The countdown has begun…

It’s now seven weeks until my next appearance on the contest stage, and Stage 1 of my pre-event preparation has been under way for a week.   Hang on, I hear you cry (almost), I thought you had retired from competition earlier this year, Chris?  So what’s afoot?

Indeed it’s true that I declared after my contest appearances in April that my on-stage competition days were over.  After all, I had just won the Miami Pro World Championship for my age group (the over 50’s), for both Muscle Model and Fitness Model, so it did rather seem like a good time to retire.  I had achieved one place better than the same event last year, so the progression of runner-up to winner to retirement sounded pretty logical to me.

But then, in May, I met young Dan Wynes and his girlfriend Liz.  Dan knew of my story, and he asked if I would act as his fitness mentor.  I agreed, but only on the condition that he set himself a real and specific target – entering a fitness modelling contest similar to the ones I had done.  The Pure Elite contest was chosen because the date of the event, 2 November, was then about 6 months in advance of that initial meeting between Dan, Liz and me.

Chris meets Dan at BodyPower 2014

Chris meets Dan at BodyPower 2014

It was then Dan’s turn to make a condition – he would only enter Pure Elite if I retired from being retired, and entered the event as well.

The conclusion of these mentor/mentee negotiations was therefore that Dan and I will both compete in the event – although in very different age categories – he is 21, after all.

So, that’s how I come to now be following Stage 1 of the preparation for an event that wasn’t on my radar 7 months ago.

This is, I’m sure, going to be a tougher competition than my last ones – a key reason for this is the age categories.  In my last contests, the category age was 50 and over; in Pure Elite, its 45 and over.  So, as I will be entering the stage just a couple of weeks away from turning 58, I’ll be facing competitors up to 13 years younger than me.  You may think that gives me more years of preparation time, but it doesn’t actually work that way, one reason being that I didn’t do any sport or lift weights seriously in the gym room until well past 50.

All of which means I’m going to have to work extra hard to do well on 2 November.  Which I will indeed do, as I relish a challenge.  And I have the bonus of training up to the date together with Dan – while I am mentoring him for these final few weeks, he is also doing his very best to encourage me too (not that I need much encouragement, the truly un-wonderful smell of the spray tan is beckoning to me already).  So yes, darling Jenny, it’s another round of spray tans, body shaves and grumpy carb-light Chris for you to put up with – one more time.

So what are these preparation stages that I mentioned all about, and what constitutes Stage 1?  I’ll explain all in my blog this time next week.

And if you want to follow Dan’s progress for these final few weeks too, check out and subscribe to his blog Danwynesfitness.wordpress.com