Bon Jovi Rocks

In preparation for my wedding, and also because it's something I've needed to do for a long time, I'm trying to get in shape. My most recent get-in-shape efforts started when I was ordering a couple of books from Amazon.com. These books were exciting in and of themselves - they deal with using young adult novels in the literature classroom and using "literature circles" (think mini book clubs) in the classroom. I'm totally excited about these strategies in the classroom, and was going to buy the books no matter how much Amazon charged me for shipping - but Amazon conveniently told me that if I spent $4 more in my order, I would avoid a $7.95 shipping charge, or something like that. So I began to browse their bargain books. (I have been shopping on Amazon for at least 10 years but that was the first time I'd noticed the bargain section. Maybe it was new?) I found Bob Greene's Get With the Program for $5. I ended up saving money by buying the book, and when it arrived in the mail, I had a ready-to-go plan for getting in shape.

Yeah, weddings can be cause for major stressing out. But I wanted to get in shape the right way, not the crash diet way. So I read Get With the Program cautiously, keeping an eye out for too-good-to-be-true promises. I didn't find any. The Program is hard work - lots of aerobic exercise, then careful meal planning and eventually strength training. I was eager for the strength training part, but not so much for the aerobic exercise . . . but I decided to do what the book suggested anyway.

And amazingly, I became a jogger. Okay, not a great jogger. In fact, I'm a pretty poor jogger - I'm still thrilled if I can do better than a 10-minute mile - but at least it is a start! The first time I jogged, I made it a few blocks from home, and walked part of the way out of sheer exhaustion. I had timed myself, and this complete outpouring of effort had taken exactly seven minutes. There must have been something wrong with the clock!

After another jogging session or two, Michael started jogging also. He was much better at jogging than me, but we decided to jog together. In the beginning, he would take a different route than me, to get a longer jog in. But as time went on, we started to be able to go the same distance - and we kept increasing the distance every day. When it was still a struggle to go .75 miles in one outing, I remember saying "by the end of the summer I want to make it to Kwik Trip" (which is a gas station about 1.25 miles down a path near our house). About three weeks ago we made it to Kwik Trip. We can now jog over 3 miles in a night, if we want to.

Therein lies the rub. I have made it to the final phase of the book. I have reached the strength training portion, which I enjoy, but it makes the jogging harder. And Michael is doing is last week of grad school for the summer, so he has tons of studying to do . . . so last night I jogged for 1.25 miles alone, and walked home because my knee/shin/ankle was sore (from the strength training) and I was lacking motivation.

Tonight I knew I was going to have to jog alone again. I had already taken Michael away from his studies for an hour and a half beating him at Scrabble. (Okay, I beat him once by a few points, then he creamed me as revenge.) I really didn't want to jog, but I also didn't want to sabotage my efforts to get in shape. Fortunately, a little band from New Jersey stepped in to provide my lacking inspiration. I have a Gazelle, which is a low impact aerobic machine thingy (technical term), and sometimes I get in some of my 150 aerobic minutes a week on the Gazelle instead of jogging. (I prefer jogging because it is a more natural activity and I have a better sense of progress when I see the fast food restaurants flying . . .er . . plodding by.) Since it was 10:00 by the time I had finally gotten ready to exercise (I put my work-out clothes on at 8:30, did my 3 sets of four kinds of crunches, plus some other "functional exercises" as Greene calls them, and then spent an hour goofing off on the computer) I opted not to jog in the dark by myself. Being proud of myself for overcoming my inertia was not enough. I still needed help to get moving.

Fortunately Michael gave me an iPod for my birthday. And fortunately I've put a few of my Bon Jovi songs onto my iPod. (Not all of them. Putting songs on an iPod takes forever. Does that drive anyone else crazy?)

Yay Bon Jovi. I spent 40 minutes on the gazelle and got to listen to most of the Bounce album too. Jon, you're the inspiration . . .