Episode 32: The True Meaning of Victory

Ron Harris

From the expressions on the faces of Jeff and his son Jared as they greeted me in the lobby of the theater as I was leaving, you would think I had just lost a loved one. They both looked like they wanted to shake my hand and softly murmur, “Sorry for your loss.”

And technically, I had lost. At the Team Universe in New York City, the contest I had trained and dieted so long and hard for, I had only managed to place ninth out of thirteen light-heavyweights.

Only the top five had been allowed to perform their posing routines, because with well over 300 total competitors in bodybuilding, fitness, figure, and bikini (yes, bikini contests are now an official athletic event), otherwise we would have still been there when Obama was up for re-election. Only the top five finalists were awarded trophies as well, though everyone else did get a nice little medal for participation so we didn’t feel like total losers. But the thing is, I actually felt like a winner. Jared and Jeff seemed puzzled and a bit wary of my ear-to-ear grin (not easy with a tiny mouth like mine). Maybe Harris had finally lost it after going so long low on carbs, and after such a devastating blow with his poor finish? They looked behind me for my wife Janet to rescue them from what they feared could be an awkward conversation with a madman, but she was stuck inside the theater yapping with a couple people she hadn’t seen in ages.

“Uh, you looked great, Ron,” Jeff offered. Jared nodded.

“Legit,” he added for emphasis, in the parlance of my town’s teenagers and which roughly translates to “seriously.”

“Thanks, I actually feel really good right now. I stood up there with the best, and I gave it my all.”

And given it my all I had. In my entire twenty years of competing, I had never dieted so strictly for so long – sixteen weeks without a single cheat meal save for two slices of pizza at eight weeks out when I was well ahead of schedule in terms of leaning out. Just as John Parrillo has been advocating since the early 1980′s, long before the rest of the bodybuilding world caught on, I had done the majority of my cardio first thing in the morning in a fasted state to optimize the use of stored bodyfat for energy. So many mornings at around five I would climb up on that cantankerous old hag, the Stepmill, and take the stairway to nowhere for 45-50 miserable minutes, my stomach growling all the while since all I had to sustain myself and prevent catabolism was a dozen Muscle Aminos and a mug of coffee roughly the size of a bucket.

The Team Universe was the first national-level contest I had ever done, and the only one where the Overall winner earned professional status in the IFBB – the organization that sanctions bodybuilding’s biggest shows like the Mr. Olympia and the Arnold Classic. Not that I had any illusions of ever competing on those stages, mind you. Most of those guys were about my size when they started lifting weights. Still, I knew from the start that the level of competition at a pro qualifier was a whole different level from what I had been used to at all the local, state, and regional shows I had competed in. There would be no chumps. Everybody there would have won at least one contest before, and in some cases literally dozens of contests over the years. It would take everything I had to stand next to them on equal footing. Mainly, my condition had to reach a new degree of sharpness in the lower body. My glutes had to be striated like Pringles potato chips, because I knew there was no way I would be the biggest light-heavy, or have the best shape and symmetry. So I literally dieted my ass off and came to New York City in the shape of my life, weighing in officially the night before the judging at 197.5 pounds, a couple Protein Chew Bars™ away from the class limit of 198 ¼.

After painting on a few coats of fake tan (a process remarkably similar to staining a wood deck, but without the final sealant that makes water bead right off in a rainstorm), I made my way over to the judging the following day and at last got a good look at the other dozen light-heavies as they oiled up and started to pump, using the giant rubber bands provided. Apparently someone finally figured out that oily hands and iron dumbbells were a dangerous mix, probably after some poor sap let one slip and it crashed down onto his bare foot. As for the whole pumping up deal, I never thought much of it. By the time you are backstage and minutes from walking out on the stage, your physique is what it is. A little more or less of a pump in your shoulders or arms ain’t gonna make or break you at that point. Besides which, an extreme pump only means that you are likely to ‘deflate’ like a balloon leaking air while standing in line, since you can’t hold a good pump for very long.

Speaking of balloons, my first thought at seeing the top men in my weight division was that they must have employed some type of helium enema the day before prior to stepping on the official weigh-in scale. It simply boggled my mind that these guys were no heavier than I was. Seeing the way their thick, round muscles flared off their joints, I would have sworn they all had at least fifteen or twenty pounds of mass on me. But this only served to prove what I have been saying for years – numbers like height and weight, even bodyfat percentage, really don’t mean anything in a visual sport like bodybuilding. You can take two guys who are both 5-8 and 198 pounds at 4% bodyfat, and one could look a whole lot bigger than the other. Unfortunately, I was the other!

Trying to stay confident and fight the urge to run far, far away, I took the stage. When you have a fairly large group as this was, you can always get a pretty accurate idea of who the top five will ultimately be based on the first callout, or the first group of competitors from the class that the judges call front and center to compare. My number was not called. When a couple of those guys were sent back into the line and a couple more were brought out to take their place, yet again I was left right where I was, watching the show from the best vantage point in the house. The finals weren’t happening until the next night, but I knew for me the contest was for all intents and purposes, over. Along with my wife and a couple friends, I stopped on the way back to the hotel and enjoyed several large and quite delicious slices of that famous New York City pizza. IFBB Pro Ron Coleman happened to be in the pizza joint. This isn’t the eight-time Mr. Olympia Ronnie Coleman, but the ‘other’ one with the same name, who actually was the first Team Universe champ back in 1993.

The next night, I went out with my class and hit two poses when my name was announced, and that was the last the audience saw of me. Which brings me to the lobby, where Jeff and Jared, who had driven all the way down from Boston to watch me, were currently struggling for the right words. They weren’t sure whether to console me for trying and coming up short, or congratulate me for doing my best. Sensing their confusion, I helped them along.

“Thank you guys for coming, it really does mean a lot to me,” I began. “I’m only sorry you didn’t get to see my posing routine. It didn’t have any breakdancing, but it was pretty solid.”

“It was a tough class,” Jeff noted in the understatement of the year. It had indeed been so competitive that the two-time defending light-heavy winner had to settle for second, and the guy who beat him easily went on to win the Overall and earn IFBB Pro status.

“It’s like I always say about competing,” I told both of them. “All you can do is look the best you can. You never have any control over who else shows up and what they will look like. At my last show, I was the one guy that all the other competitors saw and knew they weren’t going to win that day. This time, I was on the other end of it. It’s like you and Hunter,” I nodded at Jared.

“Huh?”

“You have been assuming that if you and he both compete in a teenage class at a show in our area, it will be between you two. But you really have no idea who else might show up. One of you might dominate, or there could be some teenage kid out there who blows you both away.”

Jared frowned at that possible scenario.

“I didn’t win, and I didn’t even make the top five, but I am still a winner,” I proclaimed. The father and son looked like they wanted to agree with me, they just weren’t sure how that statement made any sense.

“Look, I’ve been competing since I was nineteen and I turn forty in two days. How many forty-year-olds out there can honestly say they look the absolute best now that they ever have in their entire lives?” Jeff shrugged. “I can,” I said. “I can look back at the last few months and know that I could not have trained any harder, dieted any stricter, or done anything else to look better than I do right now. I was just up against guys who were genetic freaks. They almost seem like they belong to some other species!”

“That’s true,” Jared noted. “Those guys were amazing.”

“There is no shame in losing if you have truly given your very best effort, and I did that. You two both want to compete next year, so you should know ahead of time that anything can happen at these shows. If you don’t prepare properly and show up in great shape, then you can blame yourself if you don’t do well. But if you look the best you can possibly look, the rest is out of your hands. Your best may be good enough to beat everyone else who shows up, or not, depending on who else happens to compete and how they look. If you have the discipline and drive to take a contest prep all the way through and reach your best condition ever, I don’t care where you place – you’re a winner.”

“Great attitude, Ron,” Jeff said, clapping me on the shoulder. At last, I saw my wife making her way out of the theater. I looked at them and my smile got even broader as a flash of gluttonous inspiration hit me.

“There’s a Baskin Robbins three blocks that way,” I informed them. “Who’s up for some ice cream?”