Midweek Stories…on Thursday

It’s Thursday so it must be time for some mid-week new stories. I might have made some of these into more significant pieces of content but I’m ill.

Today’s stories include Stryd, T100 triathlon, Eight Sleep and an up to 50% SRAM sale.

new Stryd Dashboard

More: Stryd.com

Even More: Detailed Stryd Review

Stryd, the maker of the world’s leading power meter footpod (the only one 😉 ), has announced a complete overhaul of its app homepage.

It’s a reasonably big change that gives you this as of today

• Customizable dashboard – You can rearrange sections like fitness metrics, shoe mileage, and past/future races to prioritise the info you want to see first.
• Fitness section – Overview of important indicators like Critical Power, Power Duration Curve, and Training Level Classification to track your improving abilities.
• Shoe mileage tracker – Monitor the miles on your running shoes to avoid overuse and know when it’s time for new ones.
• Events section – See upcoming races with projected finishing times and power targets. Review past race details to celebrate wins and plan improvements.
• Race calculations – Get estimated times and power targets for different distances like miles or marathons to set realistic goals.
• Training load management – This feature helps balance your training volume so you’re in the right zone for Performance, Maintenance or Productive training without overdoing it.

Thoughts; This appeals to the runner in me and looks ideal for single sport athletes. Existing features are reshaped together on the dashboard and I guess it’s not too dissimilar in concept to some of the things that Garmin has done with aspects of its Morning Report.

Triathlon World Tour

The Professional Triathletes Organisation (PTO) and World Triathlon have jointly announced the relaunch of the 2024 World Tour, now to be known as the T100 Triathlon World Tour. The tour covers eight events on three continents, with races from March to November 2024. [via Slowtwitch and others]

40 Pro triathletes battle it out for a $ 7 million prize pot.

Interestingly for you, there are Age Group races alongside the pro races. For example in the London race, there is the 100km distance race (2km swim, 80km bike and 18km run) with famous London landmarks as your backdrop. However, that famous backdrop will likely mostly be East London and the Excel Centre with a brief few seconds within sight of Big Ben, preceded by some effluent that Thames Water has kindly left in the Thames for you as a race memento.

Yes that is disgusting, yes I do swim in the Thames, no I am not happy about it. (Join 80’s singer Fergal Sharkey and his anti-pollution campaign by clicking the image, below)

Thoughts: I like the T100 logo and general branding. I also quite like the 100km format; it’s a tad easier than a Half Ironman and represents an eminently doable challenge for the average person. It also nicely uses the 100 number for its branding, interestingly linking to earlier news about the UK publication 220Triathlon.

Eight Sleep Autopilot 3.0

More: EightSleep Details

Even More: Eight Sleep Review

Eight Sleep is a smart mattress-based sleep system used by some pro cycling teams (and me! It’s good). It does all the HRV monitoring stuff you’d expect and then automatically heats or cools each side of the bed accordingly to give the optimal temperature for your current sleep stage and for comfort.

The updated sleep algorithm now gives more frequent temperature updates with its algorithms trained on over 1.2 million hours of sleep

• Autopilot 3.0 reviews your historic sleep trends and personal patterns minute by minute, making temperature adjustments to help you get more time in each REM and deep sleep phase.
• It does this in real-time, but also by reviewing your previous night’s sleep to learn what sleep phases you’re running low on.
• Personalisation also considers your biological sex when making temperature selections, plus over a dozen other factors from previous Autopilot versions like local weather, sleep preferences, and more.

up to 50% SRAM Sale (USA)

More: Power Meter City

West Coast-based Power Meter City hosts an up to 50% sale of SRAM stuff. Mostly SRAM Red and that includes chains, derailleurs, power meters, brake levers, and cassettes

Vittoria Corsa PRO Speed

More: Vittoria

The Corsa PRO Speed is designed for performance in time trials and triathlons, you can now buy a pair when previously it was only available to the pros. Jonas Vingegaard won Stage 16 Time Trial at the Tour de France 2023, Wout van Aert won a Belgian National Time Trial victory, and Jos van Emden won the Dutch National Time Trial. All used the Vittoria Corsa PRO Speed.

Shimano Glasses and tri Shoes

Shimano has just announced a range of cycling sunglasses. Some have fixed opacity and others react to light changes. Having reviewed quite a few pairs of sunnies over the year I was very surprised that Shimano has kept its pricing from $65 to $100, which almost makes them cheap by 2023/4 standards.

Shimano also released its “entry-level” TR5 triathlon bike shoes (SH-TR500). I have a pair of the earlier TR9 SPD-SL and the new TR5 looks better aesthetically. They will probably lack a bit of stiffness here or a bit of breathability there, but they’ll be pretty similar.

AI Endurance

More: AIEndurance.com

The AI/ML endurance training app (that actually uses AI/ML in the models rather than just the marketing 😉 ) is currently undergoing an app overhaul. So it should look a bit nicer. After that, we hope to see some additions to the modelling later this year.

In a nutshell: AI Endurance determines what historical training has made you faster and prescribes more of it for your future training.