Rock ‘n’ Roll New Orleans Expo

March 3, 2012

People posing excitedly outside the Brooks Running bus at the Rock 'n' Roll New Orleans expo
Chris from Brooks is getting us ready to get our stride on. Kenny is beside him. Kristin is getting ready for her first half!

Best expo yet.

Brooks Running rocked this expo. They basically set up a carnival, complete with games and a show. They even had a bus with treadmills. You could run, and they’d take a video of your stride, show it to you, and tell you what kind of shoe to get. Everything about their area was awesome!

I became totally obsessed with this skeeball game. You had to get to 26.2 miles before one of the other three players did. I lost by a hair 3 times in a row. I knew I needed to get out of there, or else I’d be playing skeeball all day and miss the whole expo.

I did a quick run around the expo. It was the fastest I’ve ever gone through one. I picked up pamphlets for a couple of races I hadn’t seen advertised before. Running a race so far from where I live is super cool. I get to see things from a different perspective, and hear about a bunch of east coast events.

fortune teller machine, themed athletically from the Brooks Running area at the Rock 'n' Roll New Orleans expo 2012I also saw a chocolate milk booth for the first time. They were making videos and giving out swag. It was a pretty sweet booth – too bad there was a carnival in the expo(!), stealing a bit of their thunder.

They said we’ll get chocolate milk at the finish tomorrow, so that’ll be an exciting change of pace. I hear SO many different things about milk.

I’ve heard it actually depletes your calcium. I’ve also heard that it’s one of the best things you could drink after a running event. Do you have any opinions on this?

After a quick sweep through the expo, I ran back to the party that was the Brooks Running carnival. In my first round back at skeeball – I won! Aw, yeah!

Then I went to get my stride analyzed. I’d always heard that that’s definitely how you should buy running shoes, but I’ve never been cool enough to get running shoes in a store that has treadmills set up with employees who’ll watch you run. This was my chance!

Aurora having a little medal put around her neck after winning at SkeeballAfter my new friend Glen watched me run, he leaned to his coworker and said “I think we might have a Dyad.”

They got excited, which of course made me excited. When I asked why we were so excited, Glen said it was because it’s very rare for someone to have a Dyad as their correct shoe. (In fact, Brooks actually made this shoe specifically for me. (Not really.))

What’s so special about my stride, you ask? I have some kind of special shape and most importantly, even still, there’s no over-pronating for this girl, ya’ll! (Party music plays.)

Have I mentioned this carnival theme is so awesome? They even had this silly, fun, little show in which a lizard jumps off the stage, and this tiny little girl ran away screaming. It was super cute (but I bet she didn’t think so!).

As of now, Brooks is winning sweetest set up, and I am stoked they’ll be in Washington DC as well!

Deddie working the register at Messina's in a food court in New OrleansAfter the expo, I took a little walk around the River Walk Marketplace. I stopped at Messina’s and Deddie made my first Po’ boy ever.

A random person in line walked up to me and out of the blue said I had great skin, immediately making them my new friend. They told me to try the crawfish po’ boy. (They had me at “good skin,” so whatever they suggested, I was going with it.)

And it was delicious.

What a fun day! Now I better get to sleep. I’ve got a half marathon in the morning!

8 thoughts on “Rock ‘n’ Roll New Orleans Expo”

  1. Congratulations Aurora for conquering another expo! Running half marathons are a challenge, but people underestimate the amount of energy it takes to go through an entire expo 🙂

    To your point about milk, a savvy milk corporation employee working at an expo booth will tell you that their product contains calcium (which it does), and that calcium is good for you and your bones (which it is), but they will leave out the fact that milk (especially skim milk) contains a large amount of methionine that causes an acid condition so that the body actually needs to leach calcium from the bones to combat, and that dairy protein and sodium increase the urinary excretion of calcium. So essentially, they are selling the benefit of calcium on the package of a product that reduces the amount of calcium in your body 😛 Instead of good stuff, you’ll get cholesterol (only found in animal products), saturated fat, and sugar, along with the antibiotics, hormones, and other crap that was fed to the cow. After a race, water is the best way to replenish your body, and if you want some of the other benefits typically attributed to milk, go with soy milk (organic unsweetened Silk is my favorite) since it doesn’t have the dairy side effects, but it does have all the benefits including calcium (http://silksoymilk.com/content/myths).

    You’re awesome for seeking out information other than just corporate propaganda. A Google search for “milk leaches calcium” (https://www.google.com/search?q=milk+leaches+calcium) is a great place to start, and http://www.pcrm.org/search/?cid=1202 is an impartial scientific study with a lot of boring details 🙂

    While you’re asking for opinions, the people in the Geico booth lie too (Progressive is better), but Brooks shoes are as awesome as their expo booth!

    1. Hi Marty!

      Thanks for sharing all this information. I’m working through the “milk leaches calcium” Google search right now. It is bumming me out! I LOVE milk (as you know since I say it all the time lol). I love, love, love it. I could easily drink at least a gallon of milk everyday!

      And it’s such a confusing bummer, because people have been telling me my whole life that milk is good for me. I only just started hearing about the secret bad sides of milk a few months ago. So my brain thinks, how is it possible that it took me this long to find out that milk may not be as healthy as people say? I mean, if it’s really leaching calcium from our bones, why isn’t the whole country standing up and demanding better?

      I’ve also been looking up benefits of chocolate milk after a workout, because I’ve been hearing a lot about that lately (even outside of the expo). There are a fair amount of articles I’ve found saying how great it is, so I was going to post a link to some of those. Then, as I was reading, I saw that the study touting chocolate milk was partially funded by the dairy industry! That’s probably not good…

      I just really want milk to be good for me since I adore it. I think I’m gonna have to try soy milk… It won’t hurt to try it.

      What did the people in the Geico booth say to you? They didn’t say anything to me. They just gave me a water bottle.

      I didn’t know Brooks was your preferred shoe. As of now, I’m an Asics girl, but that all could change. The Brooks stuff did look pretty awesome at the expo. I cannot wait to see it all again in DC and try on my super special shoes!

  2. It is a confusing bummer! I’m not surprised that you grew up hearing that milk is good for you – everyone did because it once was good for you (back in the 1800’s when people ate grain and dirt, milk was a plus), and the milk industry is doing everything they can to keep that perception alive, including the influencing of tons of “scientific” studies that don’t hold up. There are even more studies that say the opposite (like one at http://tinyurl.com/6s8nuzh which shows how milk contributes to acne) that aren’t publicized because the scientists don’t pump millions into marketing. I grew up knowing that milk is bad for you, mainly because I was very food conscious as a kid and I questioned authority regularly. The first book I read was called Diet for a New America (http://tinyurl.com/8x57haj), and that was enough to open my eyes and see food for what it really is, a product that companies want to sell, no matter what they have to say to do it (like how popcorn packages say “Gluten Free!” – duh, all popcorn is gluten free).

    You’re absolutely right when you ask “why isn’t the whole country standing up and demanding better?” We should demand better! The more I learn about food products, the more I ask myself that question. For instance, there are a ton of foods like Yoplait Strawberry Yogurt and Tropicana Season’s Best Ruby Red Grapefruit Juice that contain the ingredient “carmine” for coloring. That is, and I kid you not, crushed beetles (http://www.naturalnews.com/002043.html). WTF? Why isn’t the world going nuts over this? Because strawberry yogurt and grapefruit juice tastes good, and there’s no reason to dig any further.

    Don’t get me wrong, if you enjoy milk (and who wouldn’t like cold chocolate milk at the end of race), feel free to drink it all you like as long as you are aware of the health concerns. As you mentioned, some people like to drink beer while they run. That’s cool (and fun to watch), but the second the beer companies start saying “beer is good for you and helps you run”, let’s revolt! 🙂

    1. lol about the revolt when the beer companies say it helps you run. That sounds like a plan! (You know what’s funny is right now it sounds so preposterous, but I wouldn’t it past anybody. Marketing people can be true geniuses sometimes.)

      I read that article about carmine in food. At first I was grossed out, but then the writer kind of had a point that beetles could actually be good for you (low in fat, high in protein). (But then, when I searched carmine beetles and saw a picture of one, it went back to sounding gross again.)

      Here’s the part that really flabbergasts me about milk very possibly not being good for me – I’ve never had a doctor tell me I should stop drinking milk. Where are all the physicians telling us at our yearly physicals, “hey, milk leeches calcium from your bones. You might want to not drink it.”?

      I mean, I just feel like this is pretty humongous news, and no one is talking about it. As I said in my last comment, I didn’t hear a single word about the possibility that milk actually takes calcium away from our bones until just a few months ago. I mean, maybe I just don’t read and explore enough… But, as far as I can tell, barely anyone is talking about this! And that’s crazy, ’cause this sounds like a huge deal.

      1. Well it’s not like milk is poison, it’s just not the medicine they make it out to be. And really, when is the last time a doctor verbally went through a list of unhealthy foods for anyone? That list is a mile long, and milk would be there somewhere between doughnuts and beer – it’s not going to kill you right away, but if you consume a lot every day, you’ll be walking into a doctor’s office at some point. That usually involves a doctor warning of high cholesterol, and since cholesterol only comes from meat and dairy, they will usually advise people to go on a vegetarian/vegan diet or start a lifetime of cholesterol medication.

        I’m not surprised that you lived your whole life without the health benefits of milk coming up in casual conversation – most people don’t even think about it, let alone talk about it. It’s a boring conversation really (“did you know milk isn’t really good for you?”, “no kidding? Want to go to a movie tonight?”) Now crushing millions of live beetles just to make yogurt a little brighter red? Come on, that’s crazy!

        Before this awesome comment thread gets so long that it breaks your website, let me just conclude my thoughts by saying: What you eat and drink is obviously up to you. I think it’s great that you are a person that wants to live a healthy life (running 52 half marathons in 52 weeks, wearing a cool hat to protect you from the sun, avoiding alcohol, and so on), so good job for looking into milk, too. When it comes down to it, milk is a natural food that is produced by mothers to feed their babies. Cow’s milk is designed to make a 100 pound calf turn into a 1500 pound cow in 6 months. Those calves aren’t going out and eating cake and candy to gain weight, they are just drinking milk. In addition to that, in order to make milk designed for a cow fit for consumption for a human being, a lot of processing needs to occur. A lot of chemicals need to be added to make sure that that fluid doesn’t go sour before you can drink it. And I won’t even go into the moral ramifications of what they do to those cows in order for the milk to be produced (inseminating them, taking their newborns, taking their milk, and then inseminating them again). Wait, I said I wasn’t going to into that. Oops 🙂

        Well there you go, milk in a nutshell, a really big, rambling, milk nut. Just trust me, soy milk is really good (at least the Silk Unsweetened soy milk), and you should definitely try it. Chocolate Silk is really good to, and it has the added bonus of actually being good for you.

        1. You make really great points, Marty.

          I suppose that would be pretty preposterous for a doctor to list off a bunch of unhealthy things. I just feel as though the more I read about milk, the more I find out that it really isn’t the very best thing for you, but I feel as though that has been a HUGE secret. Huge.

          I know I talk about how I love milk, but I kept drinking it and conditioned myself to love it since I thought, “Think of all the good I’m doing! I’m giving myself SO much calcium. I am going to have the BEST bones!” It’s a big ol’ bummer that I may not actually be helping my bones at all.

          Lol on your second paragraph. I don’t know. I think it’s totally fascinating. It comes up in casual conversation with me all the time now! I even talked about it with a random guy at the New Orleans airport who happened to come sit by me. He was actually pretty passionate about milk. But, he said that it’s really important to drink organic milk instead of soy, because of the dangers of soy milk. Men’s Health even has an article asking if Soy is the most dangerous food for men. (And Google says there are plenty of detrimental things about Soy for women as well.)

          I suppose the moral of the story is that everything is bad for me and I’ll never have any idea what I really should be drinking…

          I guess it’s a little funny that I’m much, much less bothered by the crushed beetles than the fact that milk may not be good for me. I mean, it does sound weird, and a little gross (and a little silly that that would be the most efficient way for companies to color some products). But, I don’t think beetles really do anything to harm people. In fact, they’re possibly even good – protein and stuff, right? I am about 8,000,000% more bothered by the fact that milk might not really, honestly give me that sweet, sweet calcium!

          Anyway, I know you concluded your comments, and that you’ve told me that it sometimes makes you kind of uncomfortable to talk too much in “public,” (I don’t know that anyone is reading these comments but us lol) or to your friends about milk. I’ve appreciated you adding this conversation to my blog! I think you do a wonderful job of being informative and funny.

I'd love to hear from you! So whaddya say?