of them.  Makes me want to wear hot pink and bust my butt in the gym even more than usual!

Thanks