Lenda Murray is pressing for her 8th title as Ms. Olympia

Seven won't do, but eight might be enough for bodybuilder Lenda Murray, who operates the Fitness Firm gym in Virginia Beach.

In October, Murray earned her seventh Ms. Olympia title, winning the world's premiere competition for female bodybuilders. And as she stood on that stage in Las Vegas, she realized to her surprise that this title - at age 40 - just might mean more to her than any of the six that she won before her retirement in 1997.

"When I won my first Ms. Olympia back in 1990, that experience was overwhelming, and it really changed my life," Murray said. "But after you win the championship that first time, it changes the feeling when you go back and win your second and third and fourth. I didn't think I could ever have that feeling again.

"But this seventh one was, I think, actually better than the first one. I had a five-year layoff, and that gave me the opportunity to miss the feeling of being champion, and then to come back and get it back. So many of the people in attendance, the judges and the people in the crowd, told me I look better now than when I won my first title back when I was about 27. That was wonderful."

The title, as always, brought lots of attention and endorsement offers within the bodybuilding and fitness community. In order to honor those offers, she says she wants to go back to Vegas next fall and win one more Ms. Olympia title. It would be her eighth.

And in the meantime, Murray and her husband, Ure, continue to run Fitness Firm. Their goal is to one day make Virginia Beach into an East Coast version of Venice Beach, Calif., the longtime Mecca of the bodybuilding world. In August, she hosted her first bodybuilding show at Chrysler Hall in Norfolk, and she plans to do that again this summer.

"The first show was such a success," she says. "We've made a lot of contacts in the past year, gotten a

lot of exposure. And we just want to keep moving ahead."