Week in Review–March 18th, 2012

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, Facebook, 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:
Here’s all the goodness that ended up on the main page of DCRainmaker.com this week:

Saturday: Week in Review–March 11th, 2012
Monday: Spending time with the Specialized Venge and running hard between DC monuments
Tuesday: DC Rainmaker on IMTalk this week
Tuesday: Spring has sprung Garmin FR910XT Giveaway
Wednesday: Top 10 Reasons I love running in the Washington DC area
Thursday: Help me creatively spend $800 on a new bike!

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) A primer into how Olympic triathlon actually slots work: No, this makes no sense to anyone outside of triathlon.  And no, it probably still won’t make sense to those inside of triathlon…but, it is what it is – so ya might as well understand it.  Good read.

2) Good Power Meter Introduction/Primer: I know there’s a lot of you out there that may not quite fully understand what a power meter is, who makes them, or how they’re used.  This is a handy little down-to-earth post that gives you all the basics.

3) Jens Voigt’s pre-race iTunes playlist: Just in case you want to pump it up like one of the top pro cyclists, here’s your chance.

4) The Inverted Bike Shop: A cool (and well produced) little video about a bike shop in NYC that builds (or helps build) custom bikes for their customers.  Neat stuff.

The Inverted Bike Shop from Show Love on Vimeo.

5) New High Performance Cycling Book from Hunter Allen and Dr. Stephen Cheung: Saw a note on this quite a while back, but here’s a good review on the new book from the author (Hunter Allen) that brought you the Cycling with a Power Meter book.

6) More than you ever wanted to know about bottom brackets: It’s understandable, this little crossroads of the bike can be fairly confusing.  Well, this article gives you the mother of all explanations into what goes on in that magic space between your feet.

7) An surprisingly detailed look at the financial/social impact of Ironman Coeur d’Alene on the local town: It’s not often that a local newspaper can accurately convey triathlon concepts, or even benefits.  But this does a pretty good (and surprisingly longa and detailed) job at it.

8) PoolMate releases new/updated software suite: If you’ve got a PoolMate-Pro downloadable swim watch, you’ll want to swing on over and grab the latest release of their software.  Looks like good stuff, though, I haven’t yet tried it myself.

9) New iPad has Bluetooth Low Energy (BT 4.0 sensor support): I caught this in the stream of interesting things last week related to the ‘New iPad’.  Because it has Bluetooth 4.0 support, it in turn has Bluetooth Smart/Bluetooth Low Energy support. This is the technology that aims to be the major rival to ANT+ (which is the sensor technology inside your Garmin accessories).  It’ll be interesting to see what apps might start to come out that take advantage of this (i.e. apps like Kinomap that also support BLE accessories like the Wahoo Fitness BlueHR strap).

10) Motactv adds a bunch of new features via software update: They’ve added 40 new activities, along with support to connect to WiFi networks directly from the watch (previously a computer was required).  Some good stuff in here, and shows the potential of expansion on a watch when designed with flexibility from the start.  It also shows the power of a 3D accelerometer in being able to expand into new sports.

Random items of note:

It’s been a busy weekend, with a bunch of new watches arriving (including the Suunto Ambit and Soleus GPS 2.0 watches).  Plus, the Cherry Blossoms started blooming here in DC, woot!  I’ve uploaded a slew of initial Suunto Ambit photos here to this gallery.  Enjoy!

Ironically, below, this picture represents the two ends of the price spectrum of GPS watches in the market – with the Soleus GPS 2.0 unit (I got on GroupOn for $95), and the Suunto Ambit at over $500.

Have a great remainder of your weekend, and thanks for reading!

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