I’m currently 8 weeks out and just coming back from a three day overnight field trip to Mackinac Island (off northern Michigan), where I chaperoned a 5th grade trip.
The trip was a blast, but it was pretty non-conducive to a bodybuilding prep. I did my best to prepare…I brought 18 pre-made meals along with 6 protein shakes and a half dozen packets of cashew portions….but it was much harder to get my meals in than I had planned.
For one, the hotel didn’t have microwaves available. The only one available was the microwave in the restaurant kitchen….so any time I wanted food heated up I had to give my meal to someone at the front desk, who had to ask the chef to heat it up for me….and neither of them were ever very excited/helpful about the situation.
Not that it mattered too much as we were out of the hotel following our 6am breakfasts until about 9:30pm each night….so there wasn’t much point in heating up food that I wasn’t going to eat for 9 hours.
And lugging around a lunchbox filled with food wasn’t quite as practical as I had hoped either….we spent the entirety of each day walking, hiking, or biking….so any eating I did was done while walking, hiking, or biking.
I did get some stellar cardio in–the combination of hours of cardio with little-to-no food had me coming home flat as hell, but noticeably leaner.
To give a little glimpse into my “this isn’t going as planned” approach to contest prep, here is how the week panned out:
Day 1:
I got up at 3:30am to train back, calves, and abs–determined not to let the trip slow me down on my training…..big mistake. We had to be at the school to load up the buses at 5:30…and I was already regretting that early working workout decision lol
After a 6 hour bus ride up the entire state of Michigan we ended up having a pretty damn good time…..doing a lot of walking and biking
Cardio total for the day:
7 miles walking
8.2 miles biking
6 hours bus riding
1 hour weight training
~20 min doing calisthenics that stupid Brad thought would be a good idea
Day 2: After staying up past 11pm trying to stay caught up on emails (the alleged WiFi in the hotel appeared to be nothing more than a scam so I was stuck answer emails on my phone using cellular signal…..which was about as spotty as you’d think on a small island off northern Michigan where no motorized vehicles are allowed) we were up at 5:30 to get ready for breakfast. Following breakfast we had a day of non-stop walking planned…two hikes, a carriage ride, and some free time to do shopping (something my 5th grade daughter enjoyed much more than I did….women be shoppin’. You can’t STOP a woman from shoppin’…”
Cardio total for the day:
12 miles walking (including a hike to the top of the island….my phone recorded it as 20 stories I think)
~20 min abs and other crap Brad recommended
Day 3: Day three was our last day on the island and we had most of the morning to do what we (i.e., my daughter) wanted. She chose shopping…again. We only had about 3.5 hours to re-shop the same trinket shops we’d hit multiple times in the two previous days, but we made the most of that time and hit every store at least 7 times (or at least it seemed that way).
Cardio total for the day:
4 miles walking
8 hour bus ride (one of the buses broke down and we had to assimilate 4 buses of screaming 5th graders into 3 buses of screaming 5th graders)
I really was hell-bent on not missing a weight training session (I train Monday and Wednesday with Tuesday off…so if I would have trained Wednesday night when we got back I would have not missed anything), but there was no way in hell I was getting through a leg workout after we got back.
In fact…I don’t really remember much about getting home at all. lol My kids had a little birthday surprise for me (my 4th grader made me a home-made pinata) and then I crashed on the couch and was OUT.
I didn’t have food prepped for the morning so I set an alarm for 9:30pm to make some….which I re-set for 10:30…and again for 11:30 before finally giving up and going to bed for the night.
Leave a Reply