A Trak Stand

For about a week now I’ve had this Blackburn Trak Stand in my apartment.  If you don’t know what this is, it’s a nifty little contraption that you hook up to the rear wheel of your road bicycle and it turns it into an indoor stationary bicycle!  Anyway, a co-worker was selling it and said for me to try it out before committing to buying it from him.  Well, this last week has been a busy week for me.  I wasn’t able to give it a try until yesterday morning.  I hooked it up to the rear wheel of my bicycle, propped the front wheel up on my little fireproof safe (you could use a brick or a cinder block) so I wasn’t aimed in a downhill direction and therefore putting extra pressure on my hands on the handlebars.  I set it on the medium resistance (that’s what the guy selling it said he set it on and was most comfortable with) and hopped on and started pedaling.  Well, I hopped back off and set it on the high resistance and that was better.  Then, I bumped up the gears so I’d have more resistance while pedaling and was quite happy.  I strapped on my heartrate monitor and pedaled for 40 minutes while watching the news.  I burned 251 calories.  Felt great!  What a fantastic way to watch tv and get a workout in at the same time!  So, when I went into work yesterday, I brought him the $40 he was asking for and voila, it’s mine!

I will now have no problem getting my 2 cycling sessions in each week that are in my new weekly workout routine.    Well, except for when I pick up overtime like I did last night.  As it is, I have to do this morning’s 8 mile run tomorrow instead.  I have to decide if I’m going to cycle with my Trak Stand or if I’m going to go to the gym and strength train…which I haven’t done in almost a month now…so maybe that would be the way to go.

Well, I sort of made up for not pulling that overtime shift Saturday night last night.  When I went into work yesterday afternoon, my supervisor said the night shift was looking for someone to stay over and I said that I would gladly stay over.  I mean, I still lost out on that $190 (after taxes amount) from Saturday.  Oh well, I just need to get over it.  And I’m working a shift of overtime this Saturday on my normal shift (evening).  I’m hoping I can pick up another shift between now and the night shift on Saturday.  That would be really nice.  That would be 4 shifts of overtime on my mid-July paycheck (around $760 extra!!!).  After Saturday, however, any overtime I get is up in the air.  There was none to be scheduled when I asked…they said they had filled their vacancies.  So, anything I get will be at the last minute like last night’s was.