The Week in Review is a collection of both all the goodness I’ve written during the past week around the internet, as well as a small pile of links I found interesting – generally endurance sports related. I’ve often wondered what to do with all of the coolness that people write, and while I share a lot of it on Twitter and Facebook, this is a better forum for sending it on to y’all. Most times these different streams don’t overlap, so be on the lookout at all these places for good stuff!
So with that, let’s get into the action!
DCRainmaker.com posts in the past week:
Here’s all the goodness that ended up on the main page of DCRainmaker.com this past week.
Monday: Last Week in Review–July 5th, 2016
Thursday: Suunto announces planned optical HR Spartan GPS, sensor details
Thursday Part 2: Suunto Spartan Series Overview (I made significant changes/additions to this June-era post, including adding 91 slides from Suunto on their upcoming plans)
DCR Podcast!
Here’s a handful of the topics discussed in this past week’s podcast:
– I chat about a new ‘product’ that arrived last weekend – including brief notes on unboxing
– We discuss Suunto’s new Spartan series GPS units
– Discussion of elliptical chainrings and power meters (and Elliptigo’s)
– Performance & Recovery Indicators
– How to get your Fenix2 to 30 hours for an Ultra
– Properly documenting a 2-year old’s cycling race with data overlays
– There were no British callers. Ben explains why.
Listen to the full podcast here on the Podcast player, or just download it directly here.
Sports Tech Deals This Week:
There’s a few notable deals that kicked off this week:
Garmin Edge 25: Save $20 – $149 (usually $169) – Hands-on overview
Garmin Varia Radar: Save $30 – $169 (usually $199) – In-depth Review
Update – deal below added July 11th:
Garmin Fenix3 is 25% off: Save at least $125 (was $499, now $375) – all editions on sale except optical Fenix3 HR – In-Depth Review | Amazon | Clever Training
Quick and easy! I don’t really see any sort of changes coming to either of these two cycling product lines, both are barely a year old. Given the short duration of the sale (until July 18th), I think this is just taking advantage of the Tour de France interest in cycling.
And for the Fenix3, I think that’s simply a case of Garmin trying to undercut Suunto’s pre-orders starting later this week of the Spartan lineup. Garmin (along with Polar, TomTom and Suunto) are all old hands at undercutting each others major product launches. I don’t expect a new Fenix series anytime soon.
Oh – also of note – Clever Training Europe is running a big crazy giveaway that’s giving away craptons of cycling stuff each of the three summer months to European folks. Given mostly just DCR readers know about this…umm…go forth?
Stuff that I found interesting around the interwebs:
Here’s a not-so-small smattering of all the random things that I stumbled on while doing my civic duty to find the end of the Internet:
1) Running coming to Zwift? Looks to be the case. Their level of innovation continues to be impressive (granted, so is their Silicon Valley financial backing).
2) How to pack for the Tour de France: A ‘What’s in your suitcase’ type of video from the GCN folks with Adam Hansen, who has done 15 grand tours to date.
3) Really cool drone shot of an outdoor swimming pool: Crazy packed, but this shot was one of the winners of an international photo competition from drone shots. Here’s an overview of all the top winners; great stuff.
4) New metrics for running with power: Perfect timing, given Stryd just rolled out Connect IQ integration for recording data. However, I really wish we’d see this in TrainingPeaks and not just WKO4.
5) Riding the Paralympic Cycling Trials: A good account by Ben Collins on his attempt with Aaron Sheidies.
6) Veloviewer becomes Team Sky Supplier: This is notable simply because this cool little app/site that I too use, is merely one person…supply to Team Sky. Neat stuff!
7) IBM, Big Data, USA Women’s Cycling Team, and BSX: Yup, that title about summed it up. Though, wish there was a bit more data on what exactly this meant. Kinda high level. But Neal Henderson is a smart duck, so I’m guessing it’s more than just marketing fluff.
Sports Technology Software/Firmware Updates This Week:
Each week I quickly highlight some of the new firmware, app, software and website service updates that I see go out. If you’re a sports technology company and release an update – shoot me a quick note (just one liners are perfect, or Tweet it at me is even better) and I’ll make mention of it here. If I don’t know about it, I won’t be able to post about it. Sound good? Oh – and if you want to get a head start on things, this page is a great resource for watching Garmin firmware updates.
Suunto Ambit3 Peak Firmware Update: New features including 3D distance, plus a bunch of tweaks/fixes.
Garmin Fenix3 HR BETA Firmware Update: Boatload of tweaks and changes.
Garmin Fenix3/Tactix Bravo/Quatix 3 BETA firmware update: Same boatload as above. Just different boat branding.
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With that – thanks for reading!
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That’s a great shot of the outdoor pool. There seem to be loads of people just standing around in a couple of the lanes.
I imagine there are only certain places where flying a drone over a somewhere like that would be allowed.
Congrats on the baby Ray.
?
No baby mention? Not even a little oh we had a baby at the end?
May I inquire again about the Rotor 2Inpower? Noticed any (potential) issues so far?
As with other commenters, I’m waiting for the new baby review to hit. Figure you’ve been working on it for months. It was released a week ago, what’s up?
Soon! Just playing catchup a bit. In the meantime, The Girl has posted a few pics here: link to instagram.com
Running on Zwift would definitely make running on the dreadmill slightly more tolerable.
The “Zwift Effect” while on a treadmill would be painful.
Hey Ray, congrats on the new addition. Hopefully, you, the girl, the baby, and Lucy are doing well. I also hope the transition to being parents for you and the girl, and a watch dog / protector for Lucy goes smoothly.
Congratulations on your new baby. All the very best to your family. P.S. My birthday as well.
Running on Zwift would be awesome. There are already some VR running apps and a bluetooth tracker like BitGym, but would be awesome to just tap into the Ant+ footpod and use that data.
“Stryd just rolled out Connect IQ integration for recording data” – Did you mean this or did you mean to write Garmin? I did not see any announcements about Stryd rolling out ConnectIQ data recording.
They sent out an e-mail to current Stryd users asking for beta testers a week or so ago. I can’t quite seem to find a public link to it, but here’s proof via Twitter folks (including Moi) are testing it: link to twitter.com
I believe the go-live public date is July 17th.
Thanks for the reply, I do remember they Beta request now that you reminded me. Looking forward to the public release.
link to apps.garmin.com
That link is actually for the ‘older’ data page, but not the true Stryd app in question.
Zwift running i like that. A while ago there was an announcement from wahoo about an an interface to control ifit treadmills I have an old trad mill that supports the port or chrip based controls. Should be fairly easy to integrate
Here I was hoping the IBM stuff meant they were doing deep neural network training to use the data from various sensors to predict future performance but seems like they aren’t there yet. Its just a better UI to show all the data collected faster then before:
link to www-01.ibm.com
Does seem like someone would use all the data at a place like strava or training peaks to train a neural network with heart rate, power, and other data points to better calculate performance of the athlete then the basic math models WKO, golden cheetah and the like do.
Ray, on the Spartan ultra, is the antenna in the band in that area that doesn’t flex where it meets the watch? This would be a similar placement to the Ambit series although on a much smaller scale, perhaps this would keep accuracy in check?
On the Spartan series my understanding is the antenna is more in-line with the bezel, as the sat bump goes away on the Ultra. This would put it in potentially the same camp as the Vertical/Traverse.
The ‘challenge’ here is we don’t know what accuracy looks like. If it follows the Ambit 1/2/3 accuracy levels (with bump), we’ll be good. But if it follows Traverse/Vertical…then…
Yikes. And that’s why I was hoping based on the pics out there that where the band meets the watch they’d have crammed it in that area. I’m going to stick with the ole reliable, the 230, until a solid review is out and resist the urge of a pre order. Unfortunately my 735 is going back as I’ve been getting RHR data that is clearly not accurate at times. Thanks for the quick reply, congratulations on your new addition, and as a father of 3 young ones, that whole sleep thing is completely over rated. Soon you’ll be able to train for races on not only less sleep but less QUALITY sleep :).
Adam Hansen has done a few more than 15…. just the last 15 were, mind blowingly, *consecutive*!
For tech deals, there’s also Amazon Prime day tomorrow. I got a 910 on the cheap last year, not sure what will be on sale tomorrow.
Ray,
Congrats to you and Bobbie! Super cute baby.
I saw this in the Fenix3 beta notes: “Brought in support for the dog tracker widget.” Does this mean you could attach your watch to your dog somehow?
The direct mp3 for the podcast is on 41, the other one is on 47.
Great to see the Maker team’s been boosted with a new athlete-in-training – many congratulations to you both.
“And for the Fenix3, I think that’s simply a case of Garmin trying to undercut Suunto’s pre-orders starting later this week of the Spartan lineup. Garmin (along with Polar, TomTom and Suunto) are all old hands at undercutting each others major product launches. I don’t expect a new Fenix series anytime soon.”
I estimate you saved yourself over 100 responses to Fenix 4 speculation with this comment. 🙂
Indeed…
I know Ray is trying to avoid Fenix 4 speculation, but based on this:
link to developer.garmin.com
I can’t see a Fenix 4 not announced at CES or earlier.
At least a Fenix 3+ that supports the latest connect iq.
The flagship watch doesn’t support the latest version of the flagship software platform.
I don’t buy (either believe or $$$$) it sorry.
The thing is though, they’re basically stop-gapping that by adding in a secondary update for existing devices to give them the major features of Biker update.
Going by home many complaints there are about out of memory problems even if the api features that are needed are available the watch may still not run newer connect IQ things.
This is useful to tell what is new in 2.1 vs 1.3
link to pastebin.com
Too bad the Fenix 3 sale is not available at Clevertraining EU 🙁
AAAAAARGH! After months of agonizing over which watch to buy, 3 weeks ago I treated myself with a Fenix 3. I love it, but I would love it even more if it was a couple hundred dollars cheaper. I guess I still saved 10% from clever training.
Congrats Ray and blessings to your fam.
Amazon USA down the price of F3 too.
Where are your link?
Here you go for the Amazon US Link: link to amzn.to
Thanks for the support!
great!