Wahoo Rival adds more STRYD running power support

The Wahoo Rival triathlon watch was released toward the back end of 2020 and, sort of, had some support for running power. Whilst this missing feature set won’t affect too many people it was a significant omission for me personally and, probably, for a significant minority like me, to the point where I had zero plans to use the Rival until that feature was working.

To cut a long story short…running power seems now to be working.

Wahoo Firmware

Source: wahoo

Wahoo promised to release feature improvements by the end of 2020 and did so via their v1.2.124 firmware release on 15 December. I was aware of the release at the time but it didn’t seem to do too much officially in the way of RUNNING POWER. I discovered that it improved custom multisport functionality and wrote about it somewhat scathingly here, however, notes that talked about the changes to multisport profiles on Wahoo’s Firmware Update page seem to have gone AWOL. Maybe that’s a good sign that they are having a re-think…I only asked for a little re-think.

Tinkerings Today

I was playing with the RIVAL earlier today and started to notice some other minor features that I could have sworn weren’t there in the launch release, so my inquisitiveness got the better of me. I played around some more and found the following

1. STRYD can be paired initially via BLE but, once paired, suggested that it also recognises the ANT+ connection as well.
2. As part of the STRYD pairing process, RIVAL asks if I want to add CADENCE and POWER fields (hmm, that was new?)
3. It IS then possible to create a new page in the RUNNING PROFILE and add various power metrics to that page (NEW!!)
4. I went for a short run and, sure enough, power was displayed. (NEW!!)
5. Some running power metrics were also displayed in the workout summary, which I seem to recall was there at launch.
6. The saved FIT file seems to save running power correctly and Golden Cheetah agreed and displayed it very nicely.

Take Out

For me, that means I can and will use the Wahoo RIVAL as from NOW.

It lacks auto- and manual footpod calibration factors and further lack the ability to have STRYD as a source of both speed and distance. I can live with that omission for a while.

Return to the full Wahoo Elemnt Rival Review

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