Alex Huxtable

By Kathryn Reed

It’s crunch time for three Lake Tahoe residents who are putting their bodies up for judgment Saturday.

Everything they eat matters. Everything they do in the next four days is related to this competition.

Chris Minnes, Cassandra Chandler and Alex Huxtable are going to Hayward to compete in the NPC San Francisco Bodybuilding, Figure & Bikini Championships.

“The last week is really the hardest week,” Minnes, 31, said Monday.

This is because the first part of the week is spent loading up on salt and water with zero carbohydrates. Later in the week he will do the opposite – he’ll get rid of the salt, the body will drain itself of water and he’ll be power eating the carbs to suck up that water.

All of this is so he can do his best at his first competition. Minnes, who runs 968 Park Hotel, has won power-lifting competitions, but this is different. He will be judged completely on his physique and not his strength.

“It’s definitely a lot more challenging,” Minnes said of the training involved for Saturday’s event. “I’m eating perfectly; not a drop of alcohol, not a gram of sugar.”

It’s been three years since Chandler competed in a figure show. Now that the Incline Village resident has turned 45, she is in the master’s division.

“It’s to show women my age if they train hard you can compete,” Chandler said.

It helps that she works at Push Fitness as a trainer. In fact, all three competitors train at Push. Huxtable, 20, lives in South Lake and works at Embassy Suites.

For this event Chandler didn’t go on an extreme diet, but she kept an eye on what she ingested, and did cardio workouts almost every day in addition to her regular workouts.

“They are looking at how things are proportioned, overall appearance. They want a feminine, athletic look,” Chandler said of the judges.