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The Marta Mathews diaries |
| By
Marta Mathews |
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October 20, 2003
I had a rough day at work today as one of my colleagues called in sick and I
had to single-handedly cover both of our desks on our busiest day of the
week. Having to cover for him for two extra hours resulted in my diet and
training being unexpectedly thrown off balance, which I really hate.
Nevertheless, I always have extra egg whites, tuna, and veggies in the
company fridge so I re-arranged my meals accordingly and I still did my one
hour on the elliptical machine after work. Now it's barely 8:00 p.m. and I
am ready to crawl into bed. I guess the extra stress and late evening
workout are catching up with me, so I better get moving before my insomnia
fairy throws her spell on me again.....
October 21, 2003
I went to bed early last night and after getting at least 7 hours of solid
sleep I still had a difficult time waking up this morning. This week I have
decided to shock my body by switching the order of my workouts. So instead
of doing my regular cardio this morning I did a full body weight training
circuit. I used very light weights for each body part but I performed at
least 40 to 50 reps of each exercise. Once I finished with 50 reps of
barbell squats, I moved on to 40 reps of barbell chest press, then to 50
reps of triceps kickbacks, and so on. Once each body part was
covered I began the circuit again with 50 reps of barbell squats, etc. I only
performed the entire circuit three times, but without stopping at once I
managed to get an amazing workout. Doing my weights in the morning also
caused me to change the order of my meals a bit - for example I had my post
workout shake as my meal number one instead of meal number five, etc.
Luckily my colleague came back to work today so I was able to get off work
at my regular schedule. For cardio, I did 60
minutes on a stationery bike.
Tomorrow morning I will do the weight circuit again for the entire body, but
I will use different exercises though. I still plan to do an hour on the
treadmill in the evening though. Every time I do cardio I try to use a
different machine as I don't want my body to adapt to one thing. I realize I
won't accomplish too much by drastically changing my workout regimen with
less than two weeks left to the competition, but every little bit helps.
Bottom line, as long as I feel I have done my absolute best to get ready for
the show then that's the only time I will be happy with my results no
matter what my placing will be.
October 24, 2003
I must say the last minute change in my workout routine was a good
"distraction" in my final week of heavy duty training. For the last four
days in the row I've been doing my light weight circuit training in the
morning and cardio in the evening and I
actually feel pretty good. I'm
really not looking forward to next week though... I will not be training
much, just focusing on my diet which will most likely be very boring - even
more so than up until now. My mood swings have been awful this week and I
just can't seem to be able to control myself. The only
consolation is that I know some of my fellow contestants are experiencing the exact same thing,
which leaves me re-assured that I am not completely loosing it and my
unusual behaviour will most likely improve after the show is over.
October 25, 2003
I got up a lot earlier than I planned today, so I decided to go grab a tan
and get my cardio out of the way. It felt good getting these things
accomplished early in the day as I did not have to dread getting them done
towards the end of the day. For some reason I'm having a much more difficult
time with this competition than I did with the Molson Indy. It seems like I
have to work out and diet twice as hard just to achieve the same
results as I did several months ago. I'm suspecting I did not take enough of a break
between my competitions and at this point I will just look at this as a
valuable lesson for the future - never do two back to back competitions
again!
October 26, 2003
Today will be my last weight training workout before the Man Show. I trained
legs yesterday afternoon and today I will be targeting my entire upper body.
After this, I might do some light cardio tomorrow, but definitely no more
weight lifting effective Tuesday. I will strictly focus on my diet next week
and most of all getting some rest. I'm debating on whether or not I should
do any cardio today, but I guess I will see how I feel after lifting and
just take it from there. On this note, I
better scoot out before I decide I'm too tired for the weights as well....
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