Moving

to 4000andbeyond.tumblr.com. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Christmas cheer, I4K style.

My roommate put up a Christmas tree tonight.

Look a little closer for some I4K flair.

One of my team mates made one of these for each team member. How adorable!

Made my first payment today

with the help of personal sponsors. Thank you all! I even collected $230 to put towards my second payment in January.

Things are really on a roll now…

EDIT: I’m sorry, that’s actually $430 leftover for the next installment. I did work, son.

I finally took my ass to the gym

and plopped it on the Stairmaster because there were no spinning bikes to be found at CRCE (I usually go to ARC because I live 10 minutes away from it). I managed 25 minutes on it before feeling somewhat faint. Then I worked on my arms, back, chest and core, all the while repeating “lift like a guy, look like a goddess” in my head, but it was so crowded that my focus wasn’t very sharp. Better luck next time. I’m going to get Ike to help me bench one of these days…

A friend of mine, who’s like a second mother to me, is retired and living in Savannah, GA. She called me today to tell me that she had sent her donations in the mail. She also told me that she brought I4K up to a couple she is friends with in Urbana, IL, and that they were very interested in donating. The wife has had two bouts with breast cancer, and the husband is an avid biker - amazing, right? Well, not that the woman’s got cancer, but you know what I mean.

On tonight’s agenda: write out more donation letters and thank you cards. Tomorrow: aiming to go for a run and some lunges before lunch time.

Just found out

that the gym that’s less than 10 minutes from my apartment is going to be closed during Fall and Winter Break. It’s the better one too, and I’m almost positive the other gym halfway across campus, the one that I’m going to have to go to now, doesn’t have spinning bikes.

Curses. Seems like everything is against me in this I4K endeavor. Pressing onward regardless…

I suppose my journey to the workout will just be my workout warmup , especially during the winter because I hate taking buses.

Currently eating tuna salad with tortilla chips.

I am obsessed with FISH. And it’s too bad I live in the MIDWEST.

Adventures in raw eating

What I eat will obviously be a huge part of my training. I can’t keep drinking excessive (delicious) beers, late night pizzas, sugary lattes, etc. like your run of the mill college student much longer if I expect to really get serious about training.

Fitnessista is one of the first healthful lifestyle blogs I ever came across and despite the overwhelming girliness of it, I still enjoy reading about how she tries to eat raw as much as possible. I often work out vicariously through the blog…ha…

Anyway, she’s always talking about her breakfast cookies, so I decided to follow her recipe and make some tonight in anticipation of tomorrow considering I’m always frantic in the mornings. I’m glad I thought of making these because they’re like homemade protein bars (the recipe calls for protein powder) and I’ve been shopping around for palatable protein bars. Now there’s no need to because I can make my own since oatmeal, peanut butter and protein powder are pretty much always in my pantry!

I used oatmeal, honey peanut butter, plain organic soymilk, cinnamon and some Stevia (which is much more palatable when it’s mixed into something like this. Otherwise, I can’t stand that stuff!). I doubled the recipe so I could eat one for breakfast and carry the other one around with me as a snack in the afternoon.

I licked off the spoon I used to mix everything up with and it was pretty good! I normally can’t stand granola bar-esque foods, but this is pretty chewy and delicious! I can see myself eating a lot of these in the future…

So far,

I’ve secured at least five sponsors/donors. Win. Thanks for not letting me give up, friends.