Week in Review–August 8th, 2021

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!

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. Also, there's a few things this week that were actually from the week prior or so too

1) How an Olympic photographer shoots and quickly uploads photos to the world: This dives into the full photographic workflow of how he handles some 2,000 photos per event, all to upload just a few dozen as fast as the social media world requires.

5) Lachlan Morton's Alt Tour Whoop Data: Whoop published Lachlan Morton's data from this couple weeks of meandering around France. From the standpoint of 'That's kinda neat', I include this. But it's funny, because it actually shows what an incredibly inaccurate and useless unit it is. As always, Whoop's silly arbitrary training load 'limit' of 21 means that almost every day is ~0.4 short of 21. While Lachlan was undoubtedly working hard, by his own admission, he wasn't working so hard that one more kilometer will kill him. Which, should be the definition of topping out - the fact that you're out of energy. But to theoretically then do it for two weeks shows the concept is simply broken.

9) InsideTracker launches Garmin integration: I looked at InsideTracker many years ago (ok, nearly a decade ago), and undoubtedly it hasn't probably changed since then. They also recently launched an integration with Garmin that essentially just uses the Garmin Connect API's to get your Garmin data (namely sleep and resting HR data) to InsideTracker. While this integration has sometimes been portrayed as some coded integration between the two, the reality is that InsideTracker is simply using the existing API's like any other app out there. There's absolutely nothing at all wrong with that, but I've seen a bit of marketing that occasionally implies otherwise.

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, Wahoo, Polar, and a few other firmware updates.

Garmin Fenix 6 Series/MARQ/Enduro BETA Firmware update: Pile of bug fixes, plus new 'Adventure Race' activity to disallow GPS navigation data fields for certain races.

Garmin Forerunner 245/745/945 BETA Firmware Update: Minor bug fixes

Garmin Instinct & Instinct Solar BETA Firmware Update: Two minor bug fixes related to navigation line, and low battery alerts.

Hammerhead Karoo Series Firmware Update: Mostly redesigned UI elements, plus improved FE-C trainer connectivity.

Wahoo ELEMNT/ROAM/BOLT Series Firmware Update: Fixed kJ calculation for Favero Assioma power meters.

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With that, thanks for reading!