I already wrote about “my life”, and now I will write about one of my many “ordi­nary” days. Sit down and try to imag­ine it … I sleep, although I could not sleep tonight … I am after a two-​night ser­vice shift, six heavy train­ing ses­sions in the last week and after a long rolling. I fall asleep at about twelve thirty in the morn­ing (12.30). Even in my sleep I feel my sore and strained back and legs as if I have them made from lead. Sud­denly the alarm rings, and it is 4:15 a.m… I’m dying for the first time … I get up, first I go to the toi­let, I need to quickly wash, dress in sports clothes and climb on the Orbi­trac … When my leg slips, I almost hit my head on the con­struc­tion. On the sec­ond attempt I’m start­ing to pedal… and I am dying for the sec­ond time … the first 15 min­utes are always tragic (some­times the entire hour). How many times do I say that in these early hours I do not under­stand what I’m doing and I con­sider the ques­tion of whether my body is will­ing to burn fat? The machine starts, qui­etly squeak­ing and I’m afraid to wake the neigh­bors … After less than an hour, with joy I quit … I’m quite fine, although tired. Next fol­lows the shower. I put food into my “work” bag and then a few min­utes after six o’clock I set out to work. Work begins from 7 am. It is quite enough. Once in a while I have time for con­sul­ta­tions, files, I write some­thing on the com­puter … It’s noon … My col­leagues go to lunch and they ask whether I want to go with them and rogu­ishly, I wink. It is well known to them that I always have food with me: some rice and the chicken in plas­tic boxes, all accu­rately weighed, with no fat, condi­ments and spices … Instead of rice, I occa­sion­ally take rice cakes, which are my favorite. The after­noon then passes pretty quickly and I look for­ward to training.

A lit­tle after seven o’clock in the evening I am already in the gym. Today I have a rel­a­tively “light train­ing” of my back. I’m start­ing to work out and I am very tired … Next to me sits a girl on a bicy­cle, and she wants to talk. I smile at her and with my sad eyes I plead with her to let me just pedal with my MP3 in my ears and most impor­tantly, at least, relax a lit­tle bit … The girl does not under­stand, and she bur­bles and bur­bles … I do not even lis­ten to it, and I’ve had enough … I say to myself, “Didn’t she see that I have a head­set that I’m really tired and I do not want to talk ?” Nor­mally yes, but now I am before the com­pe­ti­tion. I am on a diet for more than 4 months, and I try to work hard as a devil, even though I am run­ning on empty. And now I really workout.…not enough sleep, work and some­times even enough for me “bru­tal diet” exhausted, last power. I get off of the exer­cise bike and go prac­tice first a series of selected excer­cises … In that moment a man “known from the gym”, come to me ( but accord­ing to his skele­tal mus­cles built, he looks like my grand­mother after a cel­e­bra­tion). And he begins: “Oh, I have not seen you. Why do you not stop over?! I saw you at the reunion of the rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the pho­tos on the net, and you looked … well … not so good. Don’t you want to change train­ers or train­ing ?! “I’m dying for the third time … What can I say? I smile … well, rather I sneer (I really don‘t want to smile) and I go to work out …Max­i­mally after 90 min­utes, I quit! Tired, but happy! I’m going to the shower and the girl in the chang­ing room ask­ing me if I exer­cise. I just nod … I’m leav­ing, and on my way I man­age to do some shop­ping. I want to stop to pick up a pack­age at the post office, but I am not able to man­age that as they are already closed now for two hours … I come home. It is approx­i­mately nine o’clock in the evening, and I am unpack­ing my shop­ping. I am hang­ing up sweaty sports clothes and start­ing to pre­pare meat in the steamer for the next day and cook the rice. In doing so, I say to myself, “When will I finally have a change and finally have fish again ?” I’m get­ting a headache from the chicken. I am study­ing the sched­ule of my menu from the trainer, and I can see that in a week I’ll be able to “afford it”, of course, with no fat, no salt, no spices … All I have to do is put my meals for the next day in boxes … still I need to wash the dishes and clean the kitchen. I look at the clock, and it is 11:15pm … I sit at the com­puter and answer the “back­logs” from the Inter­net … and I open my pro­file on Face­book, and I flip through new mes­sages. Some are with­out text, only with a big smi­ley face … One winks, the other laughs, the next applauds … other times it would make me laugh … I drink water and slowly I get ready for bed.

Tomor­row I will have more spare time, but in the morn­ing I need to go to the bank, then to the author­i­ties and take a jour­ney to my coach from Prague to Plzen and back. It all comes to me at least for 4 hours of my time. First she will inspect me in a swim­suit, we will dis­cuss my cur­rent state, then hard train­ing, and the exer­cise set.I wake up from “dream­ing,” respec­tive of what awaits me for the next day, actu­ally today … I look at the clock, it dis­plays twelve thirty at night … or morn­ing … Well, it is not impor­tant! I shut down the com­puter and close Bobik in his cage. Do not worry, it’s my par­rot and he belongs there … He has a perch, toys, food, good­ies and he sleeps there. I need to brush my teeth, and I pre­fer to not look at the watch. Leisure day is that I am not going to work. I serve for the police and I have shifts, day and night, except for some “spe­cial events,” or a secu­rity mea­sure, when I go “as needed.” So I have the “lux­ury of get­ting up” at 6 o‘clock , albeit with a “car­dio.” Then I can start run­ning … But not out­side or in a gym but on a machine, but going to the author­i­ties in deal­ing with the arrears of work, which rushed off my feet.I sleep.

If you’ve read this far, I admire you and maybe you’re won­der­ing why I have not writ­ten some­thing pos­i­tive … I can answer it sim­ply. I will be happy to do so, but next time I will write about “some expe­ri­ence,” like from the com­pe­ti­tions that are wait­ing for me. I wanted that those who write me, on Face­book or wher­ever, “an evil” thing and like to crit­i­cize and dis­par­age the achieve­ments of oth­ers to think a lit­tle bit that suc­cess is really quite often very painful and my day does not start by wak­ing up at 9 am, with break­fast in bed, with a few paces in my pool, and then relax­ation train­ing … But all is so far by the miles! For exam­ple, for me to take part in the Euro­pean Cham­pi­onships in Spain in 2014, I had to switch my shifts,for me to have a free time for com­pe­ti­tions and to go there. Well, then I pre­pared for the Ama­teur Olympia in Prague (2014) . I pre­pared myself for only 14 days while I had 3 night shiftsin sequence, day off and again 3 night shifts… Friends, I do not cry. You would under­es­ti­mate me, or do not want to com­plain. But imag­ine how dif­fi­cult time it is per­form­ing in such an impor­tant com­pe­ti­tion, which Ama­teur Olympia in Prague 2014 indis­putably is, when you had six night shifts… I really don‘t want to com­plain or cry about how hard it is to be a “work­ing ama­teur”,… I am well aware that it is dif­fi­cult in life for mil­lions of other ath­letes around the world! And I always try to be hum­ble, and so I could appre­ci­ate myself. I shortly described here what almost all ama­teur ath­letes around the world expe­ri­ence while they are prepar­ing as pro­fes­sion­als. But cer­tainly they do not have same con­di­tions as that! Let’s wish together much suc­cess for all these ath­letes! Let‘s demon­strate appre­ci­a­tion for some­one in the neigh­bor­hood, and it does not mat­ter whether she’s doing: “female body­build­ing”, now newly “physique”, ath­let­ics, box­ing, bik­ing, or play­ing rugby, or swim­ming … It is not impor­tant what sport you’re doing, but it is impor­tant how and what you sac­ri­fice? Thank you again for your huge sup­port and I look for­ward that next time you going to read only pos­i­tive things! Your Lenka Dear friends, Thank you all for your sup­port and favours, that are very impor­tant for any ath­lete! With­out the assis­tance of oth­ers, the prepa­ra­tion for com­pe­ti­tion would be very com­pli­cated and dif­fi­cult. To all those that sup­port me, I would like to thank very much.If you would like to sup­port me, I will be very happy.