World Vegan day 2004
In 2004 we managed World Vegan day events at both Essex & Bristol! Here's a brief summary of the days:
Bristol Vegan festival 2004...
The vegan Bodybuilding crew started off early for the Essex Vegan festival. Karin, the organiser, had asked if we could help set up the event, so we squeezed into a car with all our food, stall stuff, more food (it was a long journey!) & off we went.
We arrived after a nightmare trip around the M25 & soon set to work setting up tables, packing goodie bags & generally getting the place ready for the evenings visitors.
Before we knew it, the doors were opening & in rushed the excited public, vegans, veggies & interested meat-eaters, all thronged around the many stalls.
As the evening went on James & Gary gave a fantastic talk about training & nutrition & helped a lot of people understand the vital need for good nutrition.
In one telling answer session James totally crushed the myth that meat was necessary for muscular size. Although I would have thought Gary & James themselves would have been enough to end that debate right there!
The two course meal put on by the Karin was fantastic & I would certainly recommend that if you can get there next year you wont be disappointed.
I must admit, this was hard to get to. I got home from Essex at midnight, took an hour to get the stuff ready for Bristol, then was up at 4AM for the early train!
This year the Bristol Vegan festival was at a different venue to the last one. Arriving, we suddenly realised how big it was! This event rivalled anything that London had put on as the place was massive! I arrived to find the event wasn't the only thing that had grown. Robbie Hazeley (the Vegan Bodybuilder) had also been doing some enlarging while he'd been away. He was fully bulked at just under 16 stone (220 pounds approx.), but unlike his previous bulking sessions a lot of the mass had been added in increased shoulder & chest size. The guy was a man/mountain!
The moment I'd been dreading soon arrived, time for me & Robbie to do a talk. I must admit I'm not the most comfortable when doing public speaking, so I wasn't looking forward to the event.
Tim (owner of Yaoh & organiser of the Bristol festival) was kind enough to host the event, which I must admit I don't remember in great detail, but everyone said was really good (probably because I let Robbie do most of the talking, I think!).
After the talk I felt a whole lot better & we got great feedback from the day. We also got to catch up with some other VBBer doing stalls & hanging out.
Mary had been working hard on her goal of becoming a competing bodybuilder, look at the bicep!
It seems that female vegan muscle is definitely taking off.
& do we need to worry about weak, skinny vegans in the future. I don't think so!
The event went fantastically well. I'm just disappointed that I met "skinny whippet" , then couldn't find the vegan runners stall to get some pics (sorry mate). As I said the place was BIG! & to all the other VBBers out there who popped along I hope you all enjoyed the day.
