Week in Review – December 15th, 2024

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/X and Facebook, 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!

DCR Posts In The Past Week:

Here’s all the latest posts on the site:

Monday: Zwift Expands Virtual Shifting Compatibility: Elite Direto XR, JetBlack VOLT V2, Decathlon D100
Wednesday: Wahoo Releases KICKR Desk V2: Here’s What’s New

The goal was to have my AmazFit T-Rex 3 review out this past week, but alas, the best-laid plans…here’s to this week! Also, Elite Avanti, and if you’re really lucky, the Decathlon D100. Tons of data collected on all three of those devices!

Top Deals Still Available:

Here are the top deals still available for the holidays, and I think all of these ship immediately (in case you need a last-second yet still awesome Christmas present):

1) Garmin Epix for $399-$419USD: This deal is amazing, though, Garmin has flirted with this a bit over the last month in deals. Still, when you remember that the Epix Gen 2 got all the feature updates of the Epix Pro, it’s awesome. This blows away virtually every competitively priced device in that price point. Note, the deal fluctuates between $399 and $419 on a near-hourly basis. But look, it doesn’t really matter if you get it for $419 or $399, both are equally incredible.

2) GoPro Hero 13 Black for $299: This is this years, just released camera. That’s an amazing price, and we’ve never seen GoPro drop it by $100 just a few months later. You can also toggle to get some alternate bundles deals too. Either way, the Hero 13 Black has become one of my mainstay cameras this fall, alongside the Insta360 Ace Pro 2.

3) Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra for $428: This is one of the best WearOS watches out there, with solid GPS accuracy, solid battery life, and all the WearOS bits. While I think the Google Pixel 3 is a better runners watch (and better training load), I prefer the design of the Galaxy Watch Ultra, as well as the battery life.

Note all of the above are Amazon affiliate links, which do help support the site. I appreciate it!

Oh, and here’s the full holiday deals list, though, many of these have either expired or are offered at a lesser discount. That said, quite a few do still work!

Stuff 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) Zwift World Series (for Elites) Paused Due to Trainer Inaccuracies: Finally, it seems like this might kick off a legit effort for companies like Zwift (or, the UCI which promised this years ago), to have meaningful accuracy tests. While I and other reviews can test a lot of cases, this specific Edge case is beyond my legs capability. Also, all these companies (including Zwift) have fancy trainer testing rigs that could easily replicate this (and most, but not all) specific test cases. The problem has been Zwift has long been hesitant to call out their partners trainers when they suck (and inversely, their partners have long been hesitant to give early access to Zwift for upcoming trainers, since they saw Zwift as a hardware competitor).

2) Apple Watch Ultra 3 Rumors for Satellite Messaging: This rumor round also includes hypertension related detection. Starting with satellite messaging, this is very much within the realm of technical possibility from people I’ve talked to. Who gets there first is really more the question. For hypertension, if I had a dollar for every time various Apple leak wizards talked about a medical feature that never comes true…I’d be a very rich person. The reality is, Apple is *ALWAYS* going to err very heavily on the side of caution when it comes to medical device features in their devices. They’re going to always have those features heavily backed up by actual clinical studies that leave very little margin of error not just for bad data, but future lawsuits. Thus far, we’ve seen limited wearable success from other companies in this specific medical area.

3) United Airlines announces AirTag integration for lost baggage: As one who *always* has an AirTag in my bike case, and as one who is a Million Miler on United, this is super cool. Essentially, you can share your lost bags AirTag temporarily to United in the event your baggage is lost, helping them find it faster.

4) Zwift Bike & Wahoo KICKR RUN Treadmill Are HSA Eligible: If you’re in the US, this might be of interest to you. In theory, up to 30% of your unit can be funded that way (which is a big deal on the KICKR RUN). Admittedly, leaving the US more than a decade ago, I kinda missed the start of whole HSA thing, so, perhaps this isn’t such an awesome deal. You tell me.

5) Garmin Connect’s Year in Review (Worldwide): Obviously, every company and their mother is putting out year in review stuffs these days (many of which are pretty bland). That said, Garmin this year actually included bits on Training Status (e.g. Productive, Unproductive, etc…), Training Readiness, and more. More interesting than I expected.

6) UCI Seeks Ban on Carbon Monoxide Use: This should be on team ‘of course, duh’, but as proven this past summer, apparently ‘of course’, wasn’t always in the room. It was really only Escape Collective’s light on the subject that got the ball moving.

7) Hammerhead (finally) adds app side loading for Karoo 3: This follows opening the SDK the week or two prior. I’ll do a full post on this, once we see the Shimano Di2 app added (or some other notable app). I still think Hammerhead needs to make some sort of app storefront, to make it easy/clear to add these. At present, it’s still a bit fuzzy for most consumers.

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With that – thanks for reading!

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