The other competitors

I've been wondering a lot lately about what the rest of the competition is doing right now. Are they suffering as they try to drop weight? Are they working harder than ever before? Are they feeling confident, possibly justifiably so?

Fortunately, I'm feeling secure enough in my diet and workout regimen that these issues don't rattle me too much, but I can't help being curious. I know I'm doing everything I can do achieve my goals ON TIME. My diet is exactly right and there's only so much exercise a person can do before diminishing return or counter productivity sets in.

I do know, however, that as soon as I see everyone looking their best on the day of the competition, I'm going to feel very unsettled and insecure. I'm trying to prepare myself for that which means going through a script in my head where I remind myself that I did everything I could, I trained hard and this is the best I could do. There will be no thoughts surrounding I-should-have, I-could-have.

The wild card with my preparation though is still my arm. I cannot predict how well I'll control it. It's all a matter of degree. I can't hold it perfectly still, but how close can I come? To address the issue, I have my single best strategy in place. It involves working my right arm to exhaustion before I go onstage. This helps minimize the shaking under normal circumstances and what makes it shake more than usual is nervousness. So I'm in a bit of a bind. But Michelle will be with me up until nearly the time I line up backstage, and she will work with me using bands or dumbbells. Over and over. All I need is about 5 minutes of recovery to have enough strength and energy left to flex, although there is the pumped up factor that will enhance the look, too.

Needless to say, this is all a grand experiment.