4 days left in my competitive bodybuilding career

I've been drinking a gallon of water since Sunday. I've stopped adding any salt to my food since then, too. Standard procedure, the week before a competition. It's definitely easier this second time around. Kinda like, I've been here, done this, not a big deal.

What hasn't gotten any easier is responding to the often asked question, why did you decide to do this? I'm still not great at answering it because I have multiple reasons, any of which I might tap depending on how I'm feeling at that moment, but none which really nails it on the head. However, I stumbled across something interesting along these lines in a recent NY Times article concerning the Mount Lemon Marathon in Tucson, Arizona. It's an extreme endurance race, with a vertical climb of 8,000 feet where the air becomes thinner and poses a challenge in and of itself. It's touted as the world's toughest road marathon, lasting 26.2 miles uphill. "Runners are like fishermen," one observer explained. "They'll talk about how steep this race was forever. It's steep. It's tough. But it will get steeper and tougher every time they tell it." Hahaha. I get it.

One participant offered another perspective. "Why are people going further and harder and stronger? It makes other things in life seem much more doable. We have so many challenges in our lives with the economy and people losing their jobs and homes. This is a way of defeating those things and breaking the monotony of life."

But here's the crux of the matter, according to the same runner: "I don't love pain but I do like challenges. And unless something is difficult, it doesn't seem that satisfying."

Bingo. There it is, expressed more concisely than I've been able to put it. A fine way to explain part of my interest in competitive bodybuilding.