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 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!
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: July 22nd, 2018
Monday: 5 Random Things I Did This Weekend
Tuesday: Zwift Tidbits from Eurobike: New course specifics, real-life course preview, and other bits
Wednesday: Quick Tour: The 2018 DCR Eurobike RV
Thursday: Eurobike Aero Roundup: Notio, AeroLab, AeroPod, Swiss Side and other tidbits!
YouTube Videos I Made This Week:
Here’s what hit the tubes over on the You of Tube, definitely don’t forget to subscribe there to get notified of videos the second they hit!
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) Ryan Lochte outs doping violation on his own Instagram: Nobody ever said he was the brightest balloon in the circus, and this once again proved it. While the actual infraction on paper is relatively minor (though the 14-month ban is not), one always has to wonder if this is what they get caught for, what do they manage to get by with? (via Slowtwitch)
2) Olympic officials take baby steps toward recognizing esports: While I’m personally very much against seeing computer gamers in the Olympics – I figured I’d share this nonetheless. There’s interest from Zwift in finding some middle-ground of having indoor cycling recognized or seen as an exhibition sport in 2024 or 2028. And while that’s definitely better than playing at a keyboard, I still feel like that’s missing athleticism aspects associated with on-road cycling and dealing with things like rain, potholes, and other humans.
3) Wahoo takes on private equity investment: This is somewhat surprising, but also probably tells you that Wahoo is gearing up to accelerate their growth and fight bigger companies. I would surmise that’s Wahoo’s biggest limiter today is likely hiring, more than manufacturing. They shifted manufacturing this spring on a number of projects (the new KICKR 18 is made in Vietnam now for example, as opposed to Taiwan), and with that mostly solved – this is probably about getting cash to significantly ramp up people to assign to projects to get them moving faster. (Thanks Edward for sending in)
4) Amer Sports – owner of Suunto – reports quarterly earnings: They saw a 20% jump in sales in Q2 this year (categorized as ‘sports instruments’). They don’t specify why though (I haven’t listened to the full investor call yet though). Note this was prior to the Suunto 9 being announced. In theory, this could be Suunto 3 sales driving it, but like Garmin they rarely detail models in investor calls. Fitbit does however.
5) Zwift’s new Innsbruck course set to go live on August 4th (next Saturday): Pretty straightforward really.
6) Tracking TdF Team Hotel Assignment Satisfaction Rates: This is pure awesomeness. The author looked up the TdF team hotel assignments (the TdF/ASO does these), and then looked at the TripAdvisor scores for each hotel. Crack open Excel and plot the magic!
7) This cyclist peddles a boat and picks up plastic garbage: Very cool, well done!
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 are 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? Oh – and if you want to get a head start on things, this page is a great resource for watching Garmin and a few other firmware updates.
Garmin Fenix 5 Series BETA Firmware Update: Added canned text reply support for Android, a small pile of bug fixes
Garmin FR935 BETA Firmware Update: Same as Fenix 5 series.
Garmin FR735XT Firmware Update: Fixed a minor pool issue.
Garmin VIRB 360 Firmware Update: Fixed unspecified things that were broken.
Wahoo Fitness BOLT/ELEMENT Firmware Update: Mostly a lot of power-meter related bug fixes, also, SRAM TyreWiz integration (cool!)
—
With that – thanks for reading!
FOUND THIS POST USEFUL? SUPPORT THE SITE!
Hopefully, you found this post useful. The website is really a labor of love, so please consider becoming a DC RAINMAKER Supporter. This gets you an ad-free experience, and access to our (mostly) bi-monthly behind-the-scenes video series of “Shed Talkin’”.
Support DCRainMaker - Shop on Amazon
Otherwise, perhaps consider using the below link if shopping on Amazon. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. It doesn’t cost you anything extra, but your purchases help support this website a lot. It could simply be buying toilet paper, or this pizza oven we use and love.
The odd part about sky getting the best hotels is that they bring their own mattresses anyway.
It‘s a bit irritating for me that Zwift launches the new course the day they scheduled the four horse man ride for the Norseman challenge…. :-/. Not sure what to think about that.
Did you see that Garmin is finally addressing the bad NTP response on the Index?
They didn’t care for those users for nearly 1,5 years.
Talking of wahoo… Amy signs of them enabling more features in the tickr fit, or even if there’s more hardware in there than they’re letting on? Storage, cadence etc?
I haven’t heard a peep about such things unfortunately.
Any comments at Eurobike on how the tradewar will impact pricing and products?
From the sports tech standpoint, many companies either aren’t impacted (because they made goods in Taiwan), or were already moving out of China to other nearby countries (Vietnam, Singapore).
Those that have been impacted note that while it sucks, it’s not quite as bad for them as the media portrays, because most of their goods aren’t hit with some straight 15% tariff, but rather just the specific components inside of them.
As for new tariffs announced since Eurobike, I haven’t seen much discussion there yet.
Hey Ray,
Any ETA on the Coros Pace in-depth review? There aren’t any real good reviews elsewhere online, so eagerly awaiting yours.
Thanks!
Sometime in August. I was somewhat waiting for some features to be implemented they promised in firmware, while it was also behind the Suunto 9 review in line (simply due to popularity).
Could you please explain what is exactly “canned text reply”?
It means you can select a reply on your watch that’s pre-canned, to a text message.
So if someone texts you ‘Hello’, you can choose a reply from the watch that might say “Hi!”, or what-not.
I’ve gotta get it paired up to my Android phone to see all the details of how it’s implemented.
After Wahoos previous firmware update I have been unable to change the time format to 24 hour. I was hoping the next update would fix this, but no such luck.
Any tips on how this can be done? I do realize it might just be me looking in the wrong place.
Hi Ray,
is a Hardware update/replacement expected shortly for the FR935? Stocks seems to go down in all stores, but no discount 🙁 or is it just too successful?
Cheers,
For esports like zwift isn’t it too easy to have problems with cheating and accuracy problems screwing up results? How do they deal with multiple equipment vendors? With all the other sports the equipment athletes bring isn’t also reporting how well the athlete is doing
It’s great that Wahoo have implemented the obscure Quarq Tire Wiz but I would much rather the add light/radar integration. This is a significant safety feature for cyclists.
I’m guessing two aspects here come into play:
– Tire pressure is much easier then radar support (less data to parse but mostly radar requires a specialized UI to be of much use)
– The only company that does radar is Garmin and they don’t want to help Garmin