Audible.com – My Way of Making Exercise Easier

This week ended up with a theme of rest/sleep for our athletes. I thought it only fair to give some emphasis on rest and sleep for us as parents. I am guilty of not allowing enough time for sleep. I have found something that definitely gives me better quality rest and sleep, though. That something is the simple act of exercising. You all know the many benefits of exercise, so I won’t go into them.

The problem I have is that I get bored very quickly with exercise. That is, I did until I started listening to audio books. For me, audio books are the perfect solution to what could be a mind-numbing hour of torture.

When I decided to listen to audio books, I ran into two problems. One is that audio books are expensive. The other is that I decided to listen to classics in an effort to exercise my mind along with my body. When I looked for classics in the form of audio books, I could find very few unabridged versions. So I did some online research and found audible.com.

I have to say, I’m impressed. The best offer audible.com has is if you pay $7.49 for an audio book each month for 3 months, then $14.95 for an audio book each month after that. Believe me, that’s a good deal. And if you find you don’t like audible.com, you can cancel your subscription at any time.

I started listening to Charles Dickens books in December and found it takes me a little over a month to listen to one Charles Dickens book if I listen each time I work out. That’s typically 1 hour 3 times per week and 5-20 minutes each of the other days.

Audible.com has over 75,000 titles, so there are plenty of audio books to choose from. I was amazed at how many different unabridged versions were available of the Charles Dickens books. I had difficulty finding any unabridged audio versions of Dickens’ books in large U.S. bookstores or even in London’s largest bookstore. Audible.com has reviews and audio previews so that I could easily choose the best narrator for me. And the price is less than ordering from a bookstore – even an online bookstore.

In addition to books in every genre, audible.com has magazines, radio shows, podcasts, stand-up comedy, and speeches. I listen to the audio books on my laptop, but you can also burn them to a CD or download them to iPod, iPhone, BlackBerry, or any of about 500 mobile devices.

If you’re like me and want to work out but need something to keep your mind busy, I definitely recommend audible.com.