Week in Review – May 26th, 2024

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/X 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!

DCR Posts In The Past Week:

Here’s all the latest on the site:

Sunday: Week in Review – May 19th, 2024

Monday: How My Garmin Endurance Score Skyrocketed In One Boring Ride

Wednesday: Hammerhead Sends Out 7-Year ‘Old Karoo’ instead of ‘New Karoo’

Spring Sports Tech Deals:

There’s a slate of new sports tech deals, primarily from Garmin, but also a few other companies jumping in on the almost summer-themed sales. Some of these end May 27th.

	Product	Sale Price	Amazon	Other site	Sale Notes
	Apple AirPods Pro (2nd Gen with USB-C) - $90 off	$169	Amazon		⚡ Both myself and my wife have been using these since last fall, after years of using the Beats Studio Buds...man, these things rock. Sure, they're good for sports, but frankly, I use them on planes, editing, and such more than anything else. In fact, I've been listening to them now for 8 hours as I type away on my flight across the ocean. Only briefly putting them in the case to top-up.
	Apple Watch Series 10 - $70 off $399/$499 (cellular)	$359	Amazon
	Apple Watch Ultra 2 Black Titanium - $70 off	$729	Amazon
	FORM Swim 1 Goggles (with heads-up display) - $50 off	$129	Amazon
	Garmin Fenix 8 Series - $200 Off! $999-$1,199	$799	Amazon	REI	⚡The Fenix 8 is now down to $799 for the 42/47mm AMOLED editions, and from $899 for the Solar/MIP editions. This is the first big sale, outside of a short $70 discount back in January by Uncle Amazon.
	Garmin Forerunner 965 - $100 off $599	$499	Amazon	REI	This is the lowest price to date on this watch, bringing it down to a very strong $499. This unit includes maps and is more or less a plastic Fenix 7 Pro. The FR970 just came out this week, adding ECG functionality and a few other software features...but at $250 more!
	Garmin Instinct 3 AMOLED - $50 off! $399/$449/$499	$399	Amazon	REI	This is th first official sale on Garmin's Instinct 3, which came out earlier this year. The smaller edition is $399, and the larger one at $449.
	Garmin Instinct 3 SOLAR - $50 off	$349	Amazon	REI	This is the first official sale on Garmin's Instinct 3 Solar, starting at $349.
	GoPro Hero 13 Black Bundle (extra battery/SD card/floaty) - $100 off!	$379	Amazon		⚡ This is a very solid deal. It's a Hero 13 Black on discount, but then an extra battery tossed in, then an SD card, and then a floaty.
	HoverAir X1 Drone Combo - $100 off!	$299	Amazon		This has become one of my favorite drones, given it's tiny size (fits in my running shorts pockets) and ease of use. While there's the new Pro drones, those are nearly 2x the price (and more for Pro-Max), and honestly, the video quality isn't really achieving that price point. Also note the checkbox to get yet an extra free battery (thus 3 batteries in total, based on the way it's currently coded in Amazon).
	Wahoo BOLT V2 - $30 off $279	$249	Amazon

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:

1)  A Crazy Cycling Race Motor Doping Story: Except, this doesn’t end there. It continues with the athlete running to a getaway car, having an accomplice drive, and then the race director ending up on the hood of the car. Not kidding.

2) Samsung Galaxy Ring Rumors Heat Up: Naturally, it’s expected this will have a subscription fee to it. No surprise there, though, I’d argue that Samsung and other major companies could better compete with just a one-time hardware cost. After all, this would undoubtedly require a Samsung phone – helping to tighten that ecosystem.

3) Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 also looks square-ish: But more importantly – more buttons! This continues the general trend we’re seeing from wearable companies the last couple years of bringing back the buttons. Finally, big tech realizing what everyone else has for years: Buttons are best.

4) Zwift Labs Features Announced: A whole burrito-bowl full of them, from group FTP tests to coached audio workouts, and more. As always, not all of these things will live. Some might die.

5) Tube vs Tubeless Gauntlet Test: I had put this on in the background initially, and was pleasantly surprised by it. This video reminded me much more of the old days of GTN, where there was less polish and more ‘buds out back with beer seeing what happens’. Except they also visited the hardware store and got sharp objects. Give it a watch, it’s funny and useful.

6) Converting bike to rail bike: I’ve seen a few bike/cart/rail conversions on YouTube over the years, but this is actually one of the first I remember that can be portaged easily. Most of them are beastly setups, or not super flexible. Also of note, I appreciate that this very small YouTube channel can randomly surface in my ‘Recommendations’ feed, for something that was legit interesting. Again, kinda reminded me of the GTN video above in a way.

7) Nearly 400 athletes DNF at Morro Bay 70.3: I’m sure you’ve probably seen some of the videos of the swim situation on Twitter/TikTok/etc this week. It’s insane. In short it sounds like a sand bar or something changed recently, which in turn caused a weird current situation that got exponentially worse with each successive wave – to the point even reasonably good/strong swimmers simply couldn’t make forward progress. Some normally 30-min swimmers were coming out of the water in 90 mins. Kudos to Ironman though for at least quickly offering all those who DNF’d to a free entry at another race.

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With that – thanks for reading!