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!
Look ma, check it out!
I just did an interview with Bicycle Retailer magazine, which is pretty much the mainstay publication for the retail side of cycling. It’s rather long-form, but covers a lot of my thoughts on a number of subjects including how I operate the blog, what I think of other publications, and the like. A bit more detailed than your average interview – cool stuff. Enjoy!
Don’t forget to get your questions in for the podcast!
We’ll be recording our first episode of the DCR/TRS Triathlon podcast tomorrow (in person no less!), so swing over to the page and ask away. And remember, it doesn’t all have to be sport-tech related! In fact, it might just be a bit more fun if it’s not…
DCRainmaker.com posts in the past week:
Here’s all the goodness that ended up on the main page of DCRainmaker.com this past week:
Sunday: Week in Review – March 29th, 2015
Monday: 5 Random Things I Did This Weekend
Tuesday: DCR & TRS Triathlon Team Up For Podcast World Domination
Wednesday: The Power2Max Type S Power Meter In-Depth Review
Wednesday: Garmin quietly introduces automatic sleep detection to existing activity trackers
Notable YouTube things I uploaded:
A few days ago the 4iiii Precision power meter came in, here’s a quick look at the unboxing side of things. Look for a bit more detail in the coming days from me.
I also put together a bit of a comparison video on all of Polar’s current generation wrist based activity trackers and watches, including the new Polar A300:
You can swing over to the full YouTube channel to see what other randomness I’ve uploaded recently, enjoy!
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 mountain bike going 223 km/h…on snow: Yes, for real. For you non-metric folk that’s a cool 138MPH. Or roughly double the speed limit on the highway. But again, in snow. (via Slowtwitch Forums)
2) April Fools Sports Tech Round-up: Plus, a pretty solid one from Wahoo Fitness. Polar and Zwift both got into it in their own ways too. Also of note was this non-tech but cycling focused one in Washington DC on using tricycles to deliver shipments. Ironic, as the video noted that’s completely the norm here in Paris. Most of the shipments to me from FedEx come via bicycle (you can see one arriving to me in this photo from a while back).
3) The CupCakery is in a movie! And, even a ton of film festivals. Last year sometime they did a bunch of shooting in the CupCakery. We haven’t quite seen it yet, but here’s the trailer!
TRAILER – UN JOUR DE LUCIDITE / A DAY OF LUCIDITY from fastprod on Vimeo.
4) Very cool bike/running path covered in solar panels in the middle of a highway: Brilliant use of space. Love it. (via Ryan B)
5) Wanna find dopers in your race? No problem, this handy sortable list makes it quick and simple. (via David Monti)
6) Crazy treadmill dance videos: Seriously, I didn’t know this was ‘a thing’ (aside from the OK GO video years ago).
7) Walking goes high-tech with exoskeleton boots: Well, that’s just way more fancy than my running shoes. (Via Randy Cantu)
8) Study on activity tracker accuracy: While this is a few months older, I’m not quite sure I ever linked to it. It demonstrates what is semi-common knowledge: Wrist based step focused activity tracking is much more difficult than belt/waist/pocket activity tracking. Simply because there is less extraneous movement to sort through. (via reader James)
Crowd Funded Projects of Athletic Note:
I regularly sift through Kickstarter and Indiegogo (plus a few others on occasion) looking for sports projects. If you’re unfamiliar with projects, read my detailed post on how I decide which projects I personally back. Note that as always with crowd funded projects, assume the project will be late and will under-deliver on features. Thus far, on the numerous products I’ve helped ‘fund’ (except a leather bike handle), that’s been the case.
(Nuttin much this week!)
Sports Technology Software/Firmware Updates This Week:
Each week I quickly highlight some of the new firmware, app, software and website service updates that I see go out. If you’re a sports technology company and release an update – shoot me a quick note (just one liners is perfect, or Tweet it at me is even better) and I’ll make mention of it here. If I don’t know about it, I won’t be able to post about it. Sound good?
Adidas Smart Run GPS Firmware Update: Pretty solid update adding in on-screen route/track display and a few other tidbits. The company continues to really chip away at the watch, almost 18 months later adding new features. Good stuff.
Garmin Connect workout creator revamp: This is the online workout creator portion for Garmin devices, which got increased workout segments and just a much cleaner interface.
Best Bike Split adds Fit Based Drag Calculator: If you know your bike fit measurements, you can enter them in for increased accuracy.
Thanks for reading, have a great remainder of your weekend!
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Not a bad idea to use the space in the middle of the road. But I doubt if it is healthy to bike in such unhealthy air.
I think I wouldn’t like it.
Snow might not be so crazy when you wipe out – imagine gravel rash at 223 klicks!
Hey Ray – Love the website. A bit surprised you didn’t comment on the price drop on powermeters this week.
I’ve got a big post on it, slated for this week. As usual, I started down a bit of a rabbit hole of looking at power meter pricing…
That makes sense. Looking forward to reading your thoughts. I have an older Quarq S975 that works great, but am considering a second powermeter for a different bike and was excited to see the price drops.
The Garmin workout creator has the same bug as the old one by the look of it. If you select workout with a duration HR of, say 100bpm then a rest until 80bpm they both end up with and a < which makes the workout finish immediately. This was reported to Garmin quite some time ago, and really should have been caught in unit testing before release. Kind of makes it obvious that no structured testing actually takes place on Garmin products. Also seems to suggest that none of the people buying Garmin HRs actually use this feature which is surprising given how standard HR training is.
Congrats to the CupCakery!!!!
Just read your interview in the Bicycle Retailer. Great work, thank you so much for your time and effort. I come to this blog almost everyday!
Thanks on both fronts!
egad! don’t draw a knife toward any body part, good way to loose a finger.
It’s funny, I thought of that about 1-second into pulling the knife that way. The way the camera was, it blocked my arm naturally going the other way. And of course, once I started to cut…I can’t uncut for another video take!
It should have said, LOOK MA, NO HANDS!
The speed record video screenshot shows a dessert (I have a white dress with gold stripes visual cortex)
1) “desert”
2) link to en.m.wikipedia.org
3) link to xkcd.com (if you haven’t heard about “the dress”)
Great interview Ray. Their story illustrates perfectly why many of us avid readers of your site recommend it so highly to everyone else we come across in this area of interest. Keep up the great work.
Hi Ray! Thank you so much for putting the trailer of our film! It was so, so, so great to film in Bobbie’s cupcakery! Thank you again so much!
It’s so nice seeing the difficulties of wrist based activity monitoring mentioned in the consumer realm!
One of my old projects was referenced in the Ferguson et al. study, so I didn’t mind that either. Those BodyMedia devices are astoundingly accurate (and mostly unchanged for the last 5+ years), but somehow have never really found a consumer foothold. A 3d accelerometer and skin sensor don’t cost 1.5k, so that could be part of it. There’s not much more tech in them than any other device, but they nailed the location and how all of the sensors fit into the picture of their algorithm(s).
The new super watches and activity monitoring bands have gotten much better, but I think the paper suggests they are expensive pedometers and fashion statements more than ‘activity’ trackers. The eyeball tests looks like pretty high error rate in step counts, but it looks better than what wrist based devices were doing a few years ago.
It’s seems unrealistic to really expect a watch or band to estimate distance without gps (treadmill or non-gps device) at this point. Running watches keep getting better and better, but the customer service crew at places like Garmin have got to be ready to strangle the marketing team for the promises of treadmill modes and the like. Maybe accelerometer data from the HRM-Run strap could be leveraged to estimate that data instead? Isn’t the Tickr doing something not too far off from that? The running power meter featured a few weeks back is taking the same measurements as a HRM-Run or TickrX, but outputting different information. We can’t be more than a Garmin update or two from running “power” and more reliable non-gps information coming from an accelerometer worn closer to the center of gravity of a runner.
As always, awesome update Ray! Looking forward to the Vivoactive review tomorrow!
FYI. major firmware updates for the garmin fenix 3.
Those ones came in the week prior. I don’t believe there has been any firmware updates this week.
My 620 pulled down a firmware update last night. I was updating my mac, plugged in my 620 & went to bed, got up this morning to go run & the 620 said “Do you want to install?” So I went for it…not sure what it did for me