Week in Review–May 8th, 2011

I’ve long since wondered what to do with all the random tidbits of things I collect each week – or the little thoughts that don’t quite make for a full post.  But I finally came up with a solution: The Week in Review Post.  This takes the place of my Weekly Mailbag – which is over on Slowtwitch.  These are just quick snippets of things that I’ve found interesting.  Nice and easy Saturday reading.  Plus, a recap of my Weekly Mailbag post a well.

So with that, let’s get into the action!

Weekly Mailbag over at Slowtwitch.com:    
This week over at Slowtwitch in the Weekly Mailbag I delve into a variety of topics including:

1) Connecting multiple ANT+ units to a single HR strap
2) Screen protectors for Forerunner devices
3) HED3 wheel speed sensor magnet options

Read all about it here.

You can read all my past weekly mailbags at Slowtwitch here.  Or the pre-Slowtwitch days here.

Posts this past week:  
A wide variety of posts this week covering quite a range of stuff.  Here’s all the stuff that landed on the front page:

Sunday: Week in Review–April 30th, 2011
Monday: A weekend on and around the Rev3 Quassy Course
Tuesday: The Bricks- An inside look at my weekly brick workouts
Wednesday: An inside look at downloading FR310XT workouts to the web without a computer
Thursday: My photo shoot day at Men’s Health Magazine
Friday: Friday Distractions

Stuff that I found interesting around the interwebs:  
Somehow the Internet was full of interesting stuff this week. So a big pile of awesomeness for you to sift through:

1) Fighter pilots and Olympic Marathon Qualifiers: If you read nothing else this week, read this.  This is an awesome story of training ones ass off to be the top of the top fighter pilots, all while qualifying to run in the Olympic Trials and her throwing down a 8-minute PR over the Olympic Trials qualifying time…at Boston no less. Really cool posts.

2) Air Force Cycling Classic: Speaking of Air Force things, the DC area classic crit-style bike race – the Air Force Cycling Classic is happening mid-June.  While I’ll be at Boise 70.3 that weekend, I highly encourage you to check it out if you’re nearby.  I was there a few years ago when it was called the CSC Invitational.  Check out my post from then, including video!

3) Free showing of Race Across the Sky 2010 (Leadville Movie): Another DC-area only item – but if you’re around on May 19th and want to enjoy a free showing of the Race Across the Sky Movie (I saw the previous year one, it was freakin’ awesome), then do some clickage on the link.

4) How sugar affects those who exercise:  Based on my admittedly (preferred) understanding of this New York Times article – I can now eat all the sugar I want…and it benefits my performance!  Well, that’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it! 

5) More back and forth the UCI and Pro Teams looking to create a new league: There’s a lot of moving and shaking going on in the cycling world with what could be some substantial implications long term for the sport.  A good article bringing folks up to the latest squabbling.

6) When Pigs Fly – Streaking at a marathon: Let’s be clear – that regardless of if your wardrobe malfunction was intentional, streaking at a marathon is apparently on the no-go list.  Well, unless you want to be tased, bro.

7) Here’s an awesome YouTube video, simply titled ‘The Race’.  It’s a replay of the Big 10 Indoor Track Championship 600m race.  Incredible.  Really worth your time…trust me!

The Race

8) Reminder: The Giro d’Italia started…yesterday.  For those of you with Universal Sports as part of your cable package, it’s there live.  For those without such service, you can grab it on Universalsports.com. If you don’t have the Internet…I can’t really help you in this area.

9) New firmware update for Swimsense watch.  If you’ve got one of these fancy swimming watches that measures your distance and uploads it later on, you’ll love the mind-bogglingly huge jump in battery life it just got via firmware.  From about a dozen hours in standby mode to 150+ hours.  Crazy!  Just plug your watch in for the magic to happen.

SRAM buying out Quarq thoughts:

Some of you were curious what I thought about this week’s big cycling news that SRAM has bought out Quarq.  Quarq being the maker of power meters (including the one I bought), and SRAM being different from SRM, as SRM makes power meters, but SRAM does not.

While I’m very happy for the completely awesome team in South Dakota, I’m also a bit bummed.  One of the key things that makes Quarq awesome IS the team in Quarq.  It’s the incredible customer service.  It’s the fact that when you call you get a human to talk to…instantly.  Or that you can gChat with them.  Or that you can e-mail and get responses right away that don’t make out everything like it’s your fault.

If you were in the market for a power meter and did any research on Quarq you’ll find that every single person who purchases one and posts on forums, blogs, tweets, etc…all say one thing: It’s the customer service that they love.

For me, I wonder how this will translate post-acquisition.  The press release is fairly ambiguous, but seems to certainly hint that both Jim and Meike (owners) don’t plan a long term relationship – based on the wording.  Having worked on a merger and acquisitions team for three years, I’m very familiar with why mergers typically occur, hence my concern.  However, one could look at Zipp (another entity owned by SRAM), as an example of a fairly autonomous organization that’s done well.

We’ll see…though there’s no doubt that regardless of how things end up in South Dakota, the power meter industry is on the merge of some significant change.

Thanks for reading, have a great weekend all!

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