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!
Stuff 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. Also, there’s a few things this week that were actually from the week prior or so too
1) How an Olympic photographer shoots and quickly uploads photos to the world: This dives into the full photographic workflow of how he handles some 2,000 photos per event, all to upload just a few dozen as fast as the social media world requires.
2) Super cool drone swimming pool video: You’ve undoubtedly seen various artistic drone FPV videos before, but this is the first time I’ve seen one centered around a swimming pool, and certainly the first time I’ve seen it end with the drone end up *IN* the pool purposefully. Give it a quick watch!
3) Life Time buys Sea Otter Classic: Will be interesting to see what impact this has on Sea Otter going forward. With Interbike out of the picture for a few years now, many have felt Sea Otter could become a replacement as the US’s main cycling expo. The ‘challenge’ with that is that Sea Otter is held outdoors, which makes it slightly more challenging from an expo space perspective. Though, as they’ve shown, it didn’t much matter to many cycling companies that flocked to the combo show + cycling race event each year (including myself). This also comes at a time when Sea Otter has been expanding internationally (albeit, with expected COVID related challenges).
4) A Few Historical Tidbits on Zwift’s Richmond Map Creation: This quick piece gives some interesting insight into how Zwift managed to convince Richmond race organizers to do a deal on modeling the 2015 World’s course within Zwift.
5) Lachlan Morton’s Alt Tour Whoop Data: Whoop published Lachlan Morton’s data from this couple weeks of meandering around France. From the standpoint of ‘That’s kinda neat’, I include this. But it’s funny, because it actually shows what an incredibly inaccurate and useless unit it is. As always, Whoop’s silly arbitrary training load ‘limit’ of 21 means that almost every day is ~0.4 short of 21. While Lachlan was undoubtedly working hard, by his own admission, he wasn’t working so hard that one more kilometer will kill him. Which, should be the definition of topping out – the fact that you’re out of energy. But to theoretically then do it for two weeks shows the concept is simply broken.
6) Garmin announces annual Connect IQ Developer App Award Winners: This small collection of apps includes a bike data field to monitor the wind direction, as well as a watch app for downloading podcasts. And a few others.
7) CyclingTips acquired by Outside: Knowing many of the crew that works there, I’m happy to see when a small group of folks works hard and gets rewarded for that. Obviously, any time some large entity swallows up a smaller one, people worry – but, I look forward to seeing what comes next.
8) Behind the scenes on music streaming costs and Peloton: I thought this data was kinda interesting. Basically it shows what each platform plays for music streams they use on their platform – from YouTube to Spotify, and even Peloton.
9) InsideTracker launches Garmin integration: I looked at InsideTracker many years ago (ok, nearly a decade ago), and undoubtedly it hasn’t probably changed since then. They also recently launched an integration with Garmin that essentially just uses the Garmin Connect API’s to get your Garmin data (namely sleep and resting HR data) to InsideTracker. While this integration has sometimes been portrayed as some coded integration between the two, the reality is that InsideTracker is simply using the existing API’s like any other app out there. There’s absolutely nothing at all wrong with that, but I’ve seen a bit of marketing that occasionally implies otherwise.
Sports Tech Device 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, Wahoo, Polar, and a few other firmware updates.
Garmin Fenix 6 Series/MARQ/Enduro BETA Firmware update: Pile of bug fixes, plus new ‘Adventure Race’ activity to disallow GPS navigation data fields for certain races.
Garmin Forerunner 245/745/945 BETA Firmware Update: Minor bug fixes
Garmin Instinct & Instinct Solar BETA Firmware Update: Two minor bug fixes related to navigation line, and low battery alerts.
Hammerhead Karoo Series Firmware Update: Mostly redesigned UI elements, plus improved FE-C trainer connectivity.
Wahoo ELEMNT/ROAM/BOLT Series Firmware Update: Fixed kJ calculation for Favero Assioma power meters.
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With that, thanks for reading!
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Hi Ray, The Whoop strain limit is 21, not 22.
“WHOOP Strain, reported on a scale from zero to 21…”
(link to whoop.com)
Oops, good typo catch. But yes, same silliness.
Hi Ray – should it be what each platform is “paying” ?
what each platform plays
The original Venu also had a firmware update: https://forums.garmin.com/sports-fitness/healthandwellness/f/venu/270532/venu-software-update—version-6-20
thanks for the great content
Damn this is exactly what I thought, I bought a whoop following a lot of youtubers advice out there, and I found it near useless for me. I sent it back to the shop and kept my garmin fenix 6
While I agree that the daily strain from Whoop is mostly useless, note that it uses a logarithmic scale, so a 0.4 is still a big amount at that point of the scale (like when comparing earthquakes for example, that also use a log scale).
The fact that the scale has a theoretical limit, doesn’t make the measurement useless by default.
That drone video is novel but was starting to make me dizzy near the end. The swimmers on the blocks would have been pretty nervous diving with the drone coming at them side-on too! I wonder if the hits they get justify the cost of the (likely) trashed drone?
Yeah, I agree the spinning loop aspects were perhaps a bit over the top, even for FPV.
As for the drone itself, many FPV flyers will actually waterproof their smaller handbuilt drones via conformal coating. Pretty easy and makes it as simple as drying it off.
Did I miss the stolen cargo bike story?
Ah the quarterly (weekly) newsletter, how I’ve missed it.
The Zwift/Richmond article got me wondering – how do you ‘own’ a course or a route? Why did Zwift have to get UCI’s permission to do this (beyond using the UCI name of course)? I don’t mean because Zwift is virtual rather than real, more the fact that UCI don’t own any of those streets in Richmond. Or were Zwift just playing safe in uncharted waters?
I don’t think it’s so much a case of Zwift wanting Richmond’s permission per se, but rather the money for it. They wouldn’t need permission to emulate the course/route, but rather, would need it to use the UCI logos/branding with it.
But instead, I suspect Zwift wanted to charge the UCI for this, and thus that’s what the visits/demo was about.
Watched the Crossfit Games last week, Woop was showing live HR data from some of the Athletes on the videofeeds during some of the workouts. That was actually an OK use of their product.
On a “simpler” note. – Jon Cena is certainly capable of doing quick reviews of fitness equipment link to youtube.com
🙂 – Maybe not quite as good as Chanel (Alex Dowsett’s wife), but certainly quite close 🙂
Have you cancelled the fit file, just thought it maybe was a lockdown thing with nothing to chat about. Missing it!!!