Last Week in Review–July 5th, 2016

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–June 26th, 2016
Monday: 5 Random Things I Did This Weekend
Tuesday: Turn by Turn Navigation Rolls out to Wahoo ELEMNT
Wednesday: First Look: Shimano Dura-Ace R9100–Now with power meter option
Thursday: All of the Giveaway Extravaganza Posts
Friday: The 2016 Annual Giveaway Extravaganza Winners!

It was a bit of a quiet week as I was travelling a bit and preparing posts for this upcoming week, for things being announced/etc…

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) Police officer tells cyclist to get off road and push bike: Yes, seriously.  But good news – it was caught on camera (on a Fly6 actually).

2) How to analyze a Tour de France power file: Pretty interesting little tidbits on what’s considered ‘normal’ and ‘beyond normal’ for an average TdF power file.

3) Tour de France started this year where bikes are banned: Interesting to know that tidbit, as I’ve been to it multiple times.  Also funny because when I was there a few weeks ago there was a group of 10-15 touring riders leaving the island.

4) Drones used to practice tennis game: I’m pretty darn certain the amount of time it would take to load up each tennis ball could be far better spent actually…practicing. But still, interesting to see creative uses of drone tech in sports.

5) 400KM of loops on Strava: Holy balls. As one who regularly does loops around Longchamp, this dude takes the cake on loopage.  Kinda like the Fat Cyclist 100 miles of nowhere event each year, except…250 miles of almost nowhere. (via Julien T. of ExpaTRIés Tri Club)

6) Cycloshield captures cars coming too close to cyclist: This is a super-cool idea, and one I expect to see others in the industry do (i.e. just combine a Garmin Varia Radar unit with a Garmin VIRB camera).  However, my main challenge with Cycloshield is that their Kickstarter timeframes are simply too far out. Never buy something on Kickstarter that’s already saying it’s a year out. That’s like 2-3 years in actual timeframes.

7) Beers with Starky: For those triathletes in the crowd, a well done interview chatting with Pro Triathlete Andrew Starykowics about all sorts of topics.

8) Wanna get all geeky with your Misfit shine?  Now you can load custom firmware on it. Pretty neat. (via Ted).

9) The Huffy Walmart Challenge: What happens when a professional downhill mountain biker tests out a $179 Walmart mountain bike. (via Gear Junkie).

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 firmware updates.

Polar rolls out TrainingPeaks connectivity/sync: Now you can sync your Polar goodness with your TrainingPeaks goodness…automatically.

Polar V650 Firmware Update: Addresses left-only power meter compatibility issues.

Suunto Ambit2 Firmware Updates: Fixes bike pod and HR pod connectivity (according to newsletter I received), Ambit3 updates coming this week. That said, the support pages don’t seem to be updated – so not quite sure 100% what’s going on there.

Garmin Vivoactive firmware update: Minor tweaks.

Garmin Vivoactive HR firmware update: Minor tweaks and additions.

Garmin FR735XT Firmware Update: Handful of new features (like emoji support!), and some fixes

Garmin Vector firmware update: All Vector variants received fix/tweak for LED status lights.

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With that – thanks for reading!