Faith Reneé Sloan
My Personal Bodybuilding Stats and Competition Standings
Below are Spring 1998 Photos copyright by Chloe Atkins
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Faith Reneé Sloan
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GOAL attained. Gained 4 pounds of lean muscle mass from 1995 to 1996. Did not place first in the NPC Contra Costa but still have time to compete again before year end. Wish me the best!!
Short-Term Goal:To come in as tight as I was in 1995 and with 3 more pounds of muscle by mid-1997 and to place first in a major 1997 ABA or NPC competition.
So how did old Faithy do at the NPC 1996 Steel Rose competition in Anaheim, CA on 09November1996??
I am now proud to say that I am the NPC 1996 Steel Rose Lightweight Champion!! I'm truly ecstatic!! Here are the pix. Compare them with my Contra Costa pix. Progress, indeedy!
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 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...
The beautiful architecture and historical significance was breath-taking. The museums, gardens, canals, etc were just totally cool. On my last day I managed to find a topless 'discotheque'. No seriously, the discotheque was topless not the people. ;-) It's such a 'hot' city that no roof was needed. But I must admit I was disappointed by the fashion of folks around my age. So i decided to shop for the lot of them. Very inexpensive when compared to the states. Can you say $125.00 tapered, designer suit?? YES SHE DID!!
One bad experience which I quickly got over since one shouldn't fret over things in which she has no control. I bought a $700 (including duty tax) beautiful gold chain which was styled in a fashion I've never seen before. Upon leaving the Florence airport, I declared the gem and was told that since I wasn't leaving Europe from Florence but was leaving via Amsterdam, I needed to declare it then. Okay fine and dandy. I put all of my goods on that darn x-ray belt but I 'beeped' while walking through the magnetic thingy. I had on combat boots with zippers on them. They made me take off my boots. When I put those bad babies back on, everything was there except for my beautiful chain. I accused those damn x-ray security guards of taking it as it was not a crowded airport. They of course denied it. I spent all of 5 minutes pissed as all hell then got over it. So not only did I lose the chain which wasn't insured yet but I also lost a bit less than $200 in duty taxes that I was to get back from the Amsterdam airport.
Life is full of experiences--you just learn from them.
All in all, I would do this again.
Oh, did I say something about retiring? I plan to compete in 2002 in Australia. I'll be 42 then and I can get in the over 40 category which is quite competitive.
Pix are forthcoming... Best...
