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I hooked up with Shannon Gill and her team today for posing practice. I met Shannon for the first time last November when doing my photo shoot with Jim Wallingford (www.jimwallingfordphotography.com) after the Northwest Championships show. I really liked Shannon's personality. She's kind of edgy and definitely tells it like it is and I LOVE people like that. When I learned that she offers weekly posing practice in Redmond I was really excited and decided that I'd like to work with her for the upcoming season.

Today was my first time practicing with her. I left my suit at home because A) I'm getting a new one and so I figured that was a good excuse and B) the real reason being that I didn't want to wear a suit being "fat". Sidebar: I love how we as competitors are "fat" at what is, by society's standards, athletic level leanness. We're kind of warped that way. At any rate, Shannon had a bag full of suits for me to choose from and made it clear that I was putting one of them on for practice. Dang! I was actually pretty pleased with how I presented in a random suit.

It was really exciting and motivating to have the suit on, the heels and be with other figure girls who are in full contest prep mode. It really made it REAL for me that the contest season is upon us and we are all GEARING UP! It's always inspirational to be around others who are passionate about the sport and Shannon's enthusiasm was very much contagious. I'm definitely going to need a few one-on-one's with Shannon and I'll be attending as many Sunday Practice classes as I can - given my schedule with my 4 kiddos! Also, the class is very affordable at only $35/class. If you're interested in attending, check out www.shannongill.com.

Alright, so it's Sunday which means meal planning, food-prep and scheduling out my training for the week. It's a busy week with the kids and their activities, so it looks like I'll be shuffling some things around to get my workouts in. I'll probably train at work a few times this week rather than the Gold's by my house just to make sure I get all my workouts in. I've also ramped up my tanning the last couple weeks and am trying to go every other day right now to get as dark of a base as I can. Tanning in the winter = really dry skin. Body butter, here I come!

I'm excited for a great week of training - hard, heavy and intense! Here's a great quote for the week:

"I KNOW THE PRICE OF SUCCESS: DEDICATION, HARD WORK, AND AN UNREMITTING DEVOTION TO THE THINGS YOU WANT TO SEE HAPPEN." ~ Frank Lloyd Wright

Julie

Fearless, with cape in hand.

Tags: Shannon Gill | Posing | Jim Wallingford | Determination | Goals | Figure | Bikini