The Arnold Classic 2010

Hey Everyone,
Well I'm back to the grind after attending the ASC this past weekend. I was there blogging the live play by play of the show as well as doing interviews for bodybuilding.com in addition to spending some time with my good friends at the Scivation booth.

Isabel and I arrived on Thursday and immediately went down town to train at Metro Fitness because we knew if we waited too long it would get very crowded. I was pleased to find the gym was relatively empty other than a few IFBB pros & top NPC guys. I was happy to find that I was the only one working out legs that day; everyone else seemed to busy primping in front of the mirror doing bicep curls and lateral raises. I started out with some heavy hack squats but after 3 sets of hacks I became disheartened starring at the poor empty squat rack. The squat rack seemed so lonely so I decided to go keep it company. I hit a few sets of 10 with 405 and then decided to go for a PR. I hit 455 for a set of 8 which would have been a PR if I was fresh, but this was after 3 sets of heavy hack squats and 2 sets of squats with 405 so I was VERY happy with this PR. Isabel and I then went back to the hotel and chilled out for the night.

While I was happy that I got to train legs, the next day my body hated me for it walking around the expo for 6 hours. I was doing interviews for bodybuilding.com the first half of the day, which was fun, though I always get nervous doing interviews because oftentimes we'll interview someone I'm not super familiar with and I would hate to ask a dumb question. This is exactly what happened when I interviewed one of the olympic lifting coaches LOL. The latter half of the day I spent at the Scivation booth meeting and talking with fans & taking pictures. I gotta say the level of support this year was incredible. I must have met and talked with several hundred people. It was really awesome. After the expo was finished on friday Isabel and I headed to the women's finals where she was doing the play by play with Marika Gethin from bodybuilding.com. The women's finals were awesome and afterwards we chatted with our friends Troy Johnson & Krissy Chin (who had just competed in her first Arnold) and with our good friend Ava Cowan who was also standing in the lobby. Ava had to be up early & headed home but Troy and Krissy went out to dinner with us and we had a blast. I've gotta say, if you've never met Troy & Krissy at the Gaspari booth at one of these expos, you need to. They are easily two of the nicest people I've ever met and we always have so much fun with them.

After dinner we headed back to the hotel to get some sleep. To our surprise, we were woken up at 3 am to a fire alarm. Apparently some jackass decided it would be funny to empty out the fire extinguishers on the 6th floor. This set off the alarms and emptied everyone out of the hotel. Needless to say we did not sleep well that night and we were dragging all of Saturday. We made it through and attended the men's finals which were a treat. Perhaps the highlight of the night was watching Derek Poundstone propose to his girlfriend after winning the arnold strongman! As for the show itself, I thought Phil Heath should have won, but Kai is so huge and freaky, it's hard to overlook him.

Sunday we spend the whole day at the expo other than grabbing lunch and chatting with Ava, which was nice because we never get to spend much time with her because we are always so busy at these things. Before we knew it, Sunday was done and we were driving home. As I've always said, the Arnold is one of those things I am really excited to get to, and really excited to leave from.

Thanks to everyone we met for making it special.

-Layne & Isabel