Week in Review – May 27th, 2018

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:

Sunday: Week in Review–May 20th, 2018
Monday: 5 Random Things I Did This Weekend
Tuesday: Connect IQ Summit Tidbits: My Keynote, New Features, and More 
Friday: Suunto 3 Fitness In-Depth Review

It was a bit light last week, as I’m prepping stuff for reviews for the next week. Between now and the end of Eurobike in 6 weeks I’m currently tracking 29 new product announcements (plus ones not in my tracker yet). Hold onto your hats!

Sports Tech Deals – One Day Left!:

While the Clever Training 20% off sale ended this past week, there’s still an opportunity for you to pick up a handful of different trainers from REI for 20% off. These deals end tomorrow, Monday May 28th at 11:59PM US Pacific Time. All these links support the site, or, if you’re picking up anything else at REI, use the below link first and then wander from there.

CycleOps Hammer (REI Link: $959 from $1,200)
CycleOps Magnus (REI Link: $479 from $600)
Tacx Flux Smart (REI Link: $720 from $900)
Tacx Neo Smart (REI Link: $1,280 from $1,600)
Wahoo KICKR 2017 (REI Link: $960 from $1,200)
Wahoo KICKR SNAP (REI Link: $479 from $600)

Technically it’s a members-only sale, but it only takes a second to sign-up and then use coupon code ANNIV18 for REI.  Oh, you can get free shipping to your local REI store. Woot!

For those curious, the Tacx Neo is my go-to trainer that I use when I’m not testing something else.  But if you’re looking for the best bang for the buck from the available trainers in this sale, it’s the Tacx Flux.

In addition, you’ve got these sales still remaining for a few days longer:

• $100 off all Fenix 5s – 5/18-6/16
• $50 off Edge 25 units (base and bundle) – 5/18-5/28
• 20% off on Saris and CycleOps – 5/18-5/30
• $50 off Edge 520 5/18-5/28

Here’s the full listing with links that support the site though:

There are no deals currently.

Enjoy (and thanks for helping support the site, even if it’s just buying toilet paper using the Amazon link on the sidebar).

YouTube Videos I Made This Week:

Here’s what hit the tubes over on the You of Tube, definitely don’t forget to subscribe there to get notified of videos the second they hit!

(Pro Tip: This week and the next 7 days or so would be a really good week to do that…)

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) Wearable sensors directly attached to your tendons: Yup, that’s next folks. (via Mark L.)

2) Chain Cleaning – A Complete guide from lazy to obsessive: I’m definitely on the lazy side of things, but certainly worth a gander.

3) Suunto’s big firmware update: Normally I list these down below, but this one is notable enough that I wanted to call it out up here. This post is a good overview of the new features.  I’ll be covering said new features shortly in a slightly different manner. Hang tight.

4) Study published on Stryd running metrics: Note, this study doesn’t look at the power accuracy/numbers of Stryd, but rather the underlying pieces like ground contact time and vertical oscillation. Those are critically important to get right in order to estimate power.  However, the bigger challenge is some agreement on what exactly is power in running (how it’s defined and at what point/way it’s measured), and then from there you can do accuracy testing. (via Titanium Geek)

5) Triathlete Magazine 2018 Buyers Guide: This was released online now (previously just on newsstands). I wrote some sections in here, albeit, an eternity ago now.

6) Garmin now the 2nd largest smartwatch manufacturer after Apple: They shipped over 1 million ‘smartwatches’ last quarter.  Do be aware that these studies don’t generally get actual numbers from vendors, but are more wild-assed guesses.  Also keep in mind the definition of a ‘smartwatch’ changes more often than an Instagram model’s clothes.  It varies from quarter to quarter, and publication to publication.

7) How Veloviewer is used by pro cycling teams in the grand tour: One of these days the stars will align between my schedule and a team-car trip to write about this in more detail. Super cool stuff that’s flying under the radar mostly.

8) A Fond Look Back At The Hysterical Anti-Citi Bike Hysteria: Change is hard, and in the case of NYC a half-decade ago – implementing a bike share program had more than a few people strongly against it. Funny bit of ‘turn back the clock’.

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.

Garmin Edge 1030 BETA firmware: Reduction of suck (hopefully). Apparently lots of folks have been having issues since 4.00 came out a couple weeks ago (I’m still on 3.90). This is supposed to fix some of those introduced issues.  Note, you can downgrade to 3.90 if you’re having problems.

Garmin FR935 BETA firmware: Added Physio TrueUp – This syncs across the advanced fitness features between certain devices.

Garmin Fenix 5/5S/5X/Chronos BETA firmware: Same as FR935.

Garmin VIRB Edit Software Update: Mostly performance stuff and bug fixes.

Suunto Spartan Series Firmware Update: This adds in intensity zones, better training target options, alongside more notification history and HR on the watchface itself.

A crapton of app GDPR updates: A bunch of apps and platforms also had minor updates this past week focused on GDPR compliance.  Too many to list here.

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With that – thanks for reading and have a great week ahead!