Here’s your quick round-up of news that I didn’t quite get to this past week. Or, that wasn’t quite worthy of an entire separate post. Either way, it’s Friday, let’s get on with it.
Rouvy & RGT (Road Grand Tours) News:
No, they haven’t merged. Though, that would be interesting (albeit, confusing). Still, both apps have got news.
Officially as of yesterday, Road Grand Tours is out of beta…and now re-branded RGT. Honestly, I kinda forgot they were still technically in beta it’s been so long (4 years, to be precise). Still, in addition to removing the beta moniker, they’ve added new features for the indoor 2019-2020 season.
For example, there’s the new ‘Magic Roads’ concept that allows you to upload any 100KM route or shorter and it’ll automatically generate a route based on that. So in some ways it’s not terribly unlike what other apps can do, except that rather than doing it atop Google Earth, they just generate something road-wise on the fly. And, you can run events on that. Anyway, here’s a promo video from them on that:
There’s also the new structured workout integration with TrainingPeaks, so if you’ve got structured workouts there it’ll pull it down from TrainingPeaks and execute it within RGT. This is in addition to specific training plans and workouts that are now there as well.
Of course, as part of growing up, they had to get a job. Or rather, you have to pay them. There’s two variants now – a ‘Freemium’ version and a ‘Premium’ version:
I’ll cover the features in slightly more detail as part my ongoing and ever-growing masterpiece that is the Indoor Trainer App Guide for 2019…err…almost 2020. Either way, these days indoor training apps aren’t really winter limited. But RGT did make the cut.
Moving on…
Another that made the cut this year is Rouvy. And they too have news. They’ve announced the partnership with the Tour de Suisse (Swiss, for English folk). The 3-year partnership basically covers two specific things:
A) All the stages for this upcoming Tour will be available to pre-ride
B) All eight stages of the 2020 Tour will be recorded with riders/etc on race day so that you can ride as part of the peloton after the race
That’s pretty cool, and I don’t think we’ve seen any all-encompassing effort like this yet. We’ve got various stages of various events recorded and available via various apps. For example, The SufferFest leverages some stages here and there for certain workouts (which are great). But nothing that’s all stages, all riders, the whole setup. So that’s cool.
While their preview video is hilariously too short, the 13 seconds that are within that starting at the 11-second marker are worthwhile watching. This seems to be a step-up on their augmented reality (or whatever you want to call it), where they’ve got race fencing as well as a few other odds and ends on the course. It looks impressively convincing actually.
The company says they’ll start publishing those stages in January, and will have them all up by March.
Wahoo KICKR Bike Adds Multi Bike Profiles & Di2 Synchro:
Wahoo has rolled out a new feature to their KICKR Bike, enabling the creation of bike profiles. Essentially, you can now create ‘virtual bikes’, with the collection of ‘virtual gearing’ configuration settings. This also includes the specifics of a given bike fit (which in turn impact some aspects like how far the CLIMB will go up/down).
Simply update your Wahoo app to see the new features (assuming you’re one of the lucky ducks that actually has a bike). You’ll see now the ability to create new bike profiles, with names of your choosing:
You can see above where I can ‘Create bike profile’, or I can tap ‘Configure’ and modify an existing profile. Once within a profile I can give it a name, change the shifting, braking, chainrings, cassette, and FIT. Essentially all the things you could do before when you only had one bike profile.
Ultimately, allowing me to clean-up the default profile and leaving me with something vaguely similar to my actual bikes:
In addition, you may have noticed that there’s now the ability to have Di2 Synchro as a shifting option. So the concept being that it’ll shift more than one gear at once into the correct next ‘logical’ gear just like in Di2. I haven’t tried it yet though, as I’ve just got regular Di2 on my tri bike, and regular eTAP on my road bike. Though, no eTAP AXS here yet (which has a similar feature) – but I’ve gotta imagine that’s in the pipeline.
Note that user profiles are still separated out. Wahoo envisions that being done on a per user app. The importance there is primarily your weight, which impacts how the bike feels when it replicates road feel responsiveness and climbs. So in this scenario I have my Wahoo app on my phone configured to be me, and The Girl has her Wahoo app on her phone configured to be her (with her bike profiles). In theory all we have to do is walk up to the bike, open the app and connect to it, and it pushes down the road bits. In practice that’s a bit muddy because you don’t truly know on the bike itself which profile is active. In any case, that’s I suppose something for another day.
Over the past week Garmin has pushed out a new firmware update for the FR945 that adds some pretty significant new features from the Garmin Swim 2 watch, as well as a bunch of things from the Venu & Vivoactive 4 series. Plus, a few other random features, bug fixes and such. But again, the biggies here are the Swim 2 features & Venu/Vivoactive 4 features:
- Add Garmin Swim 2 Features: Advanced Swim Workouts, Auto rest, Critical Swim Speed, Swim Pacing Alerts
- Added all-day respiration, respiration widget, and breathwork activity
- Improved treadmill calibration. An outdoor run prior to first treadmill use will improve performance
- Added Pilates
- Improvements to Spotify, audio playback, other audio apps
- Fixed crash that could occur on activity save at high elevation
- Added advanced Yoga and Pilates Workouts
- Added support for Hydration widget, tracking, and sweat loss
- Added support for Airplane Mode, which allows the user to disconnect from all wireless communication namely Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and ANT. (Hold Light > Controls > Hold Up > Add Controls > Airplane Mode)
- Added support for file based Emojis, which brings support for over 1300 Emojis. (Update your device through Express or connect it to Garmin Connect Mobile.)
- Added support for ClimbPro ‘Climb Detection’ setting in Cycling. (Bike > Activity Settings > ClimbPro > Climb Detection) This allows the customer to customize grade ‘sensitivity’ when identifying climbs
- Improved ClimbPro for cycling by adding category coloring to the ascent graph, which better depicts the difficult portions of the climb. This will also be available when reviewing the elevation plot for a course
- Improved compass performance
- Fixed an issue where the device may become unresponsive when trying to navigate certain types of PacePro enabled courses
- Fixed an intermittent issue where the map would switch to a Dark theme when previewing a PacePro course
- Various other fixes and improvements
Meanwhile, the FR245 also got a very similar update as well:
- Add Garmin Swim 2 Features: Advanced Swim Workouts, Auto rest, Critical Swim Speed, Swim Pacing Alerts
- Added all-day respiration, respiration widget, and breathwork activity
- Improved treadmill calibration. An outdoor run prior to first treadmill use will improve performance
- Added Pilates
- Improvements to Spotify, audio playback, other audio apps
- Added advanced Yoga and Pilates Workouts
- Added support for Hydration widget, tracking, and sweat loss
- Added support for Airplane Mode, which allows the user to disconnect from all wireless communication namely Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and ANT. (Hold Light > Controls > Hold Up > Add Controls > Airplane Mode)
- Added support for file based Emojis, which brings support for over 1300 Emojis. (Update your device through Express or connect it to Garmin Connect Mobile.)
- Fixed an intermittent issue where the map would switch to a Dark theme when previewing a PacePro course
- Various other fixes and improvements
This is version 3.90 that you’re looking for, and by now it’s likely you’ve already been updated or offered the update (it started last Friday). Garmin does phased updates though, whereby they ‘release’ the update to a certain % of people each day (usually around 10-20%), but I believe at this point it has reached 100% availability, meaning that you should be offered the update. And these days, most of the updates just quietly install at night.
Oh – and if you’ve got a Fenix 6? That similar update with the Swim 2 bits is coming soon, in fact you can already download a beta version of it here. Now, if only Garmin would add PacePro to the FR645 and we’d be all set.
Anyway – go forth and update and enjoy!
Reminder: 20% sale off Favero & Wahoo (and more) ends tonight!
Last call on this last minute sale, but just in case you missed it, there’s a rare sale of the Favero Assioma power meter pedals for 20% off right now, bringing them down to $519. Also, the Wahoo KICKR, KICKR CORE, CLIMB, Headwind, and all sorts of other Wahoo things are 20% off too. The sale further includes the Saris H3, Saris MP1 platform (which according to UPS is out for delivery today, woot!), and plenty more!
Here’s the full sale page of deals. But this ends tonight, US Eastern Time. So get on with buying your significant other a new trainer. I mean, assuming they want that. Otherwise you just get in trouble. Just sayin’. I’ve put just the cycling table below (there’s still the watches and the GoPro Hero 8 bundle deal for $349, which is super solid) – all of which are listed on the full deals page above, where I’m still adding in deals daily.
| Product | Sale Price | Amazon | Clever Training | Other site | Sale Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Copyright DC Rainmaker – Updated December 17th, 2019 @ 5:32 pm | ||||||
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4iiii Fliiiight Smart Trainer with Viiiiva dual ANT+/BLE HR strap bundle – Normally $599 | $499 | Clever Training | |||
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CycleOps Hammer (Original) – $200 off | $599 | Amazon | Clever Training | This is a solid deal if you don’t mind the slight racket that the original CycleOps Hammer makes. That said, with the H3 at $799 right now, if you can stretch it, having the H3’s much lower noise profile for $200 more might be worth. If you’re wearing headphones…nevermind. Note that basically there’s virtually no feature differences between the H1/H2/H3 – just different colors of paint and on the H3, a different belt. They’re already running near identical firmware. | |
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Favero Assioma Duo Power Meter Pedals – $130 off! | $519 | N/A | Clever Training | ⚡⚡⚡The Favero Assioma are virtually never on sale. This is a steal – act quick! Use coupon code HOLIDAY20 to save 20%. | |
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Garmin Cadence Sensor Gen2 (Dual ANT+/Bluetooth) – $5 off | $35 | Amazon | N/A | Note: This is a random Amazon deal that will probably disappear. But, it’s a great sensor for Zwift usage as it’s not just dual ANT+/BLE, but dual-BLE atop that (so it can do two concurrent Bluetooth connections and unlimited ANT+ connections). | |
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Garmin Edge 530 Cycling GPS – 11% off! | $265 | Amazon | N/A | ⚡ ⚡ This is the first sale we’ve seen on this unit, which only came out this past spring. It’s also an Amazon-specific sale and is highly unlikely to last long. This is one of the main units I use for my day to day riding and testing. | |
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Garmin Speed Sensor Gen2 (Dual ANT+/Bluetooth) – $5 off | $35 | Amazon | N/A | ⚡ This isn’t a huge deal per se, but it is my favorite speed sensor for a commuter bike as it just quietly tracks all your mileage in the background and syncs it to your phone. Also, this falls in the bucket of ‘random Amazon deals that will probably disappear’. | |
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Kinetic R1 Smart Trainer with Motion (+ cassette included) – 20% off | $759 | N/A | Clever Training | Note: Clever Training is now including an 11-speed cassette in the bundle as of Nov 22nd. | |
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Saris H3 (Hammer 3) Smart Trainer – $200 off! | $799 | N/A | Clever Training | N/A | ⚡⚡ One of the top three trainers, but by far the top trainer on the market for ERG mode (so if you’re a TrainerRoad user – this be the one!). Last sale of the year likely. Use coupon code HOLIDAY20 to reduce price to $799. |
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Saris M2 Smart Trainer – Normally $499 | $399 | N/A | Clever Training | Last sale of the year likely. Use coupon code HOLIDAY20 to reduce price to $399. | |
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Saris MP1 NFinity Motion Platform – Normally $1,199 | $959 | N/A | Clever Training | Last sale of the year likely. Use coupon code HOLIDAY20 to reduce price to $959 | |
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Tacx NEO 2 Smart – $200 off! | $1049 | N/A | N/A | Competitive Cyclist | ⚡ This is a great deal, especially considering there’s such little difference between the NEO 2 and the NEO 2T. |
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Wahoo CLIMB Accessory – Normally $599 | $480 | N/A | Clever Training | ⚡ Last sale of the year likely. Use coupon code HOLIDAY20 to reduce price to $720 A solid deal if you were looking to add this to your existing Wahoo setup. | |
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Wahoo Headwind Fan – $50 off! | $199 | N/A | Clever Training | ⚡ Last sale of the year likely. Use coupon code HOLIDAY20 to reduce price to $199. This is one of those units that is undoubtedly expensive – yet everyone who has one loves it. Including myself. | |
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Wahoo KICKR + CLIMB Bundle – $200 off! | $1,599 | N/A | Clever Training | This is a simple bundle of the Wahoo KICKR 2018 + the KICKR CLIMB, for $1,599. | |
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Wahoo KICKR 2018 Smart Trainer – 20% off! | $959 | N/A | Clever Training | ⚡ One of the top three trainers out there. Last sale of the year likely. Use coupon code HOLIDAY20 to reduce price to $959 | |
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Wahoo KICKR Core Smart Trainer – $180 off! | $720 | N/A | Clever Training | ⚡ Last sale of the year likely. Use coupon code HOLIDAY20 to reduce price to $720 A solid deal on one of the best trainers at this price range. | |
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Wahoo KICKR SNAP – 20% off! | $399 | N/A | Clever Training | ⚡ Last sale of the year likely. Use coupon code HOLIDAY20 to reduce price to $399. | |
With that – have a good weekend ahead!
