Shortly after noon on most work days, three 50-something women in sweat pants and T-shirts gather in a third-floor conference room.
Sylvia Long, Donna Buchanan and Bonnie Edwards
While many of their fellow Norfolk Southern employees in the old mechanical building in Roanoke head out to lunch, the trio pops an exercise video into a small TV. And for the next 45 minutes or so, they step, bend, and stretch.
It’s a routine they’ve stuck with for several years now, and they know well the truth behind the exercise slogan, “No pain, no gain.”
“The guys make fun of us, but they haven’t had to do it,” said Bonnie Edwards, a statistical analyst. “It’s a real workout.”
Adds Sylvia Long, assistant manager purchasing – diesel: “We don’t do it because we love it. We’d like to be able to go out to lunch with our friends and do what everyone else does. But we know that to be where we want to be healthwise, we have to sacrifice – and this is it.”
A big conference table in their make-shift exercise room takes up much of the space, but there’s enough room between the chairs and the walls for them to work out. “We each have our little spot,” Edwards said. Their aerobic exercise routines mostly involve stepping in place and doing such things as knee lifts, kicks, and side-to-side movements, often using hand weights and stretch bands.
Since starting, they’ve advanced from the equivalent of a one-mile walk to three miles, which nearly exhausts their lunch break. Afterwards, they change into their dress clothes and have a quick lunch, usually eating sandwiches or other light fare, such as fruit, at their desks.
The three friends rely on each other for motivation.
“You can talk about issues you have and they listen and offer suggestions,” Long said. “We’re like our own little support group.”
They all point to benefits. Donna Buchanan, a systems analyst and the third member, said the workout sessions have helped lower her blood pressure and reduced her pulse rate to 75 from nearly 100. Besides that, a touch of arthritis in her shoulder disappeared after she began using light hand weights to do the walking exercises.
“Those reasons in themselves are well worth this investment of time each day,” Buchanan said. “We do it to be sure our quality of life will be the best it can be for our age.”
Long and Edwards said the workouts energize them and relieve stress. “Sometimes our jobs can be fairly overwhelming,” Long said, “but if I exercise at lunch time, I get a relief from being able to burn off energy.”
Long began focusing on eating healthier and exercising in 1999, when she went back to college to earn a business degree and gained weight in the process. She joined Weight Watchers to lose 10 pounds. “I had never had to lose weight and didn’t know how to,” she said.
The support and structure Weight Watchers provided was invaluable, she said. Besides learning to eat better – plenty of fruits and vegetables, for example – she learned the importance of exercising, even if just for 10 to 15 minutes a day. Within the past two years, when she added a few pounds earning her MBA, Long had the tools to burn them off.
“I have three children and four grandchildren and they’re kind of my motivation,” Long said. “But mostly, I’m motivated just for me because of what I want out of life – the way I look, the way I feel.”
Edwards, who turns 59 in October, advises younger employees to get into the habit early of exercising and eating healthy. But no matter your age, everybody can improve their health, even if it’s as simple as walking, she said.
“Just the kind of lifestyle many people have at Norfolk Southern, with a lot of sitting in front of computers, I think you really need to exercise,” Edwards said.
Long’s advice: “You have to start slow and build up to where you feel comfortable, and then you push it a little bit more and then push a little more. I know that it works; I’m living proof.”