VANCOUVER NATURAL COMPETITION

WARNING!!!!! This blog post WILL be filled with excessive bragging and pictures of a VERY HOT MAN:) So...this past weekend was the Vancouver Natural Bodybuilding Show and it was Tay's first bodybuilding competition. I will start off by saying that I am so proud of how hard Taylor worked to be ready to step on that stage. For 12 weeks, he literally put his heart and soul into this competition. He gave 100% in all aspects. I watched him wake up early to do cardio and then head back to the gym later on for his weight training every day. I watched him weigh out every ounce of food that went into his body and keep track of every calorie in order to cut all the fat off of his body. He had to stick to a diet pretty low in calories and had to be exact in his ratio of carbohydrates, protein, and fats. He literally did not cheat even once on his diet for 12 weeks. He even felt bad one night after eating a couple of extra bites of brown rice because he was so hungry and depleted...that's the closest he came to cheating. The amount of dedication and perserverance that it took for him to do what he did was amazing all by itself, but the ultimate goal was to compete. I'm going to explain the process of how the show runs because I didn't know this before we went, so most of you probably don't either:)
So anyways, the competition was on Saturday April 2, 2011 and we left Moses Lake on Friday morning. It was about a 5 hour drive for us, so we decided to leave early and stay 2 nights. We got there on Friday and he had to go to the weigh in at 5:30 that night. As you will see from the pictures I will post, you have to get CRAZY tan and bronzed to go on stage. All that bronzing comes with a price...mainly a very painful back and neck for me after spending 6 hours literally painting on his tan layer by layer. So that is what we spent Friday night doing. Kent and Kathleen drove over 9 hours to come and support Tay and they stayed with us in the hotel! It was so amazing to have them there and I know that it really meant a lot to Taylor to have some extra support there. They kept me company the entire time, which was great because the competition was LONG and entailed a lot of watching other people waiting for Tay to come out on the stage. Anyways, so we woke up early Saturday morning and headed to the pre-judging. The competition consisted of pre-judging early in the day and then the finals at night. However, the pre-judging is where most of the actual decisions are made as to who is going to win it. Taylor signed up to compete in the novice division because it was his first competition thinking that he would be competing with other first time competitors. That wasn't the case....you qualify to compete in novice as long as you haven't won your division before. He competed against 8 other guys and he was the only first time competitor. This was a BIG show and the competition was FIERCE! I couldn't believe how great all of them looked. I could not believe how AMAZING Taylor looked. You could seriously teach an anatomy lesson from his body:) I am a little biased, but I thought that Tay definitely looked the best during pre-judging. After pre-judging, we knew that he was in the top 4 because of the way they arrange the competitors, but we didn't know the actual placing. So, then we went back to the hotel to wait around until the finals. I seriously can't even describe how amazing he looked. This may sound weird, but as the day progressed, he just kept looking better and better. The cuts in his legs got deeper and he just looked more shredded as the day progressed. The finals started at 6:00PM, but Tay didn't get back on stage until almost 9:30 because of all of the competitors. He had to do an individual posing routine to music for 60 seconds and then they brought out all of the top 5 from his class. They start by announding the 5th place winner, then 4th, then 3rd, then 2nd and 1st. With each name that they announced, I was screaming louder and louder because it meant that Tay was getting closer to first place. When I say screaming, I'm being serious...I feel so bad for anybody that was ANYWHERE near me during that competition because I was cheering for my man pretty loud. Kent and Kathleen were there too, so we were pretty loud and I'm sure people thought we were crazy:) So, it got down to the top 2 competitors and the announcer was asking the crowd who should win and I'm not kidding when I say that people who didn't even know Tay were screaming "TAYLOR". It was awesome!! Then they announced that he had WON THE HEAVYWEIGHT NOVICE DIVISION!!!! I was so proud of him. But, the bragging doesn't end there....he then had to go up against the winners of the novice lightweight and middle weight classes. They posed together and then the judges decided on an overall winner for the novice division. Yep, you guessed it....HE WON OVERALL!!! I have never been so proud of him in all my life and I literally could not stop jumping up and down and grinning from ear to ear! It was so great to see all of his hard work rewarded. He got 2 AWESOME trophies and was really pleased with the outcome, but you know Tay, he was very modest about the entire thing. They gave him a judges score card to see how each judge voted and only 1 of the 7 judges didn't put him in 1st place. That's amazing because it's usually about half and half for one competitor vs. another. I'll post a bunch of pictures now and they will blow you away!

This is right before pre-judging...don't make fun of the tan:)
Kent, Kathleen and I hanging out at pre-judging (for 4 hours). It was soooo good to have them there!
Kent and Kathleen look AMAZING! They both just finished a 12 week challenge and lost a ton of weight and body fat! Super HOT!

Again, us just chillin' at pre-judging.
This was Tay in his heavyweight novice division in pre-judging.


Again, here is he at pre-judging posing with another competitor.
This was at the hotel in between pre-judging and finals. I'm telling you...he just kept getting more and more SHREDDED as the day progressed!

MAN....LOOK AT THOSE LEGS!!!!
This was the top five being called out in the finals that night.

Like I said, they call out 5th place first and then 4th and move their way up to first. The top 3 are in the back there....
And of course, TAY WON, so here he is getting his trophy for the winner of the heavyweight novice class.
Then, he had to go up against the winners from the other novice weight classes to decide on an overall winner. Here they are posing..
More overall posing..


Again....sorry, he just looked sooo hot it deserves a few extra pics;)


So, then they announced that Tay had won the OVERALL NOVICE DIVISION!!!!Here he is getting his trophy from this guest poser at the competition...

Look at that TROPHY! He got 2 super nice trophies!

Here they are together...we were all SOOO excited. I think that Kent, Kathleen and I were more excited than Tay.
This was pretty much the look I had on my face all night long....grinning from ear to ear with pride:)

So, there you have it. I know this was a long post, but I know a lot of people wanted to be there that couldn't make it and I wanted to portray it like it was. It was an AWESOME day and I can't even say how proud of him I am!