FIGURE COMPETITION/ATTENDING ONE/TOSCA WAS THERE!!!

I had wanted to attend the Sandra Wickham Classic November 8th 2008 in Vancouver (as an observer). However, in place of the cancelled Paris trip (which was to be a birthday present) my daughter Jen generously spent many hours on the Internet getting tickets to a Tina Turner Concert in Toronto for my 60th birthday.

I was going to be in Toronto for the date of the competition in Vancouver. So, I searched for shows in Toronto and got in touch with IDFA. Just so happens there was a pro and amateur body building competition on the same night in Toronto November 8th 2008. There were two parts to the competition. The morning session - presentation - and the evening - judging. I hear that the judges actually know who they are narrowing it down to from the presentation portion.

It was quite the experience. I arrived in the lobby in the morning after a harrowing drive - the tall downtown TO buildings made it impossible for my GPS to locate the satellites. Anyway - there was a sign in the lobby something like - You will be on camera, there is a filming of a documentary about Tosca Reno for W Network. YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING! Holy cow - my favourite magazine guru and somewhat of an idol for me. Wonder if she is going to be there?Well I had a great seat up front. She and the publisher of Oxygen Magazine, her husband Robert Kennedy were a couple of seats in front of me. I thought maybe I'd had another mini stroke :) I struck up a conversation with a number of people in the crowd, many of them body builders. I met Heidi, a body builder in training and the mother of a friend of Heidi's who was competing in the body building part (the daughter was competing not the mother). The crowd was very warm and friendly.

I did not want to pester Tosca Reno or shove a camera in her face, so I hung back but with Heidi trying to convince me to go speak to her. I said I will go home before the evening part and bring back my O2 Magazine and get up the nerve to ask them to sign it. Alas - they did not come back to the evening portion. You snooze you lose.

My daughter decided to attend the evening session with me but as her ticket was bought late - she ended up in the balcony. She met a PT. I googled him later and found he was associated with a training method known as 'slow burn' theory - or superslow. Yikes!!! My former personal trainer (in answer to my question about it) blogged negatively about it and WOW the reactions... very lively and controversial....But I digress.....

I picked my choices for anticipated winners. I was right on for the men's and women's body building and the men's body building posing but not even close for the women's figure, the women's masters body building or the women's masters figure choices. I will make a point of reading some of the articles I have filed without reading as to what judges generally are looking for. I think I was looking at overall esthetically pleasing outcome but they likely were looking more closely at other things like muscle development, symmetry, shape and tone, posing etc - not sure but I assume they know what they are doing.

Hopefully it is not political judging like in figure skating. The crowd around which included body builders was similarly confused. There was a contestant in the novice category I believe represented by Oxygen who did not place I COULD NOT BELIEVE IT! She was awesome.

But it is important to say that all the competitors stepped up to the plate from a dedictation, hard work, point of view and that it is incredibly brave of them to be there. I was also surprised to hear in their bios that many had been training two years prior to competition.

It sure was having me rethinking any possibility of me competing. I was in a hurry because of my age but having to spend even more time training to their level, I will only be all that much older - not fair competition at all - I might have to wait for a grand grand masters division.

The bios of the competitors gave a long list of the people they thanked for support. So that makes it even clearer that you have to have a supportive family and fitness network to help with your success.