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Getting exercise outdoors is great, and I'm a fairly avid summertime biker. It's not such an enticing option in the winter, though, unless you're the loud and boisterous professor across the hallway, who biked into campus last week in the middle of the day, when the air temperature was -5, and the wind chill was 35 degrees below zero (or, as our departmental coordinator kindly pointed out, cold enough to freeze exposed flesh within ten minutes), from the next town over. I heard him enter his office with a student in tow. "Do you, uh, want a minute?" the student asked. "Your hair is kind of, like, frozen." The professor, with an uncharacteristic pause, refused. "You know... I kind of like it."

Anyway, this is why I go to the gym once it gets cold, and why the $25 that I spend on an academic year locker rental is so very worth it. Without the locker, I spend ten hours on campus, then walk a mile across campus, through the aforementioned cold and wind, in the dark, lugging a pair of shoes, sweatshirt, bandanna, towel, water bottle, socks, shirt, shorts, and sports bra, plus my normal school bag full of books, food, and 15+ pounds of other invaluable necessities. It makes me frustrated and angry. The locker, however, is motivational: all my stuff is there, just waiting for me! No lugging or sherpas required! Three words, seriously: personal gym locker. So the drudgery doesn't happen until you get to the gym.

A VERY good point. AND you can reward yourself with a square of heart healthy 70% dark chocolate. Training is complete! Oh happy day.