As in any micro culture, trends come and go in cycling. Sometimes they bring us fixies and overly tight jeans; sometimes they bring us electronic drivetrains. Here are five bandwagons I am officially jumping on.
About 18 months ago I advocated for Garmin to partner with Strava, suggesting putting an 'upload to Strava' button on the Edge computers. Garmin for years seemed to wilfully ignore Strava's very existence, insisting for a time that sponsored team riders could not use Strava but instead had to use Garmin Connect. At the start of this year's Tour de France, Garmin debuted the new Edge 520 with Strava features built right into the GPS computer. Cool. And about time!
ADVERTISEMENT
The Garmin/Strava partnership highlights what other tech companies have known, and operated on, for years: more people will use your stuff if it works with the stuff they already use. ANT+ and Bluetooth are the common languages of tech toys now. A few examples:
- Turbo trainers talk to laptops for training or for racing your buddies on the other side of an ocean
- Virtually all power meters talk to your Garmin or other GPS computer
- Garmin computers talk to your home wifi network, for automatic uploading after a ride
- Progressive heart-rate monitors and power meters talk to your smartphone, for training or easy software updates
Shoot, even grumpy old Polar has begrudgingly added Bluetooth Smart to its latest Look Power pedals. Of course, those still don't work on ANT+. Okay, maybe not everybody is playing nice yet...
Yes, this one is as trendy as bright socks and coffee snobbery among cyclists (guilty of those too, I'm afraid). But whether the manufacturers genuinely believe in wider tyres or just want to cash in on the craze, clinchers now are readily available in 25, 26, 27, 28 and even 30mm options.
You can read more at BikeRadar.com
via BikeRadar All the latest from BikeRadar.com http://ift.tt/1RNAifo
No comments:
Post a Comment