If Rice, Bush can find time to work out, so can we

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gets up at 4:30 in the morning to exercise. She set up a mini gym in her apartment with a stationary bicycle and an elliptical machine.

President Bush gets up early, too, is in the Oval Office by 7 a.m. and works out at midday. The president used to run a 7-minute mile but started mountain biking a couple of years ago to give his knees a break.

He's such an inveterate exerciser that he has little patience for anyone who doesn't find time. Bush says if he can find time to work out, anyone can.

His predecessor, Bill Clinton, once famous for his love of fast food, became a convert to healthier eating and exercise after quadruple bypass surgery in 2004.

The great divide in this country isn't between men and women, Republican and Democrat, red state and blue or baby boomer and Gen-Xer. It's between those who get up early and find time to exercise — and the rest of us.

As one who has been on both sides of the exercise divide (flip flop), I know how hard it is to carve out time.

I set the alarm last week to watch the secretary of state work out on TV.

I felt ridiculous watching her do what I should have been doing myself.

Rice had invited local anchorwoman Barbara Harrison of the NBC affiliate WRC-TV to the State Department gym, where they rode the indoor bike, pumped iron and worked on their abs. Brief segments about Rice's fitness regimen ran at 5:45 a.m. for three days.

Now, I don't know if Rice wants to be president or vice president or to win any elective office, but she established one thing with her debut as a fitness and diet coach. As her trainer, a former Marine, said, Rice is tough.

She pushed herself through a vigorous workout on camera on a Saturday morning, just 15 hours after returning from a trip to the Middle East.

A competitive figure skater in her younger days, Rice, 51, looks like she has never battled a bulge. But, she confided Oprah-esque, that in her senior year in college, she lived in the sorority house, stopped working out, snacked on pigs-in-a-blanket and gained 30 pounds.

She has tried the low-carb and low-fat diets but now prefers old-fashioned healthy eating and working out with weights and cardio machines.

She exercises just about every day whether she's at home or traveling. Maybe Bush lets her use his treadmill on Air Force One.