Joan Davis takes “move it” seriously

If you’re sitting down as you read this and haven’t exercised today, Joan Davis has a message for you: “Move it.”

She is being friendly but firm when it comes to people’s health, physical and mental.

To read this vibrant Sun Citian’s resume, you would think she’s a 20-something professional athlete or a national fitness champion. Davis is 64 years old and looks like she’s going on 40. She has run three marathons, 14 half-marathons (13 miles), and more than 70 community racing events. She is a fitness fanatic in the best sense of the word; she not only demonstrates it in her philosophy of life, she has found an almost infinite variety of ways to live it out in her lifestyle.

Davis works in a sedentary job, so she knows the value of exercise and fitness. She works more than 30 hours a week as an “Ask a Nurse” health information specialist for a national health information and education firm.

Davis admitted that she initially was an unlikely athlete.

“I hated gym class in high school; I preferred reading to sports and got my only “D” in a required physical fitness class,” she said. “But I joined a Jazzercize class to lose a few pounds and found I loved the companionship and benefits of aerobics.”

She soon included regular exercise in her active life but only took up jogging in her 50s and then only on a whim.

“My husband Larry and I cruised to Greece and found out about the famed Athens Classic marathon on a land excursion,” Davis said. “I joked that if I ever wanted to do a marathon, that would be the one. The idea caught my imagination.”

She decided to enter the next one and trained hard for six months.

“I decided to walk it, but I soon realized that to get done in the six-hour time limit, I’d have to jog,” Davis said. “I hated jogging and could only go a block without getting winded. But I persevered using a cassette of songs to help motivate myself and measure my progress. I arrived at the finish line tired but triumphant in five hours, 49 minutes, just 11 minutes shy of the deadline.”

Since then, Davis has done two more marathons and more than a dozen half-marathons.

“I’m not fast. I don’t try to win. I go for completion,” she said. “Most of the time, I’m at the back of the pack, especially for the more challenging races like this past spring at March Madness in Cary, known for its hilly course. I made it to the finish line just as they were taking it down.”

But this isn’t simply just another story about jogging and exercise. It’s also about twins.

To add a little friendly sibling rivalry to her life, Joan often runs with her identical twin sister, Jean, who lives in Elkhorn, Wisconsin.

“We like wearing our matching shirts proclaiming ‘Born Together, Running Together, Twin 1 or 2,” Joan said. “We find fun races like Fruit Loop Run in Door County.” (Instead of medals, participants got boxes of Fruit Loops.)

The pair competed in last fall’s 10k Rump Roast Run in Minocqua, Wisconsin, where Jean won the gold cow bell, and Joan, the silver. “Let’s just say there was no bronze,” Joan joked.

Next spring, the twins will journey to Twinsburg, Ohio, to participate in a national twins festival. Naturally, it will include a lot of “moving around.”

Holder of three degrees, Joan has been a teacher, occupational health and ergonomic nurse, fitness counselor and educator, a cruise lecturer (she’ll try anything once), nurse educator, a medical consultant, corporate occupational health manager, health services coordinator, hospital staff nurse, and an AIDS educational consultant.

She has published nearly a dozen articles in nursing and health publications and has won nearly half-a-dozen awards. She has traveled and worked in all parts of America, but she has always considered the Chicago area her home, having grown up in Medinah. She and Larry moved to Sun City in 2011.

Early on in her pursuit of health activities, Joan’s “mission” beliefs intensified when her 7-year-old son died of a brain tumor.

“I switched my orientation then from teaching to nursing,” she said.

She is persuasively passionate about the harmful effects of a sedentary lifestyle and the importance of exercise.

“I’m a prime example,” she said. “I sit in front of a computer for 10-hour shifts. Exercise is vital for me. But all of us, no matter our age or jobs, need to keep moving whether it’s jogging, walking, swimming, or biking. I cringe when I see sedentary Americans whose only “sport” is watching professional athletes.

“I say to them, ‘Focus on you and your exercise rather than some professional athletes.’”

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