Here’s your quick round-up of news that I didn’t quite get to this past week. Or, that wasn’t quite worthy of an entire separate post. Either way, it’s Friday, let’s get on with it.
Rouvy & RGT (Road Grand Tours) News:
No, they haven’t merged. Though, that would be interesting (albeit, confusing). Still, both apps have got news.
Officially as of yesterday, Road Grand Tours is out of beta…and now re-branded RGT. Honestly, I kinda forgot they were still technically in beta it’s been so long (4 years, to be precise). Still, in addition to removing the beta moniker, they’ve added new features for the indoor 2019-2020 season.
For example, there’s the new ‘Magic Roads’ concept that allows you to upload any 100KM route or shorter and it’ll automatically generate a route based on that. So in some ways it’s not terribly unlike what other apps can do, except that rather than doing it atop Google Earth, they just generate something road-wise on the fly. And, you can run events on that. Anyway, here’s a promo video from them on that:
There’s also the new structured workout integration with TrainingPeaks, so if you’ve got structured workouts there it’ll pull it down from TrainingPeaks and execute it within RGT. This is in addition to specific training plans and workouts that are now there as well.
Of course, as part of growing up, they had to get a job. Or rather, you have to pay them. There’s two variants now – a ‘Freemium’ version and a ‘Premium’ version:
I’ll cover the features in slightly more detail as part my ongoing and ever-growing masterpiece that is the Indoor Trainer App Guide for 2019…err…almost 2020. Either way, these days indoor training apps aren’t really winter limited. But RGT did make the cut.
Moving on…
Another that made the cut this year is Rouvy. And they too have news. They’ve announced the partnership with the Tour de Suisse (Swiss, for English folk). The 3-year partnership basically covers two specific things:
A) All the stages for this upcoming Tour will be available to pre-ride
B) All eight stages of the 2020 Tour will be recorded with riders/etc on race day so that you can ride as part of the peloton after the race
That’s pretty cool, and I don’t think we’ve seen any all-encompassing effort like this yet. We’ve got various stages of various events recorded and available via various apps. For example, The SufferFest leverages some stages here and there for certain workouts (which are great). But nothing that’s all stages, all riders, the whole setup. So that’s cool.
While their preview video is hilariously too short, the 13 seconds that are within that starting at the 11-second marker are worthwhile watching. This seems to be a step-up on their augmented reality (or whatever you want to call it), where they’ve got race fencing as well as a few other odds and ends on the course. It looks impressively convincing actually.
The company says they’ll start publishing those stages in January, and will have them all up by March.
Wahoo KICKR Bike Adds Multi Bike Profiles & Di2 Synchro:
Wahoo has rolled out a new feature to their KICKR Bike, enabling the creation of bike profiles. Essentially, you can now create ‘virtual bikes’, with the collection of ‘virtual gearing’ configuration settings. This also includes the specifics of a given bike fit (which in turn impact some aspects like how far the CLIMB will go up/down).
Simply update your Wahoo app to see the new features (assuming you’re one of the lucky ducks that actually has a bike). You’ll see now the ability to create new bike profiles, with names of your choosing:
You can see above where I can ‘Create bike profile’, or I can tap ‘Configure’ and modify an existing profile. Once within a profile I can give it a name, change the shifting, braking, chainrings, cassette, and FIT. Essentially all the things you could do before when you only had one bike profile.
Ultimately, allowing me to clean-up the default profile and leaving me with something vaguely similar to my actual bikes:
In addition, you may have noticed that there’s now the ability to have Di2 Synchro as a shifting option. So the concept being that it’ll shift more than one gear at once into the correct next ‘logical’ gear just like in Di2. I haven’t tried it yet though, as I’ve just got regular Di2 on my tri bike, and regular eTAP on my road bike. Though, no eTAP AXS here yet (which has a similar feature) – but I’ve gotta imagine that’s in the pipeline.
Note that user profiles are still separated out. Wahoo envisions that being done on a per user app. The importance there is primarily your weight, which impacts how the bike feels when it replicates road feel responsiveness and climbs. So in this scenario I have my Wahoo app on my phone configured to be me, and The Girl has her Wahoo app on her phone configured to be her (with her bike profiles). In theory all we have to do is walk up to the bike, open the app and connect to it, and it pushes down the road bits. In practice that’s a bit muddy because you don’t truly know on the bike itself which profile is active. In any case, that’s I suppose something for another day.
Garmin Forerunner 245 & 945 gets Big Feature Update:
Over the past week Garmin has pushed out a new firmware update for the FR945 that adds some pretty significant new features from the Garmin Swim 2 watch, as well as a bunch of things from the Venu & Vivoactive 4 series. Plus, a few other random features, bug fixes and such. But again, the biggies here are the Swim 2 features & Venu/Vivoactive 4 features:
- Add Garmin Swim 2 Features: Advanced Swim Workouts, Auto rest, Critical Swim Speed, Swim Pacing Alerts
- Added all-day respiration, respiration widget, and breathwork activity
- Improved treadmill calibration. An outdoor run prior to first treadmill use will improve performance
- Added Pilates
- Improvements to Spotify, audio playback, other audio apps
- Fixed crash that could occur on activity save at high elevation
- Added advanced Yoga and Pilates Workouts
- Added support for Hydration widget, tracking, and sweat loss
- Added support for Airplane Mode, which allows the user to disconnect from all wireless communication namely Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and ANT. (Hold Light > Controls > Hold Up > Add Controls > Airplane Mode)
- Added support for file based Emojis, which brings support for over 1300 Emojis. (Update your device through Express or connect it to Garmin Connect Mobile.)
- Added support for ClimbPro ‘Climb Detection’ setting in Cycling. (Bike > Activity Settings > ClimbPro > Climb Detection) This allows the customer to customize grade ‘sensitivity’ when identifying climbs
- Improved ClimbPro for cycling by adding category coloring to the ascent graph, which better depicts the difficult portions of the climb. This will also be available when reviewing the elevation plot for a course
- Improved compass performance
- Fixed an issue where the device may become unresponsive when trying to navigate certain types of PacePro enabled courses
- Fixed an intermittent issue where the map would switch to a Dark theme when previewing a PacePro course
- Various other fixes and improvements
Meanwhile, the FR245 also got a very similar update as well:
- Add Garmin Swim 2 Features: Advanced Swim Workouts, Auto rest
- Added all-day respiration, respiration widget, and breathwork activity
- Improved treadmill calibration. An outdoor run prior to first treadmill use will improve performance
- Added Pilates
- Improvements to Spotify, audio playback, other audio apps
- Added advanced Yoga and Pilates Workouts
- Added support for Hydration widget, tracking, and sweat loss
- Added support for Airplane Mode, which allows the user to disconnect from all wireless communication namely Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and ANT. (Hold Light > Controls > Hold Up > Add Controls > Airplane Mode)
- Added support for file based Emojis, which brings support for over 1300 Emojis. (Update your device through Express or connect it to Garmin Connect Mobile.)
- Fixed an intermittent issue where the map would switch to a Dark theme when previewing a PacePro course
- Various other fixes and improvements
This is version 3.90 that you’re looking for, and by now it’s likely you’ve already been updated or offered the update (it started last Friday). Garmin does phased updates though, whereby they ‘release’ the update to a certain % of people each day (usually around 10-20%), but I believe at this point it has reached 100% availability, meaning that you should be offered the update. And these days, most of the updates just quietly install at night.
Oh – and if you’ve got a Fenix 6? That similar update with the Swim 2 bits is coming soon, in fact you can already download a beta version of it here. Now, if only Garmin would add PacePro to the FR645 and we’d be all set.
Anyway – go forth and update and enjoy!
Reminder: 20% sale off Favero & Wahoo (and more) ends tonight!
Last call on this last minute sale, but just in case you missed it, there’s a rare sale of the Favero Assioma power meter pedals for 20% off right now, bringing them down to $519. Also, the Wahoo KICKR, KICKR CORE, CLIMB, Headwind, and all sorts of other Wahoo things are 20% off too. The sale further includes the Saris H3, Saris MP1 platform (which according to UPS is out for delivery today, woot!), and plenty more!
Here’s the full sale page of deals. But this ends tonight, US Eastern Time. So get on with buying your significant other a new trainer. I mean, assuming they want that. Otherwise you just get in trouble. Just sayin’. I’ve put just the cycling table below (there’s still the watches and the GoPro Hero 8 bundle deal for $349, which is super solid) – all of which are listed on the full deals page above, where I’m still adding in deals daily.
There are no deals currently.
With that – have a good weekend ahead!
Do you know what features were added to the Garmin 245 version 3.90? My watch was updated yesterday, but I can’t find a list of what was added.
Almost the same set as the FR245: link to forums.garmin.com
Add Garmin Swim 2 Features: Advanced Swim Workouts, Auto rest, Critical Swim Speed, Swim Pacing Alerts
Added all-day respiration, respiration widget, and breathwork activity
Improved treadmill calibration. An outdoor run prior to first treadmill use will improve performance.
Added Pilates
Improvements to Spotify, audio playback, other audio apps
Added advanced Yoga and Pilates Workouts
Added support for Hydration widget, tracking, and sweat loss
Added support for Airplane Mode, which allows the user to disconnect from all wireless communication namely Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and ANT. (Hold Light > Controls > Hold Up > Add Controls > Airplane Mode)
Added support for file based Emojis, which brings support for over 1300 Emojis. (Update your device through Express or connect it to Garmin Connect Mobile.)
Fixed an intermittent issue where the map would switch to a Dark theme when previewing a pacepro course.
Various other fixes and improvements
Hi Ray, maybe it’s me, but after updating the firmware of my 245 from beta 3.77 to 3.90, I haven’t noticed any additional Swim 2 features: just workouts and auto rest are available.
Hmm, did you go in and try and enable the other features?
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Add Garmin Swim 2 Features: Advanced Swim Workouts, Auto rest, Critical Swim Speed, Swim Pacing Alerts
Thanks Ray!! Yeah, I’ve followed the official Garmin’s instructions to enable them, but the options for pacing alerts and critical swim speed are just missing. Hope someone on Garmin’s forum will come up with an answer.
Well Garmin just admitted on the support forum they made a mistake on the 3.90 change log list of features for the 245.
Tempted to pick up the Favero pedals at this price and convert to MTB a la GPlama’s hack for the gravel bike.
Yeah, it’s a pretty incredible price.
The deal is for the “Uno” as well. $325 plus tax was too good of a deal for me to pass up. Considered the duo, but for the Uno after adding in the cost of the Xpedo pedals(which are not all that inexpensive compared to other mtb/spd pedals(as a person that doesn’t care much about weight savings)) and the fact that I will be using them not only on a gravel but also for CX and on a mountain bike. I figure with the Uno I have a 50% less chance of destroying one on a pedal strike.
So with Rouvy allowing virtual ride-along with the TdS, does that mean they’ll have appropriate footage to show me being ejected out the back of the peloton as I try to keep up with my puny FTP? 🙂
I can now see hydration info after completing of the run on 945. Is it possible to have a widget or notification alerts like we have on 830 Edge?
Is the Wahoo 20% off also good for Clever Trainer in Europe? The website tells me that HOLIDAY20 discount code doesn’t exist.
Sadly not. 🙁
Thanks. I’ll say one thing about living in Europe, I almost miss how easy it is to spend money in the US. Between Amazon Prime and all the sales, it’s no wonder few Americans save money. Here it’s almost like they don’t want to be compulsive consumers!
What exactly is “Added advanced Yoga and Pilates Workouts”
Where do you find them if there are workouts on watch or is it just an activity profile?
RGT on Windows is now an app (not a ‘program) and is limited to Win10 machines; earlier OSes not supported. That’s too bad, but maybe understandable. My main laptop is Win 8.1 and I was using Road Grand Tours occasionally. I’ll look at it when I upgrade – not planned – but wanted to alert everyone…
Do you know if Venu/VA4 are also going to receive Garmin Swim 2 features?
Hello Ray – what do you think about the gps performance (gps fw 2.60) of the 945? I think that compared to the 935 it’s well behind – still owning both watches and doing some comparisons, from my experience the tracking of the 945 is pretty erratic (when zooming it ofc)…perhaps could you re-do / update the tests or confirm this? Here’s a thread where I’ve added some feedback:
link to forums.garmin.com
Thanks for the update Ray! Good to see Wahoo putting out updates to the KICKR already.
Hopefully transmitting power data is next as my Fenix 6 is feeling lonely on indoor rides…
The 945/245 firmware update broke some CIQ apps. It’s still not clear what changed or how to fix it.
It unfortunately also appears that the servers for the OLD Tacx Trainer software 4 have been shut down now.
My 75 year old dad found out earlier this week, when tts4 started giving him errors, and apparently it just stops working when it can’t find any web. (can’t get past the “news site”)
This is such crap what can it possibly cost them to keep the licensing server on?
You will never be able to reinstall or install the licensed videos you paid a premium price for. They charged customers multiple times for bug fix releases of TTS that at its best would crash 15% of the time and at worst more like 65%. Remember the North American hardware faults that you could have the privelege of paying to fix? But only if you saw it barely mentioned for a 6 week period hidden on their website.
I don’t care how good the new trainers are Tacx is never getting another $ from me.
Sorry – his setup was actually pretty solid with his old fortius trainer (it did get a new motor though), But he started on tts3, and did not want to pay the premum for the full version of tts4, so he did only use his rlv’s in tts4 and pretty much nothing else was premium.
And we are unfortunately in northern europe – and have no idea about what happened on the other side of the pond.
But yes – you could not stop thinking that was a bit of a “cashcow” for them.
Still didn’t fix notifications on my 945.
Does this mean 245 gets animated workouts?
I am pretty excited to try the “magic roads” concept in RGT. Will have to give it a spin with the trial version during the holiday season. Thanks for posting!
Battery Life is a joke on FR945 fw3.90
Hydration widget same, everytime differences to GCM vs Watch (a 8 year old developer can do it better!)
and Respiration Rate Widget isn’t available on GCM Android and it don’t cares
What exactly makes the Swim Workouts “Advanced”? I just read the whole Swim 2 post and didn’t see any details about what that means. I created a new swim workout in GC and it doesn’t seem any different than before. Where does the whole advanced come into play?
According to Garmin, from some slides I had back in August:
“- Remove limitations in GC that existed only for pool swim workouts.
– Enable more than two steps in a Repeat Block.
– Enable nested repeat blocks.
– Improved watch UX for stepping through workouts”
I believe these carry over here too.
Awesome…thanks!
Buddys, I’ ve just bought 245 and I’m very disapointed. Garmin cut out critical swim speed workout and pace alerts. This functions apear only in 945. Ray, please, put lights on this.
Thanks a lot. 245 last uptadet 4.0.
Gustavo
Yeah that sucks! I bought one for my wife and I keep looking for the CSS test for her to do and nothing! How disappointing.
Yeah, it looks like they changed the release notes after initial upload. Previously the FR245 release notes for that firmware had CSS, whereas later on it was snipped.
Thanks for the post! If I’m looking to add HR to my Zwift cycling setup, between the arm band HR BT bands, e.g. a Scosche, and applying the $80 or so towards the purchase of a 245 or 945 watch, which do you like between the two? I’d want to enable BT HR broadcasting on the watch route, and I’d like it to pair reliably (Apple TV) and not be too finicky. I imagine the dedicated strap is always going to be quicker/more reliable, but I’d rather have this functionality on the watch if it’s pretty close and skip the dedicated HR band. I currently have a Vivofit 3 and am looking at upgrading. Thanks!