Week in Review–August 7th, 2011

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 Google Plus, 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 this past week:
A wide variety of posts this week covering quite a range of stuff. Here’s what made the main stage:

Sunday: Week in Review–July 31st, 2011
Monday: The Seattle Century 2011 Ride Report
Tuesday: Fun with a Garmin GPS while running on cruise ships at sea
Wednesday Morning: New Garmin Connect Updates (including courses and workouts!)
Wednesday Evening: DC Rainmaker on the cover of Bicycling Magazine
Thursday: A Brief Shark Week (Link Bait) Post of My Shark Adventures
Friday: Timex Global Trainer gets Mythbusters, footpod & lots of other data fields

Men’s Health/Gatorade/Urbanathlon Blog posts this past week:
In addition to all my writings here, I also cover a bunch of topics over on the Men’s Health Urbanathlon blog. Here’s the goods from the past week:

Tuesday: A look at the 2011 Chicago Urbanathlon Obstacles
Thursday: A look at the 2011 San Francisco Urbanathlon Obstacles

Note that I post over there roughly every Tuesday and Thursday, and Sarah posts on Monday and Wednesday. It’s a tag-team event.

Stuff that I found interesting around the interwebs:
Here’s a small smattering of all the random things that I stumbled on while doing my civic duty to find the end of the Internet:

1) The one article you should read about Team HTC-Highroads: If you read nothing else, read this.  Very well put together article on how things went down, from the team manager.

2) An interesting airplane magazine article on Team Garmin and anti-doping: Fairly surprising to see something about professional cycling on an airplane magazine (United Hemispheres), but this was fairly well written.  Read it on my flight back from Chicago on Thursday.

3) More about aerodynamics than you can think of: Bike Radar put together a great in depth post that you should browse on over to if you’ve ever thought about anything to do with cycling aerodynamics (which is all of us)

4) FitBit Google Spreadsheet Goodness: This was from back last month, but just noticed it now.  A pretty cool look at using the API’s on FitBit to create some interesting views from data on the FitBit.

5) Swimming in the sand in the Middle East: A look at how one deployed soldier gets his swimming training in, despite a lack of pool.

6) Watches that actually count your calories as you eat: I just simply hope that it doesn’t accurately count cookies or cupcakes…

7) A look at the Basis watch with their CEO: Still waiting for this product to hit the market, but certainly looking forward to it.

8) Another watch that focuses on being a wearable platform: We continue to see lots of watches start to transform into being standalone devices to being more connected to our other devices.  Just like the Metawatch.

9) Clif Bar introduces new wine lineup: Yes, seriously, wine.  Not sure what to think, but I do know that when I want to know the deets about such things I turn to Donald – so read on.

10) Getting Chicked: A great post from Chuckie V on the whole topic. Plus, any time you can include Ellen DeGeneres references, you know it’s gonna be gold.

11) The funniest triathlon related advertisements you’ll ever see: Just trust me on this.  Have I ever lead you astray?  No. That’s what I thought.  Thanks Adam for the share.  Here’s an example of just one of the many:

Best triathlon ads ever

Random Items of Note:

1) Garmin offering $50 back for trade-ins to new watches (including FR610!)

If you’ve got an older Garmin Forerunner watch (FR110, FR201, FR205, FR210, FR301, FR305, FR310XT, FR405, FR405CX, FR410, FR610) and are itching to pickup one of the newer ones (FR210, FR310XT, FR410 or FR610), you can do a swap and get $50 back towards your new watch purchase.  This is for any watch purchased between July 1st and August 31st at a qualifying retailer (eBay doesn’t count, but Amazon does). 

To be clear, I’d really have no idea why you’d trade in a FR610 for a FR310XT and only get $50 back…but to each their own.  Obviously at the FR201/301/305 level that could be a good deal.

The better deal is that your old Garmin goes to ‘Girls on the run’, a charity promoting healthy lifestyles for girls.

2) A massive ton of updated posts and comments answered

This weekend has been pretty productive from an updating and answering standpoint.  While I’m still wading through e-mails, I did manage to update a huge number of older product review posts and also answer all the questions to date in those posts.  We’re probably talking over 500+ questions answered across all the posts.  Here’s what got updated:

CompuTrainer

FINIS AquaPulse

FINIS Swimsense

Garmin Forerunner FR60

Garmin Forerunner 110

Garmin Forerunner 210

Garmin Forerunner 305

Garmin Forerunner 310XT

Garmin Forerunner 405

Garmin Forerunner 410

Garmin Forerunner 610

Garmin Edge 500

Garmin Edge 705

Garmin Edge 800

Nike+ GPS Sportwatch

Polar RCX5

PowerTap and Joule

Timex Global Trainer

Withings WiFi Scale

Yeah, it’s a lot.  Additionally, a slew of non product specific posts were updated too – stuff like the following:

Garmin ANT+ Foot Pods- Everything you ever wanted to know

Cadence Sensor- Everything you ever wanted to know

2011 Sport Device GPS Accuracy In Depth- Part I

Going really really really long with your Forerunner 305

My 2010 Athletic GPS Device Recommendations

Product Reviews (Main Page)

And a whole bunch more that I honestly can’t remember…it’s all sorta blurred together.

Thanks for reading everyone, enjoy the remainder of your weekend!

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