An Old 1998 Competition Rambling … Just Because …
I don’t have much to talk about today so I figured I’d give you all a taste of an event I participated in a lonnngggg time ago. This Bodybuilding event takes place in Amsterdam almost 8 years ago.
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Hello all! Been rather busy on the road and all and just decided to sit down and tell ya’ll about my tale of 2 cities.
I competed in the Unity Games in Amsterdam in early August 1998. It was such a glorious time. Actually, it’s just a party place. I could never take it too seriously. Those uhhh, coffee shops were something out of a novel.
In any case, I placed a disappointing (but fairly judged kinda) 4th place. So no medal to take home. -( I deserved my placing as I fell off of the dieting bandwagon with the extensive travelling, lack of focus, and lack of personal motivation. I truly believe that I’m losing it. Did I mention that I was going to retire after this outing?
The 1st place winner was a friend of mine from San Francisco who has minimal muscle mass but was ripped to shreds(102lbs dripping wet). That’s what they’re looking for re the babes (i can say babes without negative connotations, can’t i?). The 2nd place winner was from Amsterdam. What I found rather interesting about her was that she was ’special’ in that she didn’t go thru the weigh-in process as the rest of us was required to do. So’s life and I have no gripe. Besides she was great to hangout in the redlight district with. The 3rd place winner I was surprised to see as I knew her when I lived in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She was both ripped and had great mass. I would’ve placed her first. But still, my low placing was rightfully deserved.
Juliette(?) Bergman was one of the judges. She seemed a tad uncomfortable throughout the event.
Random drug testing was performed but I wanted to know what was so darn random about 4 of the top 5 light women being tested. I have an undergrad degree in Quantitative Methods (Statistics and stuff) so from what I remember, there’s a very low probability of 4 lightweight women being drugged tested out of 160 odd competitors (both male and female). It was a joke. We laughed. I had a hard time urinating as I wasn’t drinking water so they assigned a very talkative, funny, interesting monitor to follow me around until that opportune moment came. I had to mention my exploits in the Amsterdam coffee shop and was reassured that as long as I wasn’t smoking anabolics, I should be alright. -) But I didn’t inhale! Now this woman had to follow me around for more than 2 hours. She ate dinner with me. She ran around with my friends and I. Her job was to stick with me until… We kinda regretted it when it was time for me to do the do. She asked that I look her up next time I was in the neighborhood. Yeah, right!
On a brighter note, I entered the pairs competition. We smoked on our routine which was put together with a bit of luck and three babes with great rhythm and coordination. Charlie and her partner put together the routine from a running tape they just happened to have. It only had one good song on it and that was our choice - Sarah McLachlan’s Building A Mystery. They manage to choreograph the whole routine in their hotel room while I was out cavorting with the devil ’til all hours of the night.
The following morning they borrowed some local woman’s home (lucky us!!) and we were in business. They explained the concept and we practiced for a coupla hours until we were able to do it with absolutely no mistakeroos.
The first place winners were the first place winners from the 1994 Unity Games in New York City. They were truly awesome! They also looked like twins from their physical being to their posing outfits. They had that ‘All American’ look (tongue-in-cheek). They were truly entertaining and you can see the love and affection they have for one another. Truly outstanding.
Bringing home the silver in this category was great given the amount of time over the last 4 years that we practiced (uhhhh, i mean the coupla hours). I was ecstatic!!
The 3rd place winners were USAers as well. One was with the San Francisco contingency and another was from the Midwest I believe.
The mo’ better news is that after the event, I was able to get down to some serious partying. After 9 days of Amsterdam, I flew my stuffed butt to Florence, Italy alone just for the heck of it. I mean, gosh, since I’m all the way over there, why not stay another week. Business can wait.
Florence was the bomb! Such a beautiful city with tolerance for non-English speaking folks like me. That darn book of translations definitely came in handy but it wasn’t cool to take it out so I was forced to memorize key terms. With my daily ration of 5 gelatos and at least 1 4-5 course meal a day including water without gas, I was satiated. I found the men rather persistent in terms of trying to convince me in Italian why I should dilly-dally with them. Yeah right! Maybe Italy is a place where physical closeness while talking to strangers is the norm (hasty generalization) but it made me a bit uncomfortable and had to get physical (albeit lightly) on one occasion. I can now say that universal language is understood by all. I did meet a wonderfully nice persian, italian guide, though. Interesting indeedy…
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Stay tuned for the stories relating to my current weight gaining diet and my search for a psychologically motivating gym. I still have plans to compete in 2007!
Faith