Week in Review–October 23rd, 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: 
Tons of interest this week in the Motoactv – so definitely check out that post. Good stuff abound!

Saturday:  Week in Review–October 16th, 2011
Monday: The Urbanathlon Race in Chicago, and other weekend items
Tuesday: A curious look at Active.com Schwaggle deals
Tuesday #2: Brim Brothers & Edge 500 Giveaway Results
Wednesday: Motorola MOTOACTV- Thoughts and analysis
Thursday: Garmin Edge 800 adds NP/IF/TSS, left/right power, tons more data fields
Friday: Friday Photo of the Day

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:

Monday: Ray’s Chicago Urbanathlon Race Report–Part I
Wednesday: Ray’s Chicago Urbanathlon Race Report- Part II

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

Stuff that 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) Cool article on an Olympic openwater swimmer in the NY Times.  He makes some very valid points on his stance that the best endurance athletes are generally crazy.

2) Slowtwitch WeNoticed site: Some interesting photos posted here.  The idea is a take on Simon Whitfield’s ’What My Phone Saw’ site where there’s a bit of a photostream of endurance sport related tidbits.

3) Hunter Kemper Crash at ITU Myrtle Beach: In case you haven’t seen this yet…you should.  In ITU races, once lapped you can’t proceed and are pulled from the course.  Unfortunately, a lapped swimmer was allowed onto the bike course into transition, resulting in the below.

Hunter Kemper Crash

4) RunKeeper now doing standard race results: If there’s any doubt that RunKeeper as a company isn’t looking to take over in the fitness world, you should continue erasing that doubt.  The amount of new product areas and integration they’re doing is staggering.  And they have millions of users already using their platform.

5) Spin Bikes designed to handle sweat: Interesting article from the Wall Street Journal about some new spin bikes designed to resist the rust that can occur on spin bikes.  I’m not a huge spin-bike person, so I didn’t realize this was a legit problem.  Learn something new every day. (via Jose)

6) Become a CycleOps Sponsored Athlete: This time of year many teams are looking for folks to sponsor for next season (both fast and…well…not so fast).  Happened to notice this one in my Twitter stream.  Remember that when applying for a sponsorship, what you do for the company is typically far more important than your race results.

7) A post on endurance athletes and which pain medications to use: Dr. Post is always a good read, and this time is no different.

8) Secret sauce to a Sub 9hr Hawaii Ironman: Unconventional wisdom: A great post if you’re a data driven geek.  Fun stuff.

9) Complete listing of all ANT+ enabled cell phones: This is a good page to keep bookmarked.  This only lists publically acknowledged cellphones where the ANT+ chip is accessible to applications/end users.  In other words, some cell phones are out there that the chip is in there, but not revealed to applications/end users.  If you’re looking for a do it all phone, start here.

10) A technical overview document of the new BASIS watch: For those following along as they prepare to release this unique fitness watch (tracks your vitals 24×7), this makes for a good read.  I may try and take them up on their longstanding offer to touch base with them in San Fran next month when I’m out there for the Urbanathlon.

11) Quarq Blog: I keep meaning to post this in a weekend post, but they keep posting just too much stuff and I can’t decide what to post.  Some really informative/entertaining/interesting posts there.  So just start at the top and burn some time away.

12) Fitbit vs Zeo Sleep Tracking: A good presentation (video) hosted over on Quantified Self comparing data from the two platforms…check it out.

Random Notes:

I think I’ve unpacked a new box of gear to review every day this week: Ergomo, RunAnalyzer, Thing I can’t talk about yet #1, Tacx Trainer, Thing I can’t talk about yet #2, Bontrager quick install Speed/Cadence sensor (no zip ties!), Bontrager Node 2, and more that I can’t remember.

Lots of cool stuff coming.  I just spent some time sketching out the rest of October and full November post schedules – tons of good stuff coming down the pipeline…and that’s even before looking at all the stuff that I haven’t planned for yet.  November’s going to be busy!

Thanks for reading all!

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