Will Work (Walk) for Food

Posted By: Michelle Ashcraft

This past week was a little bit crazy for me, so my schedule got all thrown off. But as of Monday even I had completed most of my miles for the week, and I haven’t missed a training walk yet! I’m looking forward for a bit of a calmer week ahead (I hope). I traveled every weekend in May and the first weekend in June, so I’m hoping for a few travel-free weekends in the near future.

Venturing to the Land of Boilermakers
This past weekend I traveled to West Lafayette/Lafayette, IN to my other “home” at Purdue University. This trip was to see my sister Becca and her boyfriend Jake. Jake recently moved into his first home (very excited for him!) and Bec just moved into a new apartment, so I was looking forward to seeing their new places, and to give them their birthday present! (My sister and Jake share a birthday - August 18. They are also fairly competitive with one another, and happen to like different Chicago baseball teams. Jake likes the Cubs. Bec likes the White Sox. So what did I do? Got them tickets to White Sox at the Cubs for next weekend. I can’t WAIT to hear about how that goes!)

Part of the reason my sister wanted to come up was to help her decorate her new place. She practically put me to work right away, but not before taking me to lunch at one of my favorite restaurants at Purdue - Scotty’s Brewhouse. If you’ve never tried Scotty’s, you should definitely make a trip to West Lafayette, Bloomington, Muncie, or Indianapolis to try it out - SO GOOD! After lunch she really did put me to work - building a bookshelf. It seems like I am always helping someone build some piece of furniture. (My grad school friends can attest to this!) My sister had bought a bookshelf from Target that obviously needed to be assembled, and it was sitting in her apartment - waiting for Jake to assemble it. When Bec said that she didn’t know how to put it together I looked at her with the instruction manual in my hand and said, “Bec they give us pictures,” to which she responded, “I don’t think I ever did well with pictures.” Apparently in this case neither of us did well with pictures - we definitely had a few mishaps along the way. However, not too long later my sister had a new bookshelf and some pictures hung on the wall.

The reward - dinner at Panera Bread! My sister happens to love their salads, and I happen to love their new mac n cheese. Little did I know that the person making our food used to live by my sister, and therefore when I got home I had 3 servings of mac n cheese instead of 1 (don’t worry … I only ate 1!).

Overall I eat pretty healthy. My sister does too for the most part, but she also loves her fast food and her ice cream with Magic Shell. It shouldn’t surprise me that much of our conversation when she joined me for a walk on Sunday centered around food. We hadn’t eaten breakfast before we took off, so we weren’t too far into our journey and Bec’s stomach was already making noises … and mine started shortly after. We were walking around Purdue’s campus so we were, of course, passing all of our favorite restaurants, and then would talk about our favorite foods there or memories of going there with friends and family. This is not a good way to spend our conversation when our stomachs are hungry! It was not surprising then when we stopped by the car at 4 miles in that Bec said, “I could SO go for a cheeseburger right now” when we passed the campus McDonalds. We didn’t get McDonalds, but as soon as we had completed our walk we did go to Panda Express, which I am sure is infinitely more healthy than McDonalds. (Yeah. Right.)

Needless to say, it turned out that I was working and walking for food this weekend. Good thing I’ve got hundreds of miles to walk this summer to walk off all those delicious calories I ate this weekend!

Fundraising Update and MANY Thanks
My “family” really came through this week, and obviously were all feeling generous around the same time. I got 3 donations in less than 30 minutes one day! MANY thanks go to the following people for donating a total of $220 this week:

- Betty Peters - Betty is a family friend and helps me make sure that my taxes are done properly every year!
- Chris Siple - Siple was on Student Orientation Committee for Boiler Gold Rush at Purdue the year before I was on SOC; and he was once a fantastic date to my sorority’s Orchid Ball.
- Becca Ashcraft and Jake Pielet - As you know, Bec is my sister, and as mentioned above, Jake is her wonderful boyfriend.
- Katie Vukovich - Katie is one of my most supportive sorority sisters.
- Susan Wilton - Susan works in Residence Life at UK, and is always a happy face when I see here on the 5th floor of POT.

With their donations, I have achieved an official total of $1,865 which is 81% of my goal! That means I have less than $435 to go!

Team NKOTW also stepped up fundraising as a whole this week. Many of my teammates (especially Jenn L., Katie B., and Kim) brought in several donations this week. Together we have raised $4,892 which is 27% of our team goal!

Breast Cancer Fact of the Week
At this time there is no sure way to prevent breast cancer, but the following steps can be taken to reduce your risk.

1. Prevent obesity - keep your weight in check!
2. Exercise regularly (45 to 60 minutes, at least 5 days a week).
3. Minimize consumption of alcohol. (Women, less than 2 drinks a day.)
4. Don’t smoke.
5. Women, avoid use of menopausal hormones.

The Numbers
This week I walked 14.96 miles and took 43,240 steps. That brings my grand total to 57 miles and 164,714 steps!

Happy walking to whatever tastes good to you this week!

Michelle