Carrying over 400 pounds on her back, bench pressing a tree log and pushing her limits, Liz Pereira is gearing up to compete against some of the world's strongest athletes.

Pereira, 46, is a trainer at the Gleason Family YMCA and is competing in the Arnold Classic, a sporting festival hosted by Arnold Schwarzenegger. The competition features athletes from around the world putting their bodies to the test in a variety of events including, bodybuilding, weightlifting and strongman.

The competition is being held in Columbus, Ohio from Thursday, Feb. 27 to Sunday March 2 and Pereira is competing in a five event competition held on Sunday.

"My first event is a max log press so I will have a big piece of wood from a tree and I have three tries to press the heaviest that I can," Pereira said. "After that I have a deadlift where I get 60 seconds to lift 440 pounds as many times as possible."

In order to qualify for the competition, Pereira first had to win a local competition and place well enough in a national competition hosted by the Strongman Corporation, the governing body of the strongman sport.

"The state competition was in Stoneham and after I won that I went to Tampa, Florida for nationals in 2023 where I came in second," she said.

The athletes are told the events they will compete in three months in advance. Since receiving her list, Pereira has been training four times a week to prepare.

She said that she works two jobs on top of training and said it has been difficult to dedicate the time she needs to train.

"I manage to train at night or sometimes my alarm goes off at 3:50 in the morning and I train then," Pereira said. "Training varies between two to three hours at a time and I usually drive to Rhode Island because there is a gym there that has better equipment."

Despite feeling slightly under the weather, she said she "feels ready for the competition."

"I would like to be top seven in the world," she added.

Competing and testing her strength is nothing new for Pereira. She has been an athlete her entire life, competing in collegiate track and field before transitioning to bodybuilding, weightlifting, and strongman competitions.

Pereira said her first taste of strongman competitions came in 2022 when she participated in a truck pull fundraiser in Hyannis.

"I pulled a hummer, a pickup truck and an 18 wheeler," she said. "This gave me a lot of confidence so I tried training for a strongman competition."

She described the first week of strongman training as "absolutely horrible," and said "everything hurt from the tip of my hair to the tip of my nose."

Despite the pain, she said she became hooked on the training and getting to the Arnold Classic has been her goal for the last three years.

"If you would've told me three-years-ago that I am going to be at the Arnold deadlifting 440 pounds and running around with 450 lbs on my shoulders I would've told you you're crazy," Pereira said. "Getting to the Arnold means I have achieved and accomplished what I wanted to."