BodyPower Expo 2014
It certainly seems that the time has been flying by recently! I’ve just realised its been well over a couple of weeks since my last post and I have so much to catch up on!
This post will be a short and sweet round up of our weekend away at BodyPower Expo with my sponsor, MuscleTrax.
We finally hit the road on the Friday afternoon before the expo and after a couple of hours drive from Plymouth to Birmingham (and a sneaky stop off for pizza and crispy kreme doughnuts) we arrived at where the satnav told us to go…. hmmm… this didn’t look right.
We pulled into a huge driveway surrounded by beautiful grounds with a huge elegant building at the end. The Marriott hotel… really? Did I book us a room here? Surely not?
After parking up we checked the paperwork and sure enough this was the place. Dressed in comfy’s consisting of tracky bottoms and t-shirts we headed in to find reception. Yep… we felt under dressed!
After checking in we went to find our room, a few flights of stairs later and we opened the door, wow, this place was stunning. But in all honesty it was about time we had little bit of luxury to ourselves, no kids for the weekend so it was certainly time to indulge.
After driving around for what seemed like hours trying to find Jarred’s (CEO of Muscletrax) hotel we eventually arrived and collected our passes and clothes. We made sure we got an early night as we would be up at the crack of dawn the next day.
Morning came too quickly and sure enough I was going to be the one making us late, after a hearty breakfast in the dining room I rushed to get my face made up, tried to style my hair as best I could, then we got our Muscletrax clobber on and headed off to the NEC.
Our aim was to arrive at 8:30, but I think it was closer to 9:30 by the time we actually parked up. We both had athlete passes so managed to skip the queues and slip in through a side entrance and then went to find our stand. We found Jarred and Kris (another Musletrax athlete) and had a quick run thorough of the stand and spiel, then armed with flyers it was go time!
I like to think that I managed to collar a fair few people over the two days and that I helped out quite a lot, but after the occasional blank from people I had obviously been taking to and who had blatantly heard me it was hard not to get a little disheartened.So then the challenge began! Kris and I fought against each other to entice as many people over to our stand as we could, then each email address we managed to get meant one point, and the person with the most points at the end would be the winner. I actually can’t remember who won at the end of it but it was a good giggle regardless.
We were given the opportunity to wander round on several occasions to grab freebies and get photos with the big names that were at the show. There was only one name I was interested in seeing, the incredible and inspirational DLB, Dana Linn Bailey.
We kept going back and forth to her booth to see if she had arrived yet, but it was empty for quite a while, then we wandered past not expecting to see her and there she was!! Wow! She’s tiny!!
DLB could only have been there for about 10 minutes but already the queue of fans to see her was enormous, so my chance to stand in line and wait was unlikely as I didn’t want to be away from my stand for too long. However I did manage to snap a picture of her as I passed by!
That was one highlight of my weekend, then I had another highlight… Throughout my 14 weeks of prep for my show I was lucky enough to start talking with some of the other people that were coached by my coach Paul. Two girls in particular, Yoanna and Carly but because of the distance we live from one another I hadn’t had the chance to meet either of them in person.
Whilst back on the Muscletrax stand I heard a hello and when I turned around who did I see? It was Carly!!
It was so exciting to finally meet one of the girls who had made such an impact on my progress and been an absolute rock for me when I was feeling crappy and low. And the weird thing was it was like I’d known her for years! Sadly I didn’t get chance to meet Yo as she wasn’t able to make it to BodyPower but a get together is well in the making!
The weekend went as fast as it came and it was soon time to head back home, but what an experience! Aside from how painful my feet were from so much standing up it was brilliant, and I 100% want to go back again next year!
I’ve got some more crazy exciting news on the way in the next couple of posts so keep an eye out!