The Freeway Flyer Fitness Program
by Susan Mazur-Stommen
The term “freeway flyer” doesn’t exactly evoke the image of a marathoner, complete with super-low body mass index, ultra-oxygenation, and rippling abs. In fact, academics in general tend to make people think of pasty little poindexters, pulling on our inhalers. Or else we are seen as paunchy, pompous professors, barely able to squeeze behind our desks after one too many faculty wine and cheese events. But I am here to stand up for the idea that teaching is a lot more aerobic than many people give it credit for, and on many days, I think it even approaches manual labor (more on this below).
Don’t get me wrong, I gained the requisite 100 pounds of stress-induced lard in graduate school – eating at Mickey D’s multiple times a day (like the guy in the film “Super Size Me”) because I was too busy studying for my qualifying exams to cook a decent meal. Add a baby during dissertation writing time and you have a recipe for obesity!
Luckily, I have made a dent in my manteca problem over the past year through added exercise, eating better, and quitting the nightly half-bot of Petit Syrah and smokes.
Which is how I started to calculate the enormous health benefits of my abject adjunct existence. Recently, I strapped on a pedometer, lured by the magic number of 10,000 steps a day, and began marching around my regular routine. I was not terribly surprised that my days running from job-to-job, picking up the house, and chasing a three-year-old easily were close to that magic figure already. I certainly feel exhausted at the end of the day! My husband, a clerical worker for a trucking firm (a very active job), strapped on the pedometer to measure his activity at work, and proudly displayed over 10,000 steps before passing out on the bed, spread-eagled.
We even had a scientific experiment in the living room, walking and giggling, walking and measuring, until we had an average for our strides (mine was roughly 18 inches walking ‘normally’) and could calculate the mileage on our pedometers. 10,000 steps of mine roughly equals three miles, not the oft quoted five miles a day one finds on Web sites devoted to walking.
The stats began to roll in – just to get from my car, to my classroom, hold one office hour, teach two back-to-back classes, and walk back? One mile.
This morning, a trek from a distant parking lot, around some construction, to teach class, then a hike to get my parking permit renewed, and get back to my car? One mile. Before 10:00 a.m. even!
Imagine the workout I would get if I needed to go to the administration building all the way across campus, God forbid! Or, if I walked out for lunch and back, instead of eating in my office. We are talking triathlete here….
vIn addition to the just plain walking, I typically drag a ten pound bag on each arm as I hike–-one filled with books, binders, and homework to be returned, the other filled with the staples of the freeway flyers lifestyle–lunch, bottled water, cosmetics bag, maybe a novel to read while I grab some downtime. All this in the 100 degree plus heat of a Southern California summer afternoon.
While in class, the workout doesn’t pause. I move chairs, drag tables, stretch for screens perched high above my 5’4” head. I lift portable podiums. I walk around handing papers back and answering questions. In extreme cases, I have wheeled carts full of computers, fossil casts, and audio-visual equipment across campuses laid out like airports. And I count myself lucky if the vast plains are relatively flat, unlike the steep hills of my main employer. On that campus, the faculty parking lot is a six-story walk-up.
No wonder I drink so much water.
So, the next time you bemoan the fact that your teaching and publication schedule prevents you from going to the gym, think again; you may already be there and not even know it!
