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 By: Brenda Kelly
I arrived at beautiful Boise Idaho, home of Bodybuilding.com from LAX on a Thursday. Downtown Boise would be the setting for another outstanding annual weekend jam packed with events of fitness fun.
First up on Friday was the Bodybuilding.com Boise Fitness Expo. The action packed day and night starts out with video interviews with the visiting celebrities who come into town for the Expo held at a super cool venue in the heart of downtown called The Big Easy. This humungous nightclub has two levels that all look out onto the main stage. Our hosts for the 5-hour Expo for the evening were the Fake Austin Powers, looking and sounding just like the real thing along with IFBB Masters Olympia Pro Bob Cicherillo.
  Click Image To Enlarge. The Fake Austin Powers & Bob Cicherillo. View More Pics From The Boise Fit Expo Here. The action never stopped with dynamic entertainment the entire time featuring The Mak Attack Dancers, a Hawaiian Tropics bikini contest, Power Lifting Championships, Hip Hop performers, popular guest posing performances from the Pros and more.
There were booths set up on the upper level and the fans stood in lines that went around the block to get in all night long. It was a capacity crowd and no wonder with stars like Mr. Olympia Jay Cutler, Iron Man Pro Champ Toney Freeman, Fitness Olympia Champ and Figure favorite Monica Brant, "it" model Jamie Eason, Isaac Hinds from Lift Studios, IFBB Pro Dayana Cadeau, IFBB Pro Tanji Johnson, performer extraordinaire Jerome "Hollywood" Ferguson and more all signing autographs for the never ending lines of fans in between guest posing routines and entertainment on stage.
Free samples were given away along with the coveted Bodybuilding.com T-shirts for the first 100+ in the door. I was at the Bodybuilding.com booth signing the Iron Man Magazine March Over 40 issue where I am proud to be the featured Hardbody model for this annual best seller. Video interviews with the Pros and athletes had started early that morning and were continued all during the Expo for the Bodybuilding.com website. I was brought in for my interview and when I got there none other than the "X Man" himself, Toney Freeman, arrived at the same time for his.
When we were asked who wanted to be first, we both decided to tape our interviews together for more interactive fun and it was a blast! Check out all 30+ of the interviews and fun video clips on BodySpace Pro/Am Blog. It is a great way to really get to know all of your Bodybuilding, Fitness and Figure favorites!
 Click Image To Enlarge. Crystal Matthews & Monica Brant-Peckham. View More Pics From The Boise Fit Expo Here. The night rocked on and all of the Bodybuilding.com staff along with head honchos Ryan, Jeremy and "Buff Daddy" Russ Deluca were there to meet, greet and party with us all. It is so wonderful to get to see people in person and thank them for all of their hard work and contribution to our industry. A kick @ss band (Super Vapors) opened and closed the evening. Russ has some extremely talented offspring with one of the band members being another of Russ' younger sons!
We all headed up to the VIP area with the Bodybuilding.com staff and Pros after the Expo closed and partied on together. I would have stayed longer however I had the Gold's Gym Treasure Valley Classic hosting engagement the next day. The Bodybuilding.com Boise Expo is an off the hook, don't miss experience. Thank you to Bodybuilding.com for inviting us all to come together. Put this on your "must go to" list and you will end up coming back year after year.
After a wonderful time I went back to the host hotel, "The Grove", a spectacular hotel with a full-on Gold's Gym on the 5th floor and anything else you can imagine! A perfect night was capped off at The Grove bar with two of my dearest friends, photographer Ian Sitren from Second Focus and the head Bodybuilding.com webmaster, Will Wiedenmann. Thank goodness I left a touch early so we could all have fun catching up. Wired Energy drink representative Cody who had been driving me around Boise the whole weekend would be picking me up in the "Wired" Hummer at 7:30 AM. My alarm would go off even earlier to have time for hair and make up so I knew better than to stay out all night.
I was pumped and ready to host the Second Annual Gold's Gym Treasure Valley Classic held at the spectacular Capitol High School auditorium. Registration for the athletes started at 8 AM and I was there to greet the athletes, guest posers, judging panel and sponsors. This was a WFF event that included Bodybuilding, Fitness and Figure.
Promoter Derek Snelson put on a fantastic program with guest posers Jason Ciarabelini who is on his way to the NPC USA's in Vegas this July along with the extremely entertaining Rodney Hawthorne a Pro Universe Champion who also has a non-profit training program for kids who are without parents or are from low-income families. The judging panel was very high level. The audience and athletes were pleased with the system and results were bang on the money every time.
After registration, weigh-in, judges and athletes meetings we had a break before the night show. I opted for lunch and a quick disco nap and was back by 5 PM for sound check and to sign some autographs while the audience and competitors filed in. It was a packed auditorium and I was honored to host the athletes who were all extremely well prepared and in great shape. I had a lot of fun with the Boise audience and the show was really electric. All of the winners received trophies and the overall winners received swords. Video services of the show by Roman Moreno were available and Richard Barnet filmed video footage for Bodybuilding.com.
 Click Image To Enlarge. Craig Toth.
Thanks to promoter Derek Snelson of Performance Promotions for having me out to host along with the sponsors; Gold's Gym, Bodybuilding.com, Wired Energy Drinks, Seductive Designs, Fit Physique, Capitol High School, Mak Attack Apparel, Spoonmantics.com, Happibodies.com and Fitbodystar.com.
There were a lot of the same people who came for both the Bodybuilding.com Expo and the Gold's Gym Treasure Valley Classic. More than one person told me it was a really exciting, inspiring fitness weekend for them and they look forward to it every year.
 Click Image To Enlarge. 2007 Gold's Overall Division Winners. The cherry on the top of my weekend was on Sunday afternoon when my promoter Derek and I visited the exquisitely newly remodeled home of Russ and Bridget Deluca for a relaxing lunch among friends. We all played with their new bulldog puppy along a beautifully landscaped stream right in the back yard! Thank you Boise for welcoming me into your town and into your fitness lives. I love visiting your beautiful city and look forward to coming back and seeing all of you soon! Take care of yourself. You deserve it.
Love,
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