The two most interesting shifts in corporate strategy within what we can acceptably call the “fitness” industry have occurred at Garmin and SRAM, both of which have embraced Apple’s “ecosystem” approach to product development. I wrote about Garmin’s shift previously, and alluded to the similar shift that SRAM has undergone over that same time. SRAM certainly no longer resembles the SRAM of 2006/07, when the first RED groupset was introduced. But perhaps even more interestingly, SRAM is increasingly diverging in important ways from Shimano. Di2 is a “feature” of certain Shimano groupsets. AXS is a foundational pillar of everything that SRAM does. Some of this is possible because, like Garmin, SRAM has acquired many of the pieces of its ecosystem. Shimano has always been loathe to grow through acquisition, and its only acquisition in recent memory – of Pearl Izumi – likely did little to convince it to change in that regard. But SRAM has basically acquired almost all of what we think of today as “SRAM.” Sachs (chains) in 1997, RockShox (suspension) in 2002, Truvativ (cranks and BBs) and Avid (brakes) in 2004, Zipp in 2007, and Quarq – their most important acquisition – in 2011. Numerous more acquisitions have followed, some of which I didn’t even know about (Velotron and Shockwiz; the latter of which I didn’t realize was an independent company).

The Quarq acquisition was, to me, the most important, not because of the product, but because of the people. In particular, Jim Meyer, Quarq’s founder. Jim is now the “Director of Digital Product” at SRAM. And, at this point, there’s less that isn’t digital in SRAM’s offering than is. Digital is everything to SRAM. The AXS mobile app serves as an important hub, especially with the number of batteries in the system. And those products that aren’t digital should be generally viewed as “not yet.” Flight Attendant – the latest RockShox advancement that combines power data and real time shock tuning (see SRAM’s 2018 acquisition of ShockWiz) to modify your suspension in real time. Brakes are currently the only complete system that has no electronic component, and while I don’t see wireless and hoseless brakes arriving anytime soon – your brakes not working because your battery is dead is not really a viable option, it’s certainly not impossible; especially for TT brakes, a wireless master cylinder would open up quite a few interesting frame options… 

This systemic approach to product design sometimes requires partner buy-in. The AXS Transmission – currently only found on Eagle MTB drivetrains, but which is surely coming to Road and Gravel at some point – needed frame manufacturers to adopt the UDH (Universal Derailleur Hanger) standard. But SRAM mostly owns all the requisite pieces now to fully design a system that never requires – or, in some cases, even allows for – the end user to leave their ecosystem.

As important as Zipp was an acquisition, giving SRAM both a world class domestic composites manufacturing team and facility as well as a major distribution hub – the majority of SRAM’s US inventory now leaves from Zipp’s Indiana HQ, it had largely remained separate from this systemic approach to design. Zipp wheels largely existed in the “old fashioned” world of cycling, where most parts were fairly interchangeable. That’s starting to change a bit, with Zipp-specific variants of Quarq’s TyreWiz coming standard on certain Zipp MTB wheels. But the most dramatic changes are the most recent ones – the introduction of Zipp’s new Vector tires manufactured by Goodyear and Zipp’s Ride Ready program, designed to get those tires and wheels (and SRAM cassettes and Avid rotors) straight into the hands of their customers.

The Ride Ready program speaks to the degree to which SRAM has become a software company. While it’s a fairly straightforward shopping cart app, it’s more that SRAM sees Ride Ready as yet another way that software can enable their customers and bring them into – or further into – the SRAM ecosystem. But really, it’s the Vector tire line that highlights the degree to which SRAM has become an ecosystem company most of all. Ride Ready only really makes sense because of everything SRAM can offer to the end user – the perfect-match Vector tires, the ability to provide relevant tire pressure information to users via the AXS app and website, the central location of the Indianapolis warehouse allowing them to add sealant to the wheels and tires immediately before shipping, and to add additional configuration options in response to user demand in a matter of days – if not hours. I spoke about the Ride Ready program with Ride Ready program manager Mike Vittorio and wheel product manager Nathan Schickel, who has been at Zipp for almost 20 years and with whom I worked on a number of products – including Zipp’s Vuka Stealth aerobar – when I was sponsored by them. 

The Goodyear Partnership

While Zipp could have introduced such a program earlier, the partnership with Goodyear makes that proposition make much more sense, because it’s really hard to tell this story effectively without tires. These are tires that are wholly optimized for Zipp’s wheels, and also makes it more congruous with the larger thrust of SRAMs evolution as a company. It’s not that Zipp is sending you complete wheels. It’s that they are sending you a system that they have optimized for you. I asked Zipp if they imagine a specific tire for every wheel in their lineup. I expected the answer to be, “No.” But it was a resounding, “Yes Absolutely.” Every wheel can have a tire – or tires (the 303 has both a 30mm and 35mm option, for example) – optimized specifically for its width, depth, and overall shape along with intended usage. Zipp calls this Total System Efficiency. The recently introduced 303XPLR demonstrates this in dramatic fashion, with its massive 32mm internal width, introduced unsurprisingly alongside a new Goodyear gravel tire meant specifically for this wheel. That wheelset was available via Ride Ready the day that it launched. 

The partnership with Goodyear is also helping Zipp emphasize that Total System Efficiency applies not only to what Zipp has traditionally been known for – aerodynamics – but also what riders are increasingly concerned with, namely rolling resistance (Crr) and grip. Grip, especially, is one of those things that I think is too often an afterthought. But grip is the thing that I appreciate most of all when I’m actually riding. Tires that grip well are just that much more fun to ride. By partnering with Goodyear, Zipp was able to create tires that are aerodynamically optimal – the 30mm variant of the Vector is understandably faster than the 35mm variant of the Vector, but each tire is optimized for its width and for the wheel. But Zipp is also clearly trying to shift away, at least ever so slightly from trying to assess their wheels by any single metric. The system is fastest. As a whole. Zipp did clarify that even if tires are optimized for specific wheels, the measured differences are quite small. L3GION has been riding the 30R NSW tires on their 454s with great success.

The tires being “generally good” is an explicit design choice. In the pro tour, teams will typically have four different tires – a Classics tire, a Road Race tire, a Time Trial tire, and a Rain tire. The SW series is designed to fill both the Classics and, critically, the Rain tire at once. In particular, the larger size option gives teams much more flexibility for say, a wet and cobbled course, arguably the most challenging conditions imaginable. That these same tires happen to also be quite aerodynamic is a bonus. Zipp has yet to introduce a TT specific tire – I’d imagine that will come with the 858 and, likely, a dedicated rear for the Super9. But even just being able to use the same tire for Classics and Rain is a huge win. While I didn’t get to test out wet weather grip – I do love California summers!, I am also not sure how much I really would want to push the envelope here in pursuit of journalistic excellence. I’m happy to take Zipp’s word for it, especially given how good the dry grip is. Grip is a consistent story, and possibly the first time I can remember really hearing about how important it is, though I can say that my race tire of choice for most of my pro career – the Specialized Turbo Cotton – had superb grip along with incredible Crr, something that more than made up for slightly less than ideal aerodynamics. That same story – that the tire needs to do everything well, even if it gives up a bit in one particular area – was something Zipp’s product management team kept coming back to.

In one example, the Vector NSW gives up 3w in Crr (on average, across a range of road surfaces) to the Continental GP5000 but gains back 2w in aerodynamics (on average, across a range of yaws). If you note that Continental still comes out ahead by 1w in this case, you’re right. But that’s where Zipp focuses on durability – race tires don’t need to be bombproof, but they cannot be fragile – and especially on grip, which is a function of both the rubber and the shape of the tread cap and also the structure of the sidewall plies, both of which are explicitly designed to be optimal when mounted on Zipp’s wheels. I also expect that Goodyear’s casings will improve over time, leading to a reduction in Crr. Goodyear knows rubber. Zipp knows aerodynamics. So it’s not surprising the tires shine in these areas. But bicycle specific tire casings take time, and Goodyear is certainly playing some amount of catch up here to Vittoria and Continental, the current leaders in low Crr casings. 

The rubber – Goodyear calls it “Dynamic UHP Rubber” and you will also find variants of it on their car tires – is a highlight. Especially with the massive footprint of a wide tire at low pressure, I found myself having to re-learn how fast I could take some of the corners I’ve taken countless times on some of my regular routes. I’ve found myself riding these tires more like I ride my mountain bike, leaning the bike way over – much more than I ever would have thought appropriate on a road bike. I haven’t yet put enough miles on these wheels to really put meaningful wear on the tires, but after a few hundred miles, they still look as new. Not a single nick or cut. And I certainly haven’t babied them. Especially if you live somewhere that has less than ideal pavement, these tires are truly superb for training. Even some of the roughest stretches of road – of which there are fewer and fewer, thanks infrastructure! – were very muted. Pure slicks are never going to be great off-road tires, but low pressure and the resulting large contact patch makes for tires that are very capable on any kind of fire road. This setup is perfect for any sort of “all road” race, which was my hope and expectation.

Nathan said Zipp first started speaking with Goodyear in 2020/2021. Zipp had been working with Hutchinson previously on tires like the RT28 and the Tangente G40 gravel tire. These were good tires, but Zipp thought they could be better, in particular in the way that they could optimize the system as a whole. Nathan said that Zipp briefly considered trying to do tires themselves, but the cost of an adequate tire factory to achieve their standards would likely have cost more than Zipp itself is worth as a business. Partnering just made more sense, and in particular, partnering with Goodyear made a lot of sense. In a contrast with what had been the development process to date, where Zipp would provide a list of requirements and manufacturers (Zipp has worked with both Vittoria, who made Zipp’s first ever Tangente tires, and Hutchinson on their tires) would come back some months later with the tire that they believed met those requirements, the process with Goodyear was much more iterative. They tried multiple casings during development, eventually settling on one that worked the best across all metrics. Tubeless technology has certainly made puncture resistance less of a concern, but tire durability still matters. I found it especially interesting that even though Goodyear is only very recently focusing on tires, they have a dedicated factory that only does bike tires. And this is actually quite unique in the industry. Continental, for example, makes its bike tires in the same factories where it makes car tires. This focus on cycling was an important differentiator for Zipp, and it was a key part of why they felt they were able to do so much iterative development.

Tire collaborations are heavily informed by automotive precedence. The Vector tires are, fundamentally, Goodyear tires. Goodyear owns the IP. But it is designed specifically for Zipp’s wheels. In automotive parlance, this is called a “fitment series.” Car makers will approach a tire manufacturer to make an OEM tire to spec. That tire can obviously be run on any car that takes a tire in that same size. But the particular compound, tread pattern, et cetera will all be designed to fit the wants of a given car. In this case, because Goodyear is still relatively new to cycling, Zipp led on the aerodynamics. Notably, Nathan said with these latest wheels and tires, Zipp has effectively managed to eliminate stall at any realistically achievable yaw angle – even very extreme ones. He pointed to extensive crosswind testing that Zipp had done on the Queen K highway in Kona to get a sense of just how extreme yaw angles could get. With wider rims and tires, hookless rims, and tire casings designed specifically for those rims, the aerodynamics package is just that much more stable at high yaw, which leads to both faster speeds and better handling. This was the early promise of the Firecrest wheelset when it was first introduced, but it has taken tires to fully realize its potential.

The Ride Ready Experience

Walking through the entire Ride Ready process, I selected the Zipp 303 paired with the 35mm Vector SW tire. The 303 is Zipp’s do it all wheel, and at roughly half the price of the 353 NSW ($2381 with a slightly heavier 1270 – Force – level cassette vs $4770 with a top of the line 1290 – RED – level cassette), it’s a much more compelling offering. Is the 353 faster? I’d say almost certainly yes. But as with the early Zed-tech wheels, I’ve always thought it was really a very marginal pickup for a relatively high cost increase. The variable cross section NSW rims are substantially more complex to manufacture, so the cost is not unwarranted. I love Zipp’s regular wheels – and have ridden nothing else since 2008 – and have never found them wanting. I can unequivocally recommend the 303s. They are just fantastic wheels. I’d have a harder time recommending the 353s as a do-it-all-wheelset at the premium price. Especially on this site. The 303s are more likely to be your do it all wheelset for mixed-road races, training, and certainly are very capable race wheels. But for this site’s audience, if I was to ever recommend an NSW wheel, it would almost certainly be the 858 where the additional crosswind stability and aerodynamic speed of the variable cross section rim is likely to be more compelling to those folks on the margin. I never rode an NSW in my decade long tenure as a Zipp athlete, as when they were introduced, it was firstly as a rim-brake-only wheelset and I had just made the switch to what was – at the time – an outlier riding disc brakes for the last year of my pro career. 

The setup I selected – 303 with Vector SW 35 – is what I consider the perfect Belgian Waffle setup. The iconic Belgian Waffle Ride – now series of rides – challenges expectations about what a road bike is capable of. I did the original BWR in 2018 on a set of Zipp’s new-at-the-time Tangente 28s, which measured at 30mm on the 303s at the time – with hooked rims, unlike the hookless variant offered currently. I rode them at 60psi front/rear, which was fine, but I definitely was much more nervous on the dirt than I would have been on the Vector 35s at 45psi/48psi. While it’s impossible to effectively simulate what it’s like to race something like BWR, I did quite enjoy being able to ride on the shoulder equally easily whether it was dirt or asphalt during testing. I did need to put on my own 10-44 cassette – that cassette, whether in 1×12 or the 10-46 1×13 variant – is really the perfect do it all cassette. I was a bit surprised Zipp didn’t offer this as a part of Ride Ready, but they also said that they hadn’t really thought about rides like BWR when setting up the Ride Ready offerings. They were quick to point out, however, that if there was sufficient demand, adding the 10-44 (12s) or 10-46 (13s) offerings to the 303 wheelset was something that could be done in a matter of hours, done on a computer in an upstairs office and able to be implemented immediately on the assembly line downstairs – those cassettes are already in stock in the Indianapolis warehouse adjacent to the Zipp factory. This was when I realized that the wheels you buy really are built for you. There were some other options I would like to see – brass nipples for one; I’ve never understood why people have traded the durability of brass nipples for the weight savings of aluminum ones, but that’s admittedly the start of a long tangent. I also was surprised to not see any rotor options – I normally ran 140mm/140mm rotors, which is admittedly non-standard, but that came from riding 24mm tires when I first got on disc brakes, and I felt 160s were too easy to lock up. But 160mm-fr/140mm-rr is pretty standard, but that wasn’t an option. 160/160 was the only option, though again, these are options that could be added easily.

The tires are filled with OrangeSeal, because Zipp has found that to be the most reliable sealant. While Zipp advertises that all you need to do when you get the wheels is to bed in the rotors, in my experience that does assume that you are already running those exact same rotors. In my case, I had to switch the mounting brackets for my calipers from 140mm → 160mm. But based on historical experience, I’d also say you will – if you’re not running SRAM’s Paceline rotors already – also need to deal with rotor alignment. Disc caliper tolerances are such that different rotors and different hub shells can cause some small amount of rubbing. I wouldn’t say this is necessarily a given – certainly the pro tour races all manage to have neutral wheel support without issue, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if a little bit of tweaking was required, especially if you are coming from non-Zipp wheels and non-SRAM rotors. Both because I was changing from Zipp → Zipp and because I had to completely remount my brakes to switch from 140 → 160 mm rotors, I can’t offer any direct experience here as to whether or not pumping up the tires was all I had to do. But certainly avoiding dealing with the mess of sealant and mounting tires was a welcome relief. The wheels came to me with just under 30psi in them. Not quite enough to ride, but certainly enough that there was no worry of sealant leaking around the bead. 

Sealant functionality and longevity tends to be inversely proportional. Orange Seal can be expected to last at least three months, and maybe as long as six depending on weather. But I also know that most tubeless riders are less diligent than they maybe should be about replenishing sealant. Some never do. And because flats are just generally less of a problem with tubeless, this is probably fine. The particulars of sealants are certainly well outside the scope of this article, except to say that Orange Seal is a very good sealant. And since the sealant is applied literally within days of you receiving your wheels, you can be confident that it will last as long as possible.

While there were some additional options I would have liked, I did appreciate the simplicity of picking a wheel and then choosing a tire, selecting yes for rotors, and then picking from either of two cassette sizes in two “tiers” (Force or RED equivalent). From there it was the very standard Shop.com checkout process – Zipp gave me a coupon code to cover the cost of the wheelset for this article – and the wheels showed up about three days later.

Unboxing the wheels, I was impressed with just how seamless the transition from tire to wheel is. It’s hard, even in pictures, to appreciate how perfectly the tire mates to the rim. And, of course, the aerodynamic story is something is essentially something you have to take on faith. But you can have that much more confidence in it because of the one big problem SRAM solves for you – tire pressure. I suspect because of changes to the wheels over time and a desire to avoid an overly long dropdown list, SRAM still makes you pick the bead type and the bead width rather than allowing you to pick a specific Zipp wheel. But you do get in addition to the generic casing options two specific ones for the Vector tires. This is where the system comes into play. Rather than picking a generic and rather subjective “casing” for your tire, you just specify which specific Goodyear Vector model you have. And then SRAM’s tire pressure guide – available both on the web and in the AXS app – gives you the exact pressure for your setup and riding style. In my case, that ended up being 45psi in the front and 48psi in the rear. Like most – probably all – “correct” tire pressures, this feels much too low, especially if you have any real experience riding on 21mm (or skinnier) tires at 120psi+. But then you get out of the road and forget about it and worry less about the quality of pavement or even if the road is pavement.

Ride Ready’s simplicity is an integral part of the narrative around Total System Efficiency. Engineering concepts like Crr and CdA are things that riders increasingly understand conceptually, but they are still difficult to parse out while riding. According to Schickel, tires always should have been wider and run at lower pressure. It really took disc brakes to really unlock that possibility. Hookless tubeless rims have helped make the experience better. But there’s still a battle against psychology – what “feels” fast (high-pressures) is typically the opposite of what actually is fast. Even on the track, pressures as much as half of what was typical are the norm, because a wood velodrome is often not quite as smooth as it would appear. As with aerodynamics a decade or two ago, convincing cyclists that “smooth is fast” remains an ongoing challenge. I think that’s where the focus on grip can help. It’s much easier to feel how much more grip you have with a big contact patch than it is to “feel” lower rolling resistance. It’s also just more fun.

Zipp has always tried to do a good job of informing their potential customers. They are a company that believes that a well informed customer will appreciate the benefit of Zipp wheels and will feel better about paying their premium price. But that process still asked a lot of customers, especially given that mounting and seating tubeless tires can be a major pain. I’ve never needed anything but a floor pump with my tubeless road wheels, but I do have an air compressor to make the process that much easier. Dealing with sealant is absolutely a nuisance. With tires that Zipp can confidently say are the best all around tires for their wheels, they’ve made the process that much simpler for end users, and in doing so, they provide a compelling case for joining the SRAM ecosystem. As with the new Transmission drivetrains – which do away with limit screws and a B-gap screw, using technology to make cyclists live simpler is the end goal. As the famous da Vinci saying goes, “simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

The post Zipp Ride Ready first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

Garmin acquired FirstBeat Analytics in June of 2020, the news made relatively little impact. I think most of that was timing, as it came during the peak of the pandemic lockdown. It also wasn’t much of a change for end users, as Garmin had already been using FirstBeat – as a licensee – in its products for over a decade. But the acquisition represented what – in hindsight – seems to have been a clear shift in Garmin’s fundamental approach to its fitness business. Owning FirstBeat allowed Garmin to become an “ecosystem” company rather than simply a product company. Garmin now makes systems. And the products it makes are designed to work within those systems. In some cases, their products only really make sense when you view them through the lens of the system rather than as a standalone offering. 

As the FirstBeat, Tacx, and Vector (power-meter pedals) acquisitions show, Garmin has generally sought to expand its ecosystem via acquisition. It certainly has made some truly innovative products – like the Varia Radar – but its real genius has been finding companies that can easily meld into its ecosystem and help expand its reach. The other company that has followed a similar trajectory of moving from a product company to an ecosystem company, largely on the back of acquiring companies and then using those acquisitions to build a richer and more comprehensive ecosystem is SRAM. The SRAM of today looks nothing like the SRAM of 2006/2007, when they launched their first RED road grouppo. SRAM today is an ecosystem company. Quarq was probably its most important acquisition, not because of the powermeters, but because of acquiring Jim Meyer, who now leads all things digital, which – for SRAM – is basically everything. Even more interestingly, SRAM doesn’t just not resemble itself anymore; it also doesn’t resemble Shimano either. Shimano, meanwhile, has remained largely unchanged in terms of the type of business it is. 

Unquestionably, the most important fittech acquisition of this millenia was Garmin’s 2006 acquisition of Dynastream, the creators of the ANT protocol. Garmin was just starting to get into fittech with its Forerunner line – I had one of those classic pill-shaped Forerunner 201s. And I think they saw that connectivity was really the key to making fittech work. The Edge 500 wouldn’t come out for a few more years, but I am sure Garmin was already imagining such a product. Notably, after acquiring Dynastream, they initially tried a licensing model with ANT. They quickly pivoted though, open-sourcing it and starting the entirely separate ANT consortium – thisisant.com, which was certainly the right decision to spur widespread adoption. While BLE has finally caught up – and some might say surpassed ANT, owing to its inclusion on mobile phones, ANT really set the stage for the wireless fittech ecosystem. It was low power. And it just worked. I still basically don’t really trust BLE, and I will always opt to pair via ANT for sensors that support both protocols. In 15 years of using it, ANT+ has just been bulletproof across all manner of devices, both measuring devices and computers/watches. Without ANT, none of what followed would have been possible, since ANT opened the door for devices to talk to each other. It allowed an ecosystem to grow.

The ecosystem approach was almost certainly a case of imitation and self-preservation as well as innovation. Garmin increasingly has to compete with the exemplar ecosystem company – Apple. It’s especially interesting to see Garmin not only protecting their areas, but also (sort of) moving into Apple’s Garmin has GarminPay, allowing you to pay with just your watch at wireless terminals. Garmin also recently launched Garmin Messenger, which allows you to communicate using an InReach device when you are in the backcountry with people on their phones. I think part of the reason why Apple has struggled to make more inroads with serious athletes is because Garmin has so aggressively – and so effectively – continued to make the Garmin ecosystem more feature rich. 

I have had an idea percolating in my mind for a couple years about how to write about this. It first came to me when Garmin introduced the Varia Radar. I became more convinced of the shift in Garmin’s approach when they acquired Tacx in 2019. And then followed that up by acquiring FirstBeat. But I never could find a hook. It felt overly editorial – “this is this thing that I see happening.” It lacked the experiential quality that I think is essential to good storytelling. If you want to know the nuts and bolts of how a fitness product works, it’s essentially impossible to beat Ray Maker of DC Rainmaker. And the pure editorializing just doesn’t feel all that compelling. But when I started mountain biking with my oldest son this past winter and decided to return to triathlon and do my first XTerra race, I had an idea about how to tell this story. I’ve been an on-again-off-again user of various fitness platforms for years, but the one constant has been Garmin Connect. Since 2009, I’ve tracked virtually every run I’ve done using a Garmin Forerunner. And since 2010, I’ve tracked virtually every ride with a Garmin Edge. I’ve since resorted to using just a Forerunner for everything, something I talked about my article about how A Clean Cockpit Is More Fun.

Could This System Help Me? Can It Help You?

While I had made the decision to ignore pretty much all data during my rides, I became increasingly intrigued by the data that Garmin was offering after them. Garmin clearly had a lot of ideas about what I should be doing for training, how I should be recovering, and more. I wondered, what if I actually listened to some of them? What if I actually dove into the Garmin ecosystem as part of training for an XTerra. I’ve always been skeptical of HRV as a standalone metric, but what about its utility when rolled into a larger package that also has detailed insights into your actual training? I figured at the very least, it would give me something to obsess over now that I’d committed to not obsessing over power.

This nicely coincided with the major overhaul – first seen via public beta – of Garmin Connect, both the web app and the phone app. Garmin Connect had always seemed like a non-priority for Garmin. They seemed generally happy to cede that ground on the social side to Strava and on the fitness and tracking side to more specialized sites like TrainingPeaks. Connect was always “good enough,” but not really much more. But with the recent update, it was clear that Connect’s importance to the ecosystem was becoming clearer, and it could no longer afford to be ignored

In deciding which device to use as the backbone for my experiment, I debated heavily between the Forerunner 965 and the Epix Pro. Since FirstBeat’s analytics tech is the foundational piece here, I was strongly tempted to go with the Epix 2, which has the newer Elevate 5 sensor, which offers skin temperature reading, over the Elevate 4 in the 965. And, of course, it’s just newer. So any attempt to glean insight about the usefulness of buying into Garmin’s ideas about training seemed like it ought to rely on the latest hardware. But having owned a Fenix, I also much prefer the fit and feel of the lighter Forerunner watches. I ended up requesting a 965, which Garmin graciously provided for this article. 

An article like this would have been a lot more difficult before Garmin introduced TrueUp, which incorporates all workouts from all devices and some key partners into your training data. You could do it if you just wore your Forerunner for everything – as I do, but you’d have to record your indoor sessions on it as well. And if you prefer to use a cycling computer, it makes sense to use that for cycling rather than needing to use the watch. TrueUp was maybe the first indication that Garmin Connect was going to play a larger role than it had, as it now served as the aggregator and disseminator of information. I can see all my workouts on my watch, whether or not I’ve actually recorded them on my watch.

Given that I was also training for an XTerra, I also was curious what sort of insights I’d get from using a Garmin powermeter. While the heart rate data is primary, Garmin uses power data on the bike to estimate VO2Max, which is part of how it calculates fitness trends and training efficacy. For running, it’s a combination of heart rate data and pace. Garmin provided me with a pair of the Rally XC200 dual sided pedals as well.

Sleeping With A Watch On Kind Of Stinks

The most difficult part of this whole experiment for me was getting used to sleeping with a watch on. Overnight data is required for FirstBeat to calculate HRV, which is a requirement for getting “Training Readiness” information. You can get the Training Status data without it – that’s based primarily on your actual training data; but even this is somewhat limited as Garmin uses HRV data to indicate periods of “Strain,” which is low HRV combined with declining VO2Max. So I had to learn to sleep with a watch. This made me doubly glad to have the 965, as it’s a lot lower profile than a Epix. After trying unsuccessfully to wear the watch through the night – I’ve literally never slept with my watch on – and getting abysmal sleep scores as a result, sleep scores that were doubly bad because Garmin assumed I had only slept until the point at which I took my watch off, not from when I bed until the point at which I put it back on, I finally managed to solve sleeping by rotating the watch so the face was on the inside of my wrist rather than the back of my wrist. I’m a stomach sleeper, and with the watch in this position, I was mostly able to forget it was there. Now, some six months later, I don’t really mind it too much, though I think Garmin absolutely needs to match Samsung and – rumor has it – Apple by making a ring. As Oura has pretty clearly demonstrated, you can fit all this technology in a ring, and that’s unquestionably the most comfortable form factor for sleeping. The disadvantage that Oura and Whoop have when competing with Garmin here is that they only have the heart rate data. They don’t know things like pace or watts. I think Whoop and Oura will struggle to make real inroads against not only Garmin, but also Polar and Suunto, which also are able to use information from connected sensors to enhance their understanding of training load. But form factor matters a lot. If I hadn’t committed to exploring this ecosystem fully, I would have given up after a few rough nights. I want the Garmin Ring. And I’m actually semi-surprised that it doesn’t exist yet. I think part of this is Garmin’s deep roots as a GPS company. Garmin GPS is – and always has been – superb. The only times I’ve ever had issues with accuracy was back when Garmin used to default to “Smart” recording rather than 1s recording as the default. Smart recording is still an option, but it seems that it was set to 1s by default on my 965, though that may have been the result of pairing a powermeter early on. Given how many of Garmin’s core products exist without GPS these days, I think a smart ring is not impossible, and I’ll be immensely glad when it arrives. Until then, I made the sacrifice to sleep with my watch on in the name of scientific discovery.

Training Load And Training Readiness.

It takes a few days of overnight wearing to incorporate the sleep data into Training Readiness. And then even longer for Garmin to establish an HRV baseline. But once you’ve worn your watch continuously for about a week, you’ll start to see the full Training Readiness data populate. This is based on:

• Sleep, which is the result of your “sleep score,” which factors in total duration, deep sleep time, REM sleep time, and both duration and frequency of “awake” periods
• Recovery Time, which is in response to specific training activities
• HRV Status, which is determined by the relative value of your previous nights HRV “score” to your 7D baseline range
• Acute Load, which is not actually the specific load in terms of quantity, but rather its ratio to your chronic load.
• Sleep History, which is your 7d sleep score average
• And Stress History, which supposedly measures your intra-day stress levels, but which has basically only ever told me that my days are fairly low stress. Which is maybe a sign that I’m just inoculated against getting stressed out by virtue of having four kids or, more likely, that I’m quite fit and so my intra-day resting heart rate – what I suspect it’s actually using – is quite low. I found Stress History to be entirely worthless.

Of these, I found the Acute Load – and Garmin’s sense of training load – to be by far the most useful. I’ve used TrainingPeaks fairly religiously since 2014, and I think – especially for ultra-endurance training like Ironman, that TSS is generally quite useful. But one thing that I always felt it lacked – at least for me – was that it failed to capture the load of threshold and supra-threshold workouts effectively. I found that really, really hard workouts – longer time-trials, anything over 30min in particular – would take me at least a week or more to fully recover from. And yet in TrainingPeaks they just showed whatever the TSS for that workout was. A 30min TT was no more significant than an easy 3hr ride. But with Garmin, those hard workouts were reflected dramatically. I did a hard Zwift session that involved a near-maximal effort on Alpe du Zwift, and Garmin had a training load score for that workout that was through the roof. Note that Garmin generally only calculates training load for workouts recorded on Garmin devices. There are some very special exceptions here with special partners – like Zwift. But you can’t just upload any ride with HR data and get training load information from it. Notably, Garmin doesn’t actually care about power when calculating load. Only HR. But it was very interesting to see how dramatically Garmin scored sustained periods at/above threshold as compared with TrainingPeaks. For me, this was the first real indication that there was real utility in the FirstBeat analysis.

While I’d previously been skeptical of sleep trackers, the sleep measurements help cement something that I had intuited but only fairly casually. I saw a marked difference in sleep quality between nights when I was in bed before 9PM (I get up around 5am) and nights when when I was in bed after 9:30PM. Even if I managed to sleep in a bit, the quantity of my measured deep sleep – which Garmin reports as occurring very early in my sleep cycle – are markedly different. If I go to bed early, I get a lot more deep sleep, which helped explain to me why even if I got an equivalent amount of total sleep, I felt so much better with an early-to-bed-early-to-rise approach. And this became emblematic of my relationship with my 965. It has a lot of opinions. Many of these I disregard. But I do not entirely ignore them. If I sense there’s a nugget of wisdom or truth, I try to isolate that part, make use of it, and chuck the rest. I did not rely on it telling me what to do. But I did find it helped me to make better decisions about what to do.

HRV vs RHR

My skepticism about the usefulness of HRV is largely unchanged however. It seemed to correlate almost exactly with overnight resting HR, something which is much simpler to understand. HRV did reflect that harder training sessions later in the day tended to impact my recovery, but I saw that exact same data in my overnight RHR and sleep score. I came away from this experiment with a better sense of what HRV actually shows and how it might be used – certainly much better than my 2013 experiment in the early days of HRV when I tried to use a system based only around intraday orthostatic tests (which you can take using the “Daily Health Snapshot” feature), but it still feels redundant to the classic RHR. My fundamental opinion of HRV – that it only tells you what you already know – is largely unchanged.

In addition to Training Readiness, Garmin also provides Training Status. Training Status is designed to provide insight on your training over the long term, whether your fitness is generally increasing or decreasing. There are eight distinct training status states, each of which has a helpful but brief description as to what it is meant to indicate; they are listed on Garmin’s dedicated tech page for the Training Status feature.

Sub-Disciplines Are – And Are Not – The Same Sport

These are based off of VO2Max estimates, HRV data, and Acute Load (again, the ratio with chronic load). In general, I found these to be useful with a couple major caveats. And this is where my sense of what Garmin was – and more importantly was not – useful for started to emerge. On the running side, because it’s based on pace, I found that incorporating a lot of trail running would very much skew my metrics. That’s because there’s no ability for Garmin to reason about “technical” trails. Likewise, very steep trails – especially when descending – tends to throw NGP (normalized graded pace) for a loop, especially if those trails are also technical. On the road, I think there’s a very clear correlation between pace and fitness. That is also true when trail running, but the numbers are not equivalent. And this is really the biggest weakness of the FirstBeat approach. It treats all subcategories of a sport as the same. I.e., if you go for an easy 5K on the road at 4:30/km and your HR is 125bpm and then do an easy 5K on the trails at 5:00/km and your HR is 130bpm, that’s a sign of “decreasing” fitness. It does use NGP – so it accounts for the hilliness of the route, but it cannot account for the technical nature of running, nor does NGP work well, in my experience, for steep stuff. For running, this sort of okay, because you can opt-out certain sports from VO2 estimates. Once I told Garmin not to consider my trail running activities when calculating my running VO2, I found the data was much smoother, but also substantially less useful. My trail runs still counted towards my overall load, but Garmin could no longer reliably infer fitness gains from a fast trail run, because that run would often be relatively slow compared to a fast road run.Especially for someone with less experience training – I fundamentally know what works for me as a an athlete after 25 years of elite endurance sport, that could be incredibly confusing. And while you can wholesale discount certain sports, there’s no way to tell Garmin to ignore a specific activity, at least for VO2 purposes, or to possibly override it manually. This means that your HR monitor better be reliable. Thankfully, the built in Elevate 4 sensor is incredibly good. It’s actually shockingly accurate most of the time. But I still wear a chest strap for most of my training. But I had an older heart rate strap that I was using early in the year that had started to go on the fritz, and I would sometimes get periods of wildly high heart rate. This both dramatically increased my training load score and also resulted in Garmin assuming my fitness had tanked. And there’s literally no option to override values. Here’s where something like TrainingPeaks, where you just edit a workout and punch in a score for TSS is clearly superior. Garmin alludes to FirstBeat being able to detect aberrant data, but I would not say I found that to be the case. Maybe egregiously bad data, but not data that’s not impossible but is certainly implausible.

Unfortunately, this same locked-in approach is even worse with cycling. If you have a powermeter, Garmin gives you no option to opt a discipline out of cycling VO2Max. But I was training for XTerra. And I am not a particularly skilled MTBer. Especially on technical trails, my HR:power ratio is very different from what it is on the road. This was initially exacerbated by the fact that the Rally pedals I received, according to a static torque test using my tuned 20kg (+/-5g) mass that I have specifically for calibrating my powermeters indicated that the Rally’s were tuned about 2% low out of the box. And then, checking my Quarq, it seemed that when I’d switched from a gravel specific 42T ring to a road specific 50T ring – I run 1X on all my bikes, in spite of Quarq saying recalibration when swapping rings is not needed, my Quarq was 2% high in that same test. Once I got both powermeters in line with each other – and confirmed that they reported the same while riding, things were closer, but my HR was still higher MTBing. That’s partially because I’m not a great MTBer. But I also think fundamentally MTBing is more generally taxing than road riding. TrainingPeaks allows you to set a different FTP per discipline. But not Garmin. Cycling is cycling just like running is running. But that’s just not true. Ironically, realizing the overall utility of HR made me feel pretty good about simply taking power off of my MTB. While I couldn’t chose to opt out if I had power, I could opt out by simply not connecting to those pedals or by just putting my regular Shimano SPDs on.

The Rallys are an interesting proposition. They’re substantially more expensive – just over $1100 – than their direct competition, the Favero Assioma – just over $700, which also allows for pedal body switching and is also rechargeable. The Rallys really only make sense within the context of the Garmin ecosystem. In Garmin connect, if you have Rally pedals, you get a ton of incredible information about how you ride. Time standing vs seated, especially relevant for gravel and other endurance racers. Average cadence standing vs sitting. Power balance data but also information about where in the pedal stroke you apply power with each leg. Is this data useful or actionable? I’m not entirely sure. I have nearly identical L/R balance, and while I found the data on seated vs standing fascinating, I also wasn’t really sure how I could use it in a meaningful way. If you’re a data geek, the Rally pedals are phenomenal. They were bombproof in terms of reliability, and they offer real information about how you pedal. And, if you’re viewing all of this in Garmin Connect anyway – as Garmin is pushing you to do, then it’s a one stop shop. At 5mm taller (10mm total thickness increase) than the absurdly thin Shimano XTR pedals, they are thicker than the Assiomas as well, but only a bit. I didn’t have any times where I clipped a rock that I thought was solely due to the pedals. But ultimately, I was put off of using them for a few reasons. The first is a bit unique to me, though I suspect I am not the only person in this situation. I think that, fundamentally, you need to stick to a single system for measuring power. It’s clear now that power is less clearly reliable than we’ve been led to believe. And it’s certainly less transferable. If you are a Quarq user, stick to Quarq. I personally believe that spider-based powermeters are the most accurate. Even after recalibrating both devices, I found the Garmin pedals read low relative to my Quarq during “bursty” efforts. Interestingly I also found that my spindle-based Quarq also read relatively low. Spider-based powermeters just seem to be the most responsive to quick accelerations. Which is not surprising. They are the closest to the source. There’s a reason Uli Schoberer developed the SRM as a spider-based unit and that remained the gold standard – and may still be the gold standard – for accuracy. The chain deflecting the spider is how power is actually applied to the drivetrain. Everything else is further removed. Some of this is self-serving, certainly. I like that my Quarq tells me I’m stronger than the Rallys do. But I also trust my Quarq data because, over 15 years, it’s been incredibly consistent, and also matches up well as compared with what elevation analysis and the simply static torque tests reveal it should be reading. I’ve also owned a lot of Quarqs over the years, and they’ve all matched up with each other. Pedal-based power measurement is hard. You have two devices that need to be reconciled against each other in real time. This is not trivial. Ultimately, I don’t think this really matters, though. The Quarqs are accurate. And the Rallys are accurate. But I do not think they are transferable. Pedal-based powermeters are amazing for portability. If you have a MTB and a gravel bike, something like the Rally makes a lot of sense. If you’re a data geek, and you just love all that information – regardless of utility, the Rallys are amazing. But for me, especially trying to focus on the ecosystem as a whole, I found they were hard to integrate alongside a Quarq on my road bike. 

I think this is where the heavy restrictions Garmin places on treating all disciplines as the same is really the biggest miss. If I could have a different FTP on my MTB than on my road bike, which seems entirely reasonable – specificity is a thing, then I think I would have used the Rallys much more. If I do decide I want power on my MTB, most likely as a requirement for use with a Flight Attendant-enabled fork, I will likely choose to use a Quarq. My power numbers are Quarq numbers. Trying to mix measuring devices and disciplines just proved ineffective. The lack of power universality  is also plainly obvious with running. I have a Stryd footpod, and I think it’s reasonably useful in certain scenarios, mostly hill training. I also think it’s reasonably “accurate,” though the precise meaning there is certainly more nebulous than with cycling. But at the very least, I found my running FTP was fairly close to my cycling FTP. Which makes sense. And which jives with other endurance sports. My rowing FTP is lower still, but still within range. Current higher end Garmin watches will estimate power from the wrist. I found this number to be useless, as it was entirely out of line with anything that seemed reasonable – i.e. doing 400w+ on an easy run. Now, maybe if I had nothing to compare it to. But knowing both what Stryd had said and what I felt was reasonable just understanding physiology, I couldn’t comprehend that power numbers it was reporting. I promptly disabled this and essentially never again thought about it after day 1. I don’t really think that running power is a “thing,” and my experience here confirmed that. Perhaps further proof that with power, you need to pick a single system and stick with it.

Now, having opted out my MTB rides from my cycling fitness evaluation and having opted out my trail runs from my running fitness evaluation, it might seem like I was dealing with a hamstrung system. But I actually found it to be quite the opposite. I think that the granularity of daily VO2 measurements was possibly noisy. And eliminating certain activities allowed for a smoother picture of fitness that was easier to interact with. My training data seemed very accurate. During a period when I took a week off from work and did a lot of training, Garmin warned me I was overreaching. Tapering into XTerra Victoria, Garmin quickly recognized that I was shifting back and forth between Recovery and Peaking. Ultimately, I came to very much value the insights that the Garmin ecosystem was offering. 

Easy Really Should Be Very Easy

The biggest sign of the system’s utility was that I explicitly changed my training in response to what Garmin suggested. For easy runs, Garmin suggested a much lower HR – 125bpm – than what I would have otherwise considered. And I found those runs to be much more rejuvenating than ones that seemed only marginally harder – say 133bpm. 

Garmin’s Daily Suggested workouts follow a similar theme of being useful suggestions, but not necessarily prescriptions. Interestingly, for base workouts, they simply prescribe a duration and suggested HR. No warmup. No cooldown. Early on, I would choose to do these, but stopped after I got tired off my watch “alerting” me that I was not in the proper zone 1min into my run. If you do want to use the suggested workouts, start them once you’ve properly warmed up. Weirdly, interval workouts do have a suggested warmup and cooldown period, though they are – in my opinion – unreasonably strict. There’s no concept of a progressive warm-up or cooldown, which is unfortunate because I think the fundamental suggestions are sound. I ended up using the suggested workouts more as reminders to not just do base and low aerobic. In particular, combined with the very useful load distribution chart – which categorizes your prior four weeks of training into three buckets – Anaerobic, High Aerobic, and Low Aerobic, I found this to be incredibly useful for getting back into race fitness. This is again where TSS falls flat. TrainingPeaks does give you insight into time-in-zones, but Garmin’s three zone system is very simple. I had fallen into a habit of doing almost all low intensity work, and I noticed a dramatic fitness boost especially from incorporating more “high aerobic” work. This is what really impressed me the most about the Garmin system. I did sense real insight. There were some maddening parts as well – if you are a triathlete, it offers both bike and run suggestions, but only assumes you ever train one sport in a day. Now, Garmin does offer proper “training plans,” but with a busy job and a young family, I like the flexibility of having a loose schedule. And so the suggested workouts are nice. But it would be nice to see the system be a bit more responsive to doing multiple sessions in a day. As seems to be generally true of AI systems, they work best as a junior assistant. 

When The Data Is All You Have, Garbage Is Especially Bad.

As with any system that is entirely reliant on data, bad data is a problem for this system. This is where I wish Garmin offered better manual overrides. Nowhere is this more true than with swimming. While the 965 does measure HR while swimming, it admits that it’s only semi-accurate. If you want to get good HR data, you must use either the Pro strap of the Tri/Swim strap from Garmin. I did not – and I’m still undecided about wearing a HR strap while swimming… – and this is certainly the biggest miss in my evaluation of the system. My swimming load was generally very low, as is typical with optical HR sensors, when they are off, it is almost always that they read too low. Even during hard swim sessions, I’d often get a final average heart rate of barely above 100. And during threshold efforts my HR would register in the 120s or 130s. This meant swim workouts got dramatically undercounted in terms of the load they applied. I think if you really want to rely on this system as a triathlete, the swim-specific strap is a must. But I think it also shows the inherent weakness in a system where data is all there is. Wonky power or HR data can cripple such a system. The auto-detect max-HR feature worked fine, regularly reporting that my max HR is about 180. But when I wore the 965 – without a strap – during XTerra Victoria, the run data was wildly inaccurate, reporting that my average HR was approximately 190+ bpm for the entire run. For two weeks after this, after every workout, Garmin would constantly tell me that based off of historical data, it was changing my max HR to 196. I eventually disabled the auto-update maxHR feature as well.

In addition to struggling with HR accuracy, I also found lap counting to be another case of almost-but-not quite. I would say almost 100% of my swims the 965 would miscount a length or two. This was simultaneously impressive and incredibly frustrating. That the watch is properly able to identify send offs and stops with near stopwatch accuracy is remarkable. The fact that it randomly will decide that I did a 375 instead of a 400 was also super frustrating. I did learn that you should always check the compass app for accuracy before starting a swim, and do the figure-8 as you would with your phone to calibrate it if it’s wonky. This alleviated almost all of my swimming woes. And swimming LCM, the Garmin is essentially perfect, but in a SCY pool, I found that almost every swim it would short me a length here and there. Did this really matter? No. But what was so frustrating here is that Garmin offers you zero tools to correct this. Want to edit that 375 to be a 400 in Garmin Connect? No can do. There are numerous forum threads about this with Sisyphean solutions that involve various third party sites to do FIT file editing. I just ended up adding a drill block in at the end of my workout to add the extra 25 or 50 back in so that my count would be correct. I could have certainly ignored it, but I suspect I’m like most triathletes in terms of being neurotic enough that this is simply not an option. Again, it’s 99.9% accurate. But in some ways being so close almost makes the random dropping of a 25 here and there feel worse. It’s like, “why that rep?” But I can acknowledge that I’m only nitpicking because fundamentally, the system really does just work and counts and times your laps with incredible precision without you ever once needing to touch a button. Which is remarkable.

Overall, the system being so good means it’s incredibly reliable and useful over the long run. Individual outlier data does eventually get smoothed out. But I think that also magnifies the times that the system doesn’t work. One night, my watch got positioned badly, resulting in an abysmal sleep score, which then drastically reduced my apparent training readiness. I just ignored it, but it was another reminder that these quantified self-devices are there to help you make good decisions, not to make decisions for you. The system mostly does just work. But I don’t think you can just cede control over your training to it. The Garmin ecosystem was at its most useful when it was just another data point – or points – that I was able to meld with experience in order to keep my training both enjoyable and productive. Your watch can’t know if some days you just need to let it rip. And some days you just need to chill. Though I did find it remarkable that sometimes it actually compelled me to be honest with myself and to actually do those things when maybe I hadn’t really thought I was up to it. While it mostly succeeded in helping me go easy more often, there were also some times when I used an indication of high training readiness to let it rip, and those workouts – though they were few – were always good.

My Two Favorite Features – Heat Acclimation And Self-Assessment

The two features I actually came to enjoy the most appear to have no particular impact on the larger system, though I think they can and should. The first is the Heat Acclimation score. This would have been incredibly value when I was preparing for Kona or other hot races. The score is based on time training above 22C (which honestly feels a bit low to me), but overall, I found it to match up extremely well with my own experience around adapting to the heat. For workouts in warmer weather, it will tell you how much that workout increased your relative heat acclimation (out of 100%) and your overall acclimation. What’s especially interesting is how quickly it would dissipate. This gave me some solace about my 2013 DNF in Kona, when I missed doing my normal heat training block in the leadup to the race as I was sideswiped by a car and had to take a few weeks very easy to recover. I didn’t think I lost too much fitness, but I ended up overheating early in the bike and then dropping out on the run. Seeing the quantification of that heat training data on the 965 made me think back to that time in the heat that I missed and how quickly my acclimation would have faded. And how much time it takes to come back. The data here isn’t as good as what I think you get from CORE – or, perhaps, from the Epix’s Elevate 5 sensor that also considers skin temperature, and it also doesn’t account for humidity or the additional thermal load of something like riding a stationary trainer, and yet I can say that once my heat acclimation score was above 50%, I was a lot more comfortable in the heat. If you are preparing for a hot race, using this as a guide to make sure you are properly adapting to the heat would be very useful. I actually bought a Garmin external Tempe sensor – since discontinued – to get temperature data on my watch back before the altimeter (which also provides temperature data0 was standard on the Forerunner series. But actual heat training response is orders of magnitude more useful. While I think temperature is necessarily reflected in training load, I did think that Garmin could do a better job of accounting for this in terms of training status. If the weather suddenly turns hot and your VO2max, by default, drops due to being less fit in the heat, that doesn’t mean that training suddenly is Unproductive. This is where only using VO2max as a measure of fitness falls short. I hope Garmin figures out how to incorporate the heat data more broadly, as I think it is a miss to have it exist essentially as a standalone metric as it does now.

Interestingly, my favorite feature of the 965 appears to have not actual impact on anything. Though I found it to be incredibly useful as a habit builder. And that’s the post-workout RPE self-evaluation. After a workout, you score the RPE on a 1-10 scale from very light to maximal. And then you give a self assessment about how you felt on a 1-5 score from very weak to very strong, indicated by smiley (or frowny) faces. I love this. And the utility of this is well established. Self-evaluation – both in the moment and over the long term – is incredibly insightful. And, critically, it forces introspection. I found myself being more honest. And then I found myself using those evaluations to make decisions about whether or not to do a second workout. Or, having decided to do a second workout, how hard to make it. This, more than anything else, is my favorite feature of the current crop of Garmin watches. I’d love to see this data be presented in a more usable way – in particular, how has my 1-5 subjective eval tracked over time. But it’s only available currently on the individual workout screen.

The Ecosystem Hub – The New Garmin Connect

Thankfully, the data is there, and it’s just a software update away. And this brings us to Garmin Connect itself, the hub – newly reimagined – for all this data. In a running theme, Connect still has an almost-but-not-quite feel to it. Notably, the web app and the phone app have wildly different UIs. Finding data in one place on one app does not mean you will find it in the same place on the other app. There were also some very weird decisions about what is permanent. I have not played a round of golf in over 20 years. I have zero interest in golf. I do not own a Garmin Approach watch. I do not want to think about golf in any way. And yet Golf is a permanent and fixed section of the primary menus on both the web and mobile apps. I can’t view my long term RPE data but I’m forced to think about downloading golf courses. Does this really negatively impact my experience? No. But at the same time, I felt it highlighted the frustrations I had with needing all of these clicks and taps to view my training data and then thinking, “why is it one click to download a golf course?” Especially coming off the big overhaul, this felt like such an obvious miss. Pick your sport/athlete type and then just tweak the UI accordingly. It just felt like it was designed to undermine Garmin’s credibility with endurance athletes. For as amazing as the system is, it’s things like this that just make it harder to really trust.

I also think that Garmin is in danger – as Strava was as well – of trying to make Connect too many things. It’s added badges and challenges. I got a recent email from Garmin letting me know I could “have more fun with Connect!” Garmin has recently rolled out some straight up copy-cat Strava features that I just don’t think make sense. I understand that Garmin wants an ecosystem, but it can’t be all the things. I think Strava has wisely walked back – or at least de-emphasized – many of its features that seemed designed to compete with Facebook and Twitter. I don’t think Connect needs to replace Strava. While Strava does dabble in training data – and I do consider it dabbling, it’s not their core product. And while maybe some of the social features Garmin is introducing into Connect will likewise be “dabbling,” I wonder if those features are more meaningful than, say, the ability to remove Golf from your home screen…

Overall, my criticisms of the Garmin ecosystem are minor. And if history is a guide, the system will only continue to get better. Garmin’s track record of near constant and continuous improvement is exemplary. Having worn the 965 for over six months straight, only taking it off to charge – which is rare, as it has incredibly long battery life, I can say that I have found it to be an incredible ally in managing family, work, and training for my first triathlon in seven years. In that time, I certainly had my frustrations. But as someone who has worn nearly every revision of the Forerunner, from OG 201 up to this latest and greatest 965, seeing the evolution of not only the Forerunner as a watch, but also the Forerunner as part of a system designed for endurance athletes has been remarkable. When you buy into a system, a device becomes more than its specs and list of features. I arrived at the start line – and then the finish line – of XTerra Victoria fit, healthy, and happy. Most of that was the result of experience. But some of that experience was directly informed by feedback and information provided by the Garmin ecosystem. When Garmin first started incorporating FirstBeat data into its analysis of its user’s training, it became an instantly different company. Suddenly, it had opinions. I set out to discover, after nearly 15 years, whether any of those opinions were any good and worth listening to. I was initially very skeptical that it could teach me anything new, but I was open minded to the idea. And after half a year, I can say unequivocally that I believe it can help you make better decisions. I am even more convinced that you need to be the one making decisions; do not hand over the reins fully to these systems. They are not a replacement for a coach. But they are also not inherently worse. They are different. A coach comes with accountability. That is the most valuable and important thing that a coach offers. But that also comes with a cost and with potential downsides. Garmin is easy to ignore when you want to. There are countless memes about all the ways in which your Garmin is judging you. But I think it’s more trying to “care” for you. It just wants what’s best for you! And sometimes, I think it’s right.

The post The Garmin Ecosystem first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

The Nike LunaRacer was the first shoe I ever really loved. I wore a pair during my first Ironman win in Penticton in 2009, and then a modified version – the Lunar Mariah – at Arizona that same year that in hindsight was a step down; I was looking for a roomier toebox, which the Mariah offered, but it wasn’t overall as good a shoe. The upper was heavier and more prone to water retention and was fundamentally a worse Ironman shoe. But the sole – the Lunar foam – was amazing. Lunar foam was probably ahead of its time; without a carbon fiber plate, the bounciness wasn’t as propulsive as the current generation of super shoes, and I think this is likely why it never really took off the way I believe Nike thought it would.

Along with the original Hoka Bondis, these shoes were a complete departure from the fairly minimal shoes I typically enjoyed running in. Though I think that a part of that enjoyment was learned behavior. This was during the height of the minimalist phase of shoes, and while I never fully bought into the idea that running in minimal shoes could make your feet stronger, I thought if if you paid attention to lower-leg and foot strength as I did, that minimal shoes were beneficial from a performance standpoint. That is, minimalist shoes were useful tools to get faster. There’s continued research supporting this – INSERT LINK, and I suspect much of my “enjoyment” of these shoes came from a sense that they were accretive to my performance on race day. And, over time, they just became familiar. And certainly I loved the light weight. That feeling of the shoes being barely there, especially since I ran mostly on trails and dirt roads.

From mid-2018 until early 2020, I stopped running entirely to focus on track cycling. Running wasn’t going to make me a faster cyclist, and I had not yet really come to appreciate training outside of the concept of competition. I loved training, but in a “type 2 fun sense of the word. I appreciated the process of training and the sense of becoming fitter and faster. Training was fun because of its utility. This didn’t diminish its fun from my perspective. I loved – and still love – that sense of purpose. I derive a tremendous sense of satisfaction from repetition and process. And so when running wasn’t really servicing any sort of larger goal, I just stopped doing it. At times, I missed it. But I was more consumed then by the larger goal and purpose of pursuit training, and so whatever emotional attachment I had to running was a distant second to the primary attachment I had to the process of becoming faster on the velodrome.

It wasn’t really until perspective was forced upon me by the Covid lockdown that I realized I just loved training for its own sake and for the simple joy of being active. And it was at this point, I started to run again. In the same minimalist shoes I’d always run in. But these minimal shoes were always facilitators of “type 2” fun. Starting during the lockdown, the idea of the “fun scale” has taken on a preeminent role in how I think about training and – more generally – being active in my post-professional life. For those who aren’t familiar with it, the fun scale classifies fun into three distinct categories:
– Type 1: this is fun while you are doing
– Type 2: this is hard – and possibly unpleasant – while you are doing it, but fun in retrospect. Type 2 fun is what is most typically associated with endurance sport.
– Type 3: this is fun that is not actually fun. Like, an idea that seemed good but wasn’t, either during or after.

I’ve written recently about how certain decisions have made training “more fun.” For clarity, what I really mean is that I’ve found ways to turn training from almost exclusively “type 2” fun into “type 1” fun. I’d admittedly not thought about this all that much as an idea – training was *always* type 2 fun; that’s just how things worked – until I read a profile in the NY Times of 2021 pursuit world champion, former pursuit world record holder, and current America’s Cup cyclor Ashton Lambie that presented the shocking (to me) idea that Ashton was satisfied to just … ride. The real nugget comes at the end, though, where a former boss of Lambie’s says that his super power is that he experienced endurance training and feats that should have been type 3 (aka “not fun”) as type 2 fun. I wondered if you couldn’t take this a step further. If you could enjoy something that you shouldn’t, could you change *how* you enjoyed something that you should? If Ashton could experience type 3 fun as type 2 fun, I wondered if I could experience type 2 fun as type 1 fun. Could I just enjoy the simple act of doing, outside of any larger sense of purpose? Like Ashton, I think I managed often to experience type 3 fun as type 2. I think my best races were always on hard courses – often in particularly brutal conditions – because I think I just liked those courses. Winning the inaugural Leadman 250 in Las Vegas, when high temperatures in the aptly named Valley of Fire national park hit well into the triple digits and the winds were so strong my lead motorcycle ran out of gas 20 miles from T2, was probably the most fun I can remember ever having on a race course. It was a race that in some ways seemed impossible. And it was perfect.

I’d always had fun training. I loved my time as a professional, but it was pretty much always type 2 fun. I loved the feeling of accomplishment. The satisfaction of setting a goal and achieving it. And it wasn’t that I disliked like it in the moment; it was more that I’d developed over many years an understanding of the value of that delayed gratification. Something was fun because it *would be* rewarding. But the idea that it could be rewarding in the moment? That was an interesting idea.

In 2022, I got pulled into running a Ragnar Road Ultra with some friends from work. And I thought, if only for the performance and energy savings/return over 36 miles, I ought to get a pair of super shoes to run it in. I tried a few different pairs but didn’t find any that really clicked. And then I tried the Asics MetaSpeed Sky, and I thought, “oh wow. These are fast. And … fun.” Running in the shoes felt a bit like a joke. The old adage is that there’s no such thing as “free” speed. And yet suddenly there was. I liked running in those shoes. They had all the bounce and enjoyment of the Lunars and Hokas, but with that added propulsive magic of the carbon plate. There was none of the sponginess of those other shoes. That sense that yes they felt good, but that the good feeling was coming at a cost. For the first time, the shoes that felt the best were also the fastest.

For reasons mostly of price and durability – and lingering questions about the possible detriments of running in fully-plated shoes for all runs, I knew that the MetaSpeeds would not be my everyday shoe. But was there something “close enough”? I’d always had a special fondness for Asics shoes both because of their incredible history and because the Asics Piranha was the shoe that allowed me to race an Ironman after my near fatal hit-and-run accident in 2010; yes, I ran Ironman Arizona 2010 in a pair of what Asics marketed as 5k flats, because the minimalist, low-profile offered a stability that kept excruciating IT band syndrome from accident at bay. The sponginess of the Lunar foam shoes set my IT band on fire, because I didn’t yet fully understand what I really liked in shoes – a wide toebox, a broad midfoot at the sole but not in the arch (I have high arches), and a snug upper. I want the sole to be wide at the midfoot, but the upper to be relatively narrow so as to offer a sense of support under my arch. Our own Ryan Heisler helped me distill this when I sent him a list of shoes that I had run in that I had liked and those that I had not liked. He wrote back and said, “this is what you want from a shoe.” And he was 100% right, and this razor has never really failed me since.

Having found joy in the Asics MetaSpeed Sky, I decided to try the first version of the Asics MagicSpeed. The MagicSpeed was Daniela Ryf’s shoe of choice for Ironman racing, and it’s certainly a race-competent shoe. But it’s not a “super” shoe. It’s really more of a “tempo trainer,” with good – but not super – foam. And a partial caron plate, at least in the first and second versions; the third version makes it more of a race-oriented shoe with a full-length plate and more race-y foam; most reviewers praise these changes, but with a couple hundred miles in the third revision, I can say that they are good, but – for me – less universally outstanding. While this article is ostensibly about the MagicSpeed as a shoe, it’s really about finding shoes that bring you joy. The MagicSpeed and MagicSpeed 2 brought me joy. The MagicSpeed 3 is a very good. But it’s more purposeful. It’s definitely less good for easy running, which for me means 5:00/km+ (8:00/mi). It’s a tempo shoe. Or a race shoe. It’s fine for an easy jog, but the shoe feels a bit underwhelming. Part of this is the more race-oriented upper; the best upper – so far – was the 2nd revision, which was sort of a knit-style upper (without being a truly knitted upper). I like the shoe a lot, and with more of my easy miles on trails in the Speedland GS, I don’t mind so much that it’s not as good overall. It’s marginally better for fast running – and is certainly a more affordable race-day shoe, but it just seems like Asics went away from a shoe that was good at literally everything to make some small gains in the fastest runs. Would I have fallen in love with the MagicSpeed 3 if it was the only shoe I ran in – as was the case when I bought my first pair of MagicSpeeds? Hard to say. I think having a better idea of what I really enjoy in shoes, I’m more critical now. Having become open to the idea of a plated, high-rebound shoe, I was a bit of a blank slate when I got that first pair. I’d basically stopped running for almost two years. So I think inevitably there was some sheen to just rediscovering how great running was that the shoes benefitted from. Now, being back in the routine of regular running – and having found another shoe that I truly love in the Speedland GS, I think I’m more critical and my expectations are higher. It’s also possible that I was an odd consumer of the MagicSpeed, wanting it as an everyday shoe rather than as a slightly cheaper race shoe. But to me, that partial carbon plate was perfect. And the slightly heavier – but more forgiving – upper, especially on the MagicSpeed 2 was superb. When I finally killed my first pair of MagicSpeed 2s, I immediately bought another pair. When this pair of MagicSpeed 3s dies, I might – might – try something else. But probably not. The shoe is still really good.

But that first pair of MagicSpeeds was, simply, magic. This was a shoe I just liked to run in. It made running on the road substantially more enjoyable. I love running on the road because I find it a bit easier to fall into the zone than on the trails, where you need some level of constant vigilance to ensure you don’t twist an ankle. And because the road is fast. But it’s also unforgiving. Or, at least, it was until I ran in more responsive shoes. That made the road more forgiving, but without taking away any of what I enjoyed. Running on the road became a lot more fun. More type 1 fun. I just liked lacing up the MagicSpeeds and running. It felt good *while* I was running. I felt fast. I didn’t feel beat up. I ran more often with a smile. I wanted to run just to run.

I put a few hundred miles on that first pair of MagicSpeeds and then replaced them with MagicSpeed 2s, which notably improved the upper – really the only area of weakness on the first version, tweaked the outsole a bit to make it more durable, and was – in general – a solid update across the board. It kept everything I loved and fixed the few things I did not. The MagicSpeed 2 was – unquestionably – my favorite shoe ever, at least until I ran in the Speedland GS, though I think the MagicSpeed helped me to really appreciate the Speedlands in a way that I might not have before. I had run on and off since retiring, including an almost 18 month stretch without any running when I was focused on pursuing, and it was the MagicSpeeds that made me fall in love with running again. I don’t see myself ever taking another break from running, and I credit the MagicSpeeds for helping me rediscover the joy of running. The shoes were fast and fun. And they changed my expectations of what a great shoe could – and ultimately should – deliver.

Falling back in love with running made me appreciate the possibility that training more broadly could be type 1 fun. In finding a pair of shoes that was both fast and fun, I set out to find more ways that I could enjoy training while I was doing it. This led me to the Speedlands. To moving my bike computer to my wrist. To riding my gravel bike only with fat 650B tires. To get back on my rowing machine. The Asics MagicSpeed changed my perceptions of what a shoe could be. And what it could offer. And in doing so it helped reshape my sense of purpose and my belief in the value of training. I’ve always loved training. But now, I find, I especially love it in the moment. If that isn’t magic, I don’t know what is.

The post MagicSpeed Is Magic first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

Lauf's Seigla and 3T's new Extrema both take up to 57mm tires. That's somewhere between 2.1 – 2.25" MTB tires, depending on knob height. The 3T specs Continental Race Kings in 50mm. The Lauf comes with 45mm Maxxis Ramblers. What used to be the exclusive province Rene Herse (nee Compass) tires – though they still lead the class in slicks with their 55mm Antelope Hill tire – is now the province of many. Specialized makes the Pathfinder gravel tire in a 29 x 2.1" size. You could try their fast rolling XC race tire – the Renegade in 2.2. Maxxis offers the Rambler up to 50mm widths. On their Terra gravel tires, Continental goes "only" up to 45mm width, but 3T just specs the XC Race King tire – ostensibly a MTB tire – in 50mm width. Somewhat ironically, MTB tires have also gotten bigger – Specialized specs 2.35" tires on their XC race bikes, which a decade ago would have been shod in 1.95" or 2.0" tires, meaning that it's less easy than it was to just put MTB tires on your gravel bike.

The lines between gravel bike and mountain bike have always been blurry. Or course, the distinctiveness of bikes themselves have always been pretty blurry. The first mountain bikes – Marin's own Mountain Bike Museum and website are incredible resources here – started life as wide-tired road bikes. Perhaps the most clearly defining feature of a mountain bike is the flat bar. Bar shape – more than anything else – is really the last remaining true distinction that separates bikes into unique categories. Because handlebars are contact points, and they necessarily dictate the resulting geometry. Aerobars, drop bars, and flat bars. This is what really makes bikes different. There are full-suspension gravel bikes and fully rigid mountain bikes. When exactly one becomes "better" than the other for a given course is largely determined by the control and positions afforded by each bike's handlebar.

Tire size – which has a profound impact on suspension – actually helps to accentuate that positioning is the distinctive factor. On extremely rough – but mostly flat – roads (meant in the broadest possible understanding of the word), the positioning afforded by drop bars is necessarily superior. On smooth – but fairly narrow and "technical" – trails (meant in a more explicit sense of the word), the control of a flat bar is paramount. It's not surprising that Lauf – based in Iceland – has been pushing the envelope in "gravel" bike development, first with its leaf-sprung suspension fork and more recently with the massive tire clearance offered by the Seigla. Iceland is very flat. And most of the roads are washboard dirt. When I visited Iceland in 2017, I noted that most people owned two cars – a smaller electric or plug-in hybrid (electricity and hot water are both basically free in Iceland because of geothermal energy) car, and then a truck with massive balloon tires. The former is what you'd drive around town or on the perimeter road that encompasses the island. And the truck is what you take if you want to go inland. Lauf's bikes are expressly designed to tackle these inland roads. The roads are flat, wide, and rough. They are, in other words, exactly the type of roads that are best ridden on a bike with a lot of suspension – either actual suspension of some kind and/or from tires.

In the US, fire roads – wide enough and steep (or not-steep) enough to be navigated by a pickup truck or jeep – offer a similar calculus. There are a lot of places where the positioning of a drop bar is optimal but where a mountain bike was – previously – the "logical" choice because of the necessity of suspension and traction afforded by its larger tires. The incredible popularity of gravel bikes worldwide reveals that virtually everywhere has this type of terrain. If it's a "road," it's probably best ridden on a gravel bike.

The great thing about separating tires and positioning is that it allows better and more thoughtful discussions about what certain terrain actually requires in terms of positioning. Riders can now pick a bike that affords them the optimal position, knowing that they'll have ample suspension and traction regardless.

Wider tires also help to make "underbiking" a bit more accessible. I first discovered the concept of "underbiking" – which is riding terrain that is more technical than what your bike is ostensibly suited for – as I researched mountain bikes for my oldest son, who as a 6th grader has recently joined the local NICA team. The Belgian Waffle Ride in 2017 was probably my first real exposure to the idea of underbiking, and I still remember riding my road bike – a Diamondback Podium Disc with 28mm tires – on routes that I previously thought were the province of my full-suspension mountain bike. And enjoying it. Interestingly, as gravel bikes have both become more capable and people increasingly realize how capable they are, the calculus for mountain bikes seems increasingly to emphasize comfort. Underbiking can be fun. It can also leave you very sore.

But I think it's the control element that's the most compelling. Mountain bike handle bars are wider – much wider – than they were. 680-690mm bars are now considered "narrow." The cross-country bikes I bought for myself and my son come with 760mm bars stock. Ritchey's WCS bar now comes in a single 740mm width. I remember debating between their 560 and 580mm versions back when I got my first MTB. I actually found an old review comparing Ritchey's bar in those widths with the then unfathomably wide Easton EA-70 at 685mm, a width you will now unquestionably need to cut your bars down to achieve. While gravel bikes can somewhat manifest this control with flared bars, it's a secondary position, since additional control is itself a secondary requirement for a gravel bike.

I would have said that about 45mm felt like a practical limit on tire size. I ride 47mm Pathfinder Pros in 650B on my 3T Exploro, and I never feel like I run out of tire. But I think the extra width is less about capability – you can ride Belgian Waffle on 25mm tires; it's just more fun on 30 or 32mm tires – and more about comfort. Underbiking for an hour is fun. Underbiking for a day – especially when it's not a race – is perhaps less so. Certainly there's a rush when you send a line you maybe think you shouldn't have on tires so skinny. But I certainly have found the novelty of that wears off. The main reason I run my 3T in the 47mm x 650B setup is because I find it's more forgiving than the 38mm x 700C that I had on before. There's nothing I really need the 650B setup for. But I definitely enjoy it.

3T positions the Extrema as opening up new possibilities. Its name implies that this bike allows you to ride hitherto unrideable – at least on a gravel bike – routes, especially since it chose to equip the bike with mountain bike tires. Lauf, on the other hand, simply presents big tires as an option. The Seigla can fit 57mm tires, but it comes with 45mm gravel tires. I prefer the Lauf narrative, because I think the jump from mid/high-40mm widths to mid/high-50mm widths just isn't that meaningful in terms of what you *can* ride. I think it has a lot more of an impact on what you might *want* to ride. I don't think I'd choose to take my bike on anything more "extreme" as a result of wider tires. But I might ride faster, further, and feel less beat up the next day.

Both 3T and Lauf continue to be among the most innovative companies in cycling today. Lauf's recently launched road bike – the Uthald – looks like a wonderful bike that – as with all their bikes – is available at an astonishingly good price for the quality. 3T still makes – and continues to improve – their Strada road bike. Both bikes emphasize the benefits of wider tires and aerodynamics. Drawing on their founders roots as prosthetics designers – and drawing from the innovations in their carbon-leaf-spring suspension forks, the Uthald's story is – as with all Lauf bikes – one of compliance. While it's a fully rigid frame, the carbon has been designed to offer about 15mm of compliance, which they equate to a 23mm tire. That's on top of the generous compliance of the 30 or 32mm tires you'll almost certainly run. Compliance is the story of Lauf, and having been inland in Iceland, on those washboard roads, it's easy to see why. 3T stays true to current co-owner (and really co-founder of 3T as it exists today) Gerard Vroomen's roots as pioneer in cycling aerodynamics. All 3T bikes – even the Extrema – emphasize the importance and value of aerodynamic optimization. These strong narrative threads – compliance for Lauf and aerodynamics for 3T – are a big part of why I believe they continue to be so innovative. They have a solid foundation philosophically from which to iterate. While those foundations are quite different, it's not surprising that they lead the industry in pushing the design envelope on tire size on drop-bar bikes.

Are tires that wide necessary? I don't know. But I think having the option allows a focus on positioning that's unquestionably a good thing. What position do you want to ride? What tires do you need to ride that position comfortably? Being able to answer those questions separately is remarkable. And I think it's the gift of that choice that is these companies greatest innovation.

All Lauf images provided by and copyright of Lauf. All 3T images provided by and copyright of 3T.

The post Can Tires Be Too Big? first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

When I first started rowing, I was captivated by the objectivity of the Concept 2 ergometer. At any moment, you knew exactly how hard you were working. Tracking improvement was purely mathematical. It was my first meaningful exposure to the concept of time as a measurement of performance and competition. I'd always been a ball sport player, and mostly team sports – football, squash, and lacrosse. I'd done swim team in middle school, but I wasn't very good (my growth spurt wouldn't come until high school), and racing didn't resonate with me the way it eventually would. It wasn't until I started rowing that I understood what it really meant to have your entire world defined by the ticking of a clock.

I had gone to Princeton hoping to walk on to the then three-peat NCAA division 1 championship lacrosse team. It was a long shot – and I picked the university more for its academics than its sports, but as a high school All-American, I thought it was not impossible. Unfortunately, I was a goaltender, and there's only so many "extras" of those required, unlike a more utilitarian position like a midfielder. It was a devastating blow when I didn't make the team, since being an athlete had always been a part of my identity. I actually was a four-letter athlete in high school – I was a part-time member of the cheerleading squad as the school mascot, and I didn't really know what to do with myself if there wasn't practice at the end of the day.

I played a season of "sprint football" – it's a weight-limit variant of the game played by only a handful of schools including Princeton, Cornell, West Point, Annapolis, and a couple others. But I wasn't much good at football and, honestly, I didn't really like being a part of a team that wasn't particularly competitive. I'd never been a part of a team with a losing record before, and it did not sit well with me. At that time – late 90's, college rowing was still fairly receptive to walk-ons. The coaches would stand by freshman class registration and holler at anyone tall – especially females – and ask if they wanted to row. It's almost entirely dominated by recruited athletes; and even in my case, I was one of only a couple walk-ons to eventually make the varsity boat. But – unlike with lacrosse – rowing was a sport where anyone who was willing to do the work was welcome.

What I didn't know then – but came to quickly discover – is that the rowing coaches relied on the work to weed people out. They didn't need to cut athletes. The erg would do it for them. But for me, it was a revelation. Having spent so long in sports where the subjective opinion of coaches was the only thing that mattered – and having been frustrated by that on numerous occasions, here was – at last – a sport where you were evaluated (it seemed) based solely on numbers. I'd eventually come to realize that the subjectivity of coaches was as much a part of rowing as any other sport, but as a freshman, at least, the erg was the only thing that mattered. Make the numbers better, and it means you are getting better. If your numbers are better than someone else's numbers, you are better at rowing than someone else. For four years, this defined my approach to sport, and while it was overly simplistic, it was transformative. This made sense to me in a way that sport had never really made sense before.

When I picked up triathlon after graduating – ostensibly as a way to cross train while recovering from a rowing injury, I missed the pure objectivity of the erg. If I wasn't running on the track, I didn't know really how fast I was running. I quickly discovered that speed on the bike was fairly useless, and HR was often as confusing as it was helpful. The pace clock was wonderful – and made sense in a way that it never did back in middle school – but it lacked the immediacy of the erg where you knew precisely how good each and every single stroke was.

When I started working with Joel Filliol in 2005, he insisted I buy an SRM. That first ride transported my back to the boathouse. Cycling suddenly made sense. From that point on, I've logged essentially every ride I've ever done on a bicycle with a powermeter. On the very rare occasions I'd ride without a powermeter – usually in the offseason when I'd dabble with mountain biking, I admittedly felt a bit incomplete. Did that ride even count? I had my doubts…

Running was still a bit of a grey area; I loved the track and also bought a meter wheel so I could measure out precisely some of the common time-trial sections I ran hard efforts on. But I hated not knowing with precision exactly how far or how fast I had run. When Joel took the job as head coach of British Triathlon in 2009, I started working with Michael Krueger, who was my coach for essentially the remainder of my professional career. Similar to how Joel had mandated a powermeter, Michael insisted that I get a GPS watch for running. It was imperative that he have some quantitative insight into my running and – in particular – he was prescriptive about specific pace targets in a way that Joel hadn't been. I had owned the very first Garmin Forerunner – the pill shaped 101 – but I lived at the time in a fairly tree-heavy area in New York and the receptivity and reliability of the device simply wasn't very good. Prescriptive paces also wasn't something that was so core to my training then – it was reserved for track sessions, and so it never became as integral to my training as my powermeter. But GPS evolved – I'm an enthusiastic Garmin fanboy and have lost track of how many different Forerunners I've now owned – and the 305 was reliable enough – even in the trees – that, along with the changes to the way that I trained, it became my constant companion. As with cycling, if there was no second-by-second record of my run, did it even happen? I wore my 305 so much that I ended up getting blisters on my wrist – I loved it, but I do not miss its bulk – and had to fashion a special pad (out of an old latex innertube) to keep it from abrading my wrist.

And this was just how I trained. I needed to see the numbers. The training was the numbers. And the numbers were the training. I certainly enjoyed my surroundings. I loved – and still love – being outside. But I also needed that feedback – immediate and omnipresent – to feel complete. To feel like I was properly preparing – because training was always about preparation and about competition. But the Covid shut the world down. It forced me – and everyone else in the world – to take a break from competition. And it also allowed me, finally, to actually retire from sport. I'd retired officially – well, as officially as any pro triathlete ever retires, whatever that even means in our sport – in 2017 when I went to work at Zwift. But in my mind, being an athlete remained my primary identity. The lockdown allowed me to finally let go of that. To have sport be something I did rather than something I was.

And it made me develop a renewed appreciation for having fun – Type-2 fun, admittedly, but fun nevertheless. I still loved data. I still loved knowing that even as I was getting older, I was still plenty fast – in some cases, when I was purely focused on cycling, I was even faster! And I think the dedication and commitment – though perhaps no longer truly an obsession – with data and objectivity is just a part of who I am. But I was happy with it serving mostly as a historical record. There are those times when I go hunting for KOMs – or more likely PRs; Southern California is home to too many very fast people – when I value the immediacy of information. But more often, I just like knowing how I did, rather than how I'm doing.

Numbers still matter to me. A lot. But I also care equally as much about having fun. About just enjoying the outdoors. About taking a break from my desk and being grateful that I am still healthy, still fit, and still able to be active every day. The biggest change I made was that I stopped using a bike computer. I didn't want my power to be starting me in the face every moment of every ride. My cockpit is clean, which has the added benefit of being incredibly pleasing aesthetically. I still have my power and GPS data – it's just on my watch. My Forerunner has become my riding computer as well as my running computer. I had the idea to start using my watch as my bike computer because I realized how long I could and would go without ever looking at my watch when I ran. I'd just go run. And I might never look at my watch. And I thought, I wonder if I'd like riding like that. And it turns out I do.

Ironically, I've gotten back on the rowing machine, and when I row, I now look at power rather than pace, because power on the erg is somehow less objective. Pace was the guiding metric when I was racing. Power has an abstractness to it on the Concept 2 that makes it … more fun.

I realize how small this seems. The data is still right there. But it's also not. The difference between a bike computer with your precise wattage in the most prominent location possible and a watch you might never look at has been, for me, enormous. It's transformed the way that I ride and, more importantly, the way that I think about riding. When I go ride now, I think about having fun. About simply enjoying being outside. A clean cockpit – but with the security of knowing that I have the data if I want it – has been a revelation. I just wanted to think of riding as training a bit less. But I discovered I was able to almost entirely change my mindset. And, in doing so, I've actually ended up riding more. And, perhaps unsurprisingly and perhaps not, I'm in as good or better shape. I just set out to have more fun. But in doing so I found more fitness. I have less desire to use it for anything specific; after 25 years of being almost solely focused on racing, most of it alone, I've found I enjoy team efforts more than individual ones. Ragnar running races have brought me the most joy over the past couple years, and I had substantially more fun joining a bunch of friends to race the team pursuit at UCI Masters Worlds in 2022 than I did racing the individual pursuit. I rarely, if ever, race Zwift on my own, but the annual ZRL is a high point of my year, though I mostly serve as a domestique in the points races and only really excel in what has become my favorite event, the Team Time Trial.

While I don't know how receptive my younger self would be, it is a lesson I wish I'd discovered earlier. Not that I didn't enjoy the training when I was a professional. The training was always the best part. I raced because that's that what paid; but I did it so that training could be my job. I raced so I could train, and not vice versa. But I still think I missed enjoying the training more than I should have. I didn't allow myself to have fun as much as I could have or, I think, should have. I don't think it would have taken much. A clean cockpit seems to have given me more than I could have asked for. It's made cycling more fun. And helped me love it even more.

The post A Clean Cockpit Is More Fun first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

I realize that it's folly to try to humanize businesses. Or to imply that they are something "more." Businesses are, ultimately, simply that. And certainly "purpose" has far too often been used for obfuscation more than anything else. As Stewart Brand so eloquently puts it in The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at MIT, "Information wants to be free. Information also wants to be expensive. […] That tension will not go away." I think this tension exists more broadly as the tension between purpose and profitability. There's been a fairly seismic shift in corporate leadership over the past year among some of the most influential companies that consider triathletes to be among their primary and most engaged users. The press releases announcing these leadership decisions have all been entirely devoid of purpose and entirely focused on profitability. Perhaps it's simple naivete to find that interesting, or to believe that such tension ever really existed. And yet having been quite involved in the actual business of two of them – Specialized as a sponsored athlete and Zwift as an employee, I can say that passion and purpose ran deep in the veins of the founder-CEOs.

Strava recently announced the hiring of Michael Martin as their new CEO. Martin will replace co-founder Michael Horvath. Martin comes from YouTube, where he ran Shopping for almost two years. Prior to that, he had a long stint at Nike in the Digital Products division. Martin's background – in particular his work at Nike on Nike Run Club – makes him seem like a strong choice. And yet the press release contains virtually no information on Martin's interests as an athlete himself.

This follows a similar trend to Specialized's 2022 announcement of Scott Maguire as CEO and Zwift's 2022 announcement of Kurt Beidler as co-CEO. Maguire came from Dyson, and – as with Martin – the press release is entirely focused on consumer product chops – physical consumer products in the case of Maguire; digital in the case of Martin. Beidler came from Amazon, where he ran the Amazon Kids+ division. I've heard that both are cyclists – Beidler's LinkedIn background features him riding a bike with a race number on his helmet, but I do find it interesting that this wasn't something that the PR teams considered important enough to merit a mention.

IRONMAN is still on the lookout for their new CEO, and I'm very interested to see if they follow the apparent trend of focusing solely on their business as makers of things that people "consume." Given that none of these are public companies, it does feel a bit odd that the press releases read entirely as if they are intended for investors, without much regard for the actual user base.

There are few truly large companies that touch triathlon very directly. The new CEO of IRONMAN will unquestionably have the most direct impact on our sport, but Strava, Zwift, and Specialized are all companies that have had a significant influence on triathlon. Specialized's own on-again-off-again history has had dramatic impact – at least within the professional ranks – when they decide that the sport is no longer an area of real interest. And their impact on the cycling industry more broadly is even more meaningful. Cycling was – and still is – at the very core of both Specialized's founder Mike Sinyard and Zwift's co-founder Eric Min. I don't have the same personal relationship with either of Strava's co-founders, but one need look no further than Strava itself for proof that being active is an integral part of who Horvath (athlete #57!) and Mark Gainey (athlete #10!) are as people. How many miles has Martin ridden or run on Strava? Is that not relevant?

The leadership and direction of these companies matters both because they are not easily replaced and because their size allows them to have uniquely powerful and broad influence. Strava is perhaps the most irreplaceable, and the company whose focus has perhaps the most outsize impact. Strava's massive user base and correspondingly large data set now plays a critical role in helping to define infrastructure projects. Whether and where bike lanes happen is uniquely influenced by Strava. And while there are competitors to Zwift, it remains the brand that truly defined indoor cycling. Both the size of its community and its unique commitment to cycling development with Zwift Academy and – especially – the TdF Femmes avec Zwift also mean that the way in which it choose to grow and evolve and invest has ramifications in ways that other company's decisions simply do not. Specialized is less unique than either Strava or Zwift – there are other equivalent bike companies in ways that there just are not for either of those other two, but it's a major employer, advertiser, and driver of cycling technology. Likewise, Specialized's charitable efforts – through their Outride project in particular – are impactful in ways that are only possible because of Specialized's scale and resources. And IRONMAN, of course, is synonymous with triathlon itself.

While the skills required to found a business are certainly somewhat different from the skills required to help an established business evolve and thrive, I still believe that a passion for the underlying sport – or sports, in Strava's case – is essential. With over 100M users, Strava is certainly more mainstream than Specialized, which is itself more mainstream than Zwift. And yet these are still brands that cater to a very specific type of consumer. In particular, a consumer that I think values knowing that someone is "one of us." While I didn't always agree with every decision Andrew Messick made as CEO of IRONMAN, he was a triathlete. The sport was a part of him as much as he was a part of it. In a 2012 profile, Bicycling wrote of Sinyard that, "Mike is fascinated by bicycles, addicted to them, and expects everyone who works at Specialized to feel pretty much the same." 10 years later, there's no mention of whether the new CEO even rides a bike.

At the risk of delving into politics a bit, there's currently a marked disconnect between how the US economy is doing and how people "feel" it is doing. Some of this is, of course, reflective of a dissonance between certain measures of economic health and activity, and the actual ways that typical consumers are actually impacted. But I think it also speaks to the importance of purpose. And of belief. I was quite curious about Strava's decision to introduce messaging as its latest big feature. And I will admit to chuckling when I saw that the first comment on Strava's official LinkedIn post announcing Martin's hiring was, "First thing to do: drop the messaging function. Focus on your core." Purpose is not ancillary to these businesses. And I don't think it can exist solely as a facilitator and driver of revenue.

It's impossible to say whether things would be different if these were public companies. The death of small and mid-cap companies at the hands of PE and VC groups is well beyond the scope of this article, though I think it is quite clearly relevant. Nor is it all clear either that these new CEOs lack passion for the purpose that led to the founding of the companies they now lead. Based on observable decisions and product direction in the case of both Specialized and Zwift, the businesses are – for the better – essentially unchanged. Specialized still makes great bikes. And Zwift still makes virtual roads that are incredibly fun to ride. I think this also helps to emphasize that we tend to overestimate the actual importance and influence of CEOs, but that's also a topic for another day. But I think we do lose something when the narrative drifts so far from purpose and focuses solely on the business. If there is to be a tension between purpose and profits, it's up to all of us to ensure that we help maintain it.

[photo of Michael Martin © Strava 2023]

The post Does Strava’s New CEO Ride A Bike? first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

"Strength training" is a complicated idea, especially for endurance athletes. While there's a specific clinical definition of "strength" – it's the maximum (singular effort) amount of force that you can produce through muscular contraction, this is rarely what most people – and especially most endurance athletes – actually mean when they talk about getting "stronger." Ultimately, strength training from a practical standpoint has come to mean, essentially, "any non-sport-specific movement that's hard and relatively short." But the further adrift we get from explicit and clear meaning, the harder it is to have meaningful conversations. I won't wade into the especially murky waters of "functional training" and "functional movement" and their purported promises around "resilience" and a great deal else, though I think it is a topic worth exploring at some point.

Running exists in essentially the opposite space. All running is basically productive as training for running. If someone says, "I ran 30 minutes" or "I ran 5 miles," I think we likely have a fairly similar idea of what that entailed. Cycling is mostly productive, though the massive draft benefit can render long rides in a group much less productive than people realize. "I rode 10 miles" has a much wider range of possible meanings than our theoretical runs. Swimming is likely the closest analog to strength training. Especially when people do "drills," which – especially for adult-onset swimmers – are often of dubious benefit. Someone who says, "I swam for 30 minites" could, in my experience, have done almost anything ranging from something I think most triathletes would agree is "swim training" to something that more closely resembles water aerobics. This isn't meant as a criticism in any way, more just to try to frame the difficulty in having a practical conversation about "strength training." Strength training is a lot like drills for swimming. It can mean almost anything depending on to whom you are speaking.

Even when done effectively, strength training is almost always what I'll call a "secondary" training stimulus. It doesn't directly make you faster. Ideally, it supports your primary training – your swimming, biking, and running – which is what actually makes you faster at swimming, biking, and running. There are some notable exceptions. Explosive lower leg exercises – heavy calf raises and plyometrics – improve lower leg stiffness, which appears to directly correlate to improved running economy.

Though as is typical, there's regularly competing research that shows no benefit to strength training over endurance training alone. As is often the case with small sample sizes, teasing apart signal and noise and drawing larger, more general conclusions is always a challenge. During my professional career, I had an on-again-off-again relationship with strength training, but it was mostly off. If I had more time – or, more specifically since I have essentially unlimited time, energy – to dedicate to training, it was best spent swimming, biking, or running. I got more into strength training since retiring, though it started in a fairly unique way.

Upon retiring from professional triathlon to work at Zwift, I remained – at least in my own mind – an athlete first and foremost. I'd been focused on sport above all else for virtually all of my adult life, and while I had no qualms about giving up racing, it was much harder than I realized to give up what I felt was essentially my identity. I did some gravel racing, but it was too much like Ironman to really captivate me. I was competent and had some good successes – KOM jersey at the 2018 Belgian Waffle Ride and 6th overall at the 2018 edition of the then-Dirty Kanza (now Unbound Gravel), but I did not love it. I discovered track cycling that fall – the Carson velodrome being only about 10 minutes from Zwift's offices in Long Beach – and fell in love. Pursuiting brought me back to my roots as a rower with the just long enough to be extremely unpleasant and just short enough to be really fast. In another life, track cycling could certainly have been my sport. While it wasn't totally insane, it was quite obviously (in hindsight anyway) a ludicrous goal when I decided I'd try to make the Olympic team in the pursuit. This seemed more plausible than it likely ever was because the US men's pursuit team is not particularly good (within the context of the very pointy end of elite track racing).

They failed to even qualify for the Tokyo games, which unfortunately meant that the best American pursuit rider of the past decade (and possibly the best American pursuit rider ever with a World Championship, World Record, and first ever sub-4 4Km to his credit) Ashton Lambie never got to race in the Olympics. Putting all of that historical context aside for a moment, the biggest obstacle for me as a pursuiter – especially a team pursuiter (now the only timed endurance race in the Games) – was that I am not a very good starter. This has always been the case. I wasn't a great starter as a rower. My poor starting ability as a swimmer was really the cause of probably 80% or more of my relative weakness as a triathlete. I just don't have explosive power. This does come with some significant benefits though, as that same physiology largely kept me from being able to blow myself up during long races. But having a peak power of – reliably – high-900w and – on great days – 1000w simply was not sufficient, especially when starting 110"+ fixed gears from a gate as is required for pursuiting.

Thankfully, the recipe for getting faster at starts is relatively simple. It's about strength. Clinical strength. And it's quite clearly established that heavy lifting provides that. But I had two problems. The first was the heavy squats and deadlifts are very challenging to do on your own, especially safely. These are exercises that require a spotter. The second was time. Nevermind the weird delusions involved in thinking that my commute prevented me from being able to get to a gym where I could lift effectively was somehow not going to be a problem when it came traveling to track races in foreign countries. I figured I'd cross that bridge when and if I came to it. In the short term, I needed a way to lift heavy and lift safely.

My long time trainer and physical therapist recommended that I look at flywheel training. There seems to be some debate about the origin of flywheel devices; the story I heard – which is a common one – is that it was pioneered originally by NASA (links to a presentation on a current device) as a way for astronauts to preserve muscle tone in the absence of gravity. But it may be quite older. The research of Per Tesch is a reasonable starting point, and whether that's the actual beginning or not is probably not hugely important. Fundamentally, the science is what it is – moment of inertia is preserved even when weight is not, flywheel or "yo-yo" training devices are not new, but they are newly popular. Driven by – as much of the innovation in sports science seems to be these days – companies in Scandinavia, flywheel training works by providing high eccentric loading. Eccentric loading has long been known to offer significant benefits – Eccentric Muscle Contractions: Risks and Benefits and especially The effects of eccentric versus concentric resistance training on muscle strength and mass in healthy adults: a systematic review with meta-analysis – that possibly even exceed the benefits of classic, concentric load strength training. For a quick primer, eccentric load is basically the "negative" load that's applied when slowing against gravity. When squatting, the concentric load is when you stand up, and the eccentric load is when you lower yourself down into the squat position. The classic example most runners and triathletes know is running downhill and – especially post-race – the agonizing experience of walking down stairs.

Flywheel training works quite simply. You apply torque to a flywheel and accelerate it, giving it rotational inertia. That applies some load, but it's not particularly stimulating, especially as compared with a very heavy concentric contraction. But, upon reaching the end of your range of motion, the momentum then attempts to pull you back down. Especially for a squat, where the flywheel and gravity are working in concert, this force is significant. Combined with the relatively higher load experienced during eccentric contractions, you are able to effectively replicate the stimulus of heavy, classic concentric loading with much less weight. Eccentric loading may even be more beneficial than concentric loading, but most studies are at least convinced that it's equally good.

The particular device he recommended was made by a Swedish company Exxentric. Their kBox device is used by a number of professional/elite track cyclists. I was drawn in particular to the kBox Lite because it is – as its name implies – light and quite portable. Unlike a traditional squat rack, I could bring this with me to work. I also liked that it had a digital measuring device that hooked up to a phone app, allowing you to actually track progress. After using the kBox for a while, I found that my peak power on the kBox matched up almost exactly to my peak power during track starts. I don't use the KMeter as much anymore – I don't need specific numbers to tell me if I've gotten a good workout in – and definitely consider at an optional – but worthwhile – add-on. But I did value the quantitative feedback it provided. But really, it was the portability that sold me. I would take the escalator up to the Zwift office with my backpack holding my laptop, a change of clothes, and my squatting harness and deadlift attachment bar on my back, my flywheel bag with two large and one medium flywheel – more than enough load for even the hardest workouts – over my shoulder, my kBox slung over my other shoulder, and my track bike rolling beside me.

In addition to its portability, the primary reason my trainer recommended the kBox was that flywheel training is relatively quite safe and also does not require a spotter. While you can injure yourself doing just about anything, the specific way in which flywheel trainers work mean that they can only impart as much load to you as you can impart to them. A flywheel will only pull you down as hard as you can pull up on it. If you do a workout like 5x max effort squats, you'll inevitably see a drop off between reps. When doing classic squats or leg press, you might replicate this with a spotter by having them pull plates off between reps, allowing you to fully exhaust your muscles, but this requires a skilled spotter. With a flywheel, this is just what happens. It's virtually impossible to get yourself into a situation where you do one rep too many and fail partway through and need to figure out a safe way to jettison the bar. The specific stimulus of eccentric loading is very similar to plyometrics, but again it's safer than jumping up onto (and down from) a box, though the newer foam boxes for plyos do help a bit here. But plyos require a lot of coordination to do well, and flywheel squats just aren't that demanding.

You can achieve a lot of the same type of stimulus safely with dedicated machines – leg press, etc. But unlike a dedicated machine, a flywheel trainer has nearly the universality of a bar and freeweights. I mostly did regular parallel squats – the king of exercises – but split squats, straight leg deadlifts, high-pulls, and almost anything else imaginable is very doable using the same simple device. While it's best for lower body exercises, you can do a fair number of upper body exercises as well, especially if you use the included floor anchor so that the device stays put without requiring body weight. My total cost for the kBox Lite with kMeter including most of the accessories I thought I'd want – belt for squatting (closer to leg press), harness for squatting (closer to traditional squat), bar (for bent over rows and straight leg deadlifts), single handles for most upper body work, and two large and one medium flywheel – ran me $3155 in 2018, and I expect it will last me a lifetime.

Since I shifted my overall focus in training to be entirely pursuit-centric – I rode the track 1-2x a week, I stopped running, put on about 10lbs, and semi-regularly supplemented with more traditional strength training. I'm reticent to try to tie any specific gains to the kBox directly, especially given what I've said about strength training being largely secondary. But in terms of pure performance, I saw my peak power on the road get up over 1200w and my track starts were regularly in the 1000-1100w range, and I could on good days top 1100w. I've since returned to running and dropped those 10lbs, but I've managed to hang onto most of the explosive gains, largely I think because I never stopped working on it nor did I stop strength training. Running makes me happy, and I love being a recreational multisport athlete. The forced lockdown of 2020 and 2021 helped me finally retire in my own mind, and so I don't have the same obsession with seeing myself as a competitive athlete, but the kBox remains a regular part of my routine, mostly because it makes me feel good and is so approachable. It offers the sort of workout options that I think would have kept me more consistent in regards to strength training when I was racing, especially because it's so convenient. It the rare home gym device that actually lives up to its promise.

While the kBox is adequate for upper body exercises, it's not ideal. In particular, the fact that the force – barring some very creative mounting (which people do in fact do; you can mount it upside down on a ceiling and do eccentric pullups…) – always comes from below you does limit what you can do. I have particularly problematic shoulders – shoulder pain, especially after my accident – was a constant battle. And I think that more upper body strength really might have helped my starts in open water. The Exxentric kPulley fills this gap. There's a fair bit of overlap between what you can do on each device – as with the KBox, with some creative mounting you can do almost anything, including squats, but certainly each has its own set of optimal uses. The kPulley Go – which Exxentric provided for this article – is particularly portable, so much so that I'd say it's viable to bring to the pool to do dryland before or after swimming. Its adjustable height – especially when used with the rail system – really makes it ideal for upper body work, especially overhead exercises. Any of the classic stretch cord exercises can be done on a kPulley but with a much more flexible load profile. As I work to try to keep up with my oldest son, who's gotten into competitive rock climbing, the kPulley gives me a lot of great options for focusing on the health of my admittedly sub-optimal shoulders.

You can put together a very complete kPulley setup for less than $2000. Along with a kBox, the total cost for a home gym that takes up less space than a treadmill, is as portable as a bike trainer, and truly offers access to literally every exercise imaginable in a safe and approachable way is about $5000 total. The system is virtually maintenance free – flywheels are super simple and if, somehow, you do wear out a cartridge bearing, it's about as simple as replacing any cartridge bearing on your bike.

While I think the convenience is perhaps the biggest selling point – training for triathlon takes a lot of time; adding in gym time to that is just a big ask, I think it's really the approachability that flywheel training offers that I love. Telling someone to add in strength training has always felt like telling someone to do drills in swimming. At best, it might do no harm. At worst, it makes them slower or injures them. But based on my own experience, flywheel training is both safe and effective.

I'll cover triathlete-specific workouts in future articles, but fundamentally, I split my workouts into two basic groups – 30sec efforts and 5-rep efforts. 3-5 reps seems to be the sweet spot in terms of maximizing benefit. The unique falloff that you can get with the flywheel makes it easier to do 5-rep-max sets than it is on a traditional machine or with freeweights. The 30sec reps is something that's a bit more unique to flywheel. Unlike with freeweights where momentum both is a bit dangerous and – typically – makes things easier, momentum on the flywheel is what makes it hard. 30sec reps are some of the most uniquely awful things that I think I've done to myself. I consider these to be the more challenging of the two – and perhaps the one to be more cautious about, since I do worry more about form breakdown; 30sec is a long time at high effort – and the one I do less often, but I think it does provide both a unique challenge and a unique stimulus. But the 3-5 rep maximal effort is simple and great for the core exercises like squats and other big muscle group exercises in 3-5 sets – removing flywheels as needed; lower moment of inertia isn't necessarily "easier" in the same way that lighter weight is easier. For smaller muscle groups I typically will do higher reps – 8-12 – with a bit more focus on technique. There are coaches who specialize in strength training programs for flywheel devices, though I think for most triathletes it's probably not something you need. Squats, calf raises, straight leg deadlifts, and hip flexion are the main exercises I'd suggest based on evidence and then for swimming I think it really depends on where you're at and, in particular, if you do or do not have specific weaknesses in your shoulders. Exxentric's own YouTube channel is also an invaluable resource that I refer to regularly. In particular, the leg-specific workout and total body workout are great examples that take you through very complete 20-30min workouts.

As with nutrition, bad advice on this topic is worse than no advice at all. Having discovered flywheel training and the Exxentric devices in my post-racing career, I do feel like this is something that I would have and could have used effectively. Swimming, biking, and running is the most effective training that a triathlete can do to get faster. But I believe effective – and low-risk – strength training can be a wonderful complement, and the flywheel devices from Exxentric provide that in a compact and comprehensive package.

[The author purchased his kBox Lite and accessories through normal retail channels. Exxentric provided the kPulley Go system and some accessories in support of this article. Slotwitch may receive a commission from Exxentric on some sales.]

The post The Ideal Home Gym For Triathletes first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

The Shoe(s)

The GS:TAM is, unquestionably, the best pair of shoes I've ever run. Not just trail shoes. Best of any kind. Now, they aren't great outside of their intended purpose – which is trail running, but they aren't meant to be. But in terms of a shoe that excels at the thing it was designed to do, the Speedland GS:TAM is without equal in my experience.

I'll talk through each component first, because that mimics the way that the shoe was designed. But really, it's the total package that is what's so incredible. The shared ideal that I have with Kevin and David, Speedland's founders, is that "engineering at its best allows you to just enjoy running." The thought that went into every decision is remarkable. But the end result is just a shoe that you can throw on and forget about in the pure bliss of running on the trails.

My first run in the GS:TAMs, I intended to run an hour. That turned into 10mi, which then turned into a half, and ultimately 15 miles that reminded me everything I love about running, particularly on the trails, which is what drew me to where I live, on the edge of a 1500 acre state park. In total, I ran just over 200 miles in the GS:TAMs in a period of just under two months, including a self-supported 50Km that I did to celebrate my 43rd birthday. In that time, the shoes continually exceeded my expectations, though really I mostly just forgot they were there until the time came to pop the BOA dials rather than unlacing them.

Speedland calls specific attention to some of their partners. They choose partners when they think someone else can do something better than they can. I've carried these references over, because it's representative of the way they approach development. Just like a high-end automotive companies and tuners will call out the premium parts they use, Speedlands expertise and value lies not specifically in each of the individual components – though something like the last itself and the overall fit and design of the upper are Uniquely theirs – but in bringing them together such that the total package is greater than the sum of all parts. I really don't want to make it seem like these things are just "off the shelf" parts cobbled together. Kevin and Dave certainly do that with existing shoes and parts with the Speedhacks projects, and this shoe is not that. They think of themselves like automotive tuners – and their Speedhacks show reflects this, but Speedland is definitely a shoe (or, rather, "equipment") company, albeit a very non-traditional one. But this is almost universally true. Very few shoe companies have their own factories. Speedland is just more vocal about highlighting where they do not have expertise – carbon fiber manufacturing, for example – as well as where they do – how a carbon plate should feel and perform.

Speedland also can never sell enough shoes – nor command what would necessarily be an astronomical price – to follow the model of a Ferrari, where everything is manufactured in-house. But that also doesn't really make sense. Again, the car company here that they remind me of the most is Lotus, rather than a "tuner." Critically, Lotus offloads engine development. While they have made their own engines, for nearly two decades, they've relied mostly on Toyota engines, though recently they make use of a Mercedes AMG engine and gearbox. Like Speedland, this allows Lotus to focus on what it does best – weight and handling. Lotus is more than a tuner, but it exists as a car company because it knows what it shouldn't build equally well as what it should.

While this is somewhat atypical in the shoe industry, it is slightly more common in trail shoes in one specific area – outsoles. Many manufacturers that would never advertise another brand on their own shoes use – and highlight – the use of Vibram rubber for outsoles. Adidas has partnered with Continental for outsoles on its road shoes, and so perhaps there is a growing sense that as shoes become more technical, finding – and recognizing – partners with specific expertise is a critical part of making higher and higher performing shoes.

Pebax Insole And Midsole

Interestingly, Speedland themselves benefit from this type of explicit recognition. Arkema – the company behind Pebax, which is the tradename for one version of the high-rebound polymer that, along with carbon plates, has revolutionized running shoes – highlights Speedland in a similar article about technology partnerships.

According to Speedland, Adidas really deserves credit for kickstarting this revolution with their variant of this foam, called Boost. Boost really revolutionized the industry. The original recipe was relatively heavy, looked cheap – that sort of pellety-styrofoam-esque appearance, and was only available in white. But the energy return was incredible. The weight came down; solutions to color were developed; and energy return went up. But it's impossible to overstate just how remarkable the impact of Adidas's introduction of boost – ousting the EVA which had been the standard midsole material essentially for as long as "modern" running shoes have existed.

For an interesting history that I mostly agree with, Gear Patrol has an awesome article on The Most Innovative Running Shoes of All Time, which covers the Brooks Villanova – the first shoe to use EVA in the midsole, which was developed based on feedback from the legendary Marty Liquori.

The GS:TAM has a lot of this plush material. With a stack (at the heel) of 37mm, it's a high-stack ultra-oriented shoe. But really, the stack is part of what Speedland calls the GS platform. The GS platform is joined by the lower-stack SL platform, which is what the SL:PDX – Speedland's first shoe – and SL:HSV are built on.

This Platform:Model approach is reflective of Speedland's attention to detail. The platform is a macro philosophy – say high-cushion – and then the model makes explicit tweaks to suit its specific purpose. In the case of the TAM – named for Mt. Tamalpais – that's typical Northern California conditions such as you might find at the iconic North Face Endurance Challenge in San Francisco. This is in contrast to the soon-to-be-released GS:PSG, named for Mt. Pisgah in Oregon. The shoes look very similar, but Speedland's founders assure me there are important differences that allow each shoe to excel in its specific territory.

Speedland's approach to achieving 37mm of stack is quite different from basically anyone else. Rather than a thick midsole – with embedded plate – a lot of the stack height comes from a Pebax insole. This does mean that Speedland's shoes are entirely incompatible with orthotics. But Kevin and David are okay with this. They actually believe that a lot of the need for orthotics comes from under-spec'd insoles. But for people for whom that's a non-starter, they are willing to accept that they can't please everyone. They believe this is the right way to make a shoe, and I appreciate the conviction. That I happen to agree with it certainly makes things easier, but I think it's great to see them acknowledging that explicit design choices in the name of performance is going to mean the shoes don't work for everyone.

The best part of this design is that it resurrects what was the killer-feature of the original Hokas – the Bondi B and Mafate – which is that your foot was "within" the shoe. The lateral stability that comes from this design – imagine your foot being on the second or third deck of a cruise ship where the cruise ship is your shoe. Especially for trail shoes, this offers incredible lateral stability. I think this may even supplant the need for orthotics in some runners, but that's really a fairly overwhelming tangent. In any case, I think this is the correct way to build trail shoes, and it was a joy to go bombing around on trails in a pair of high stack shoes that felt even more stable than a pair of XC flats. It offers a ton of both medial and lateral support that helps keep you upright – and your ankles intact – even when the trails get tricky.

Carbitex Plate

As with most current plated shoes, the plate is sandwiched between thick layers of high-return polymer. But the Speedland plate has three important differences. The first is that it's removable – which also highlights the second point – it's reusable. The plate costs extra, but it's an extra cost you don't have to pay repeatedly. While I am sure the plate will wear out eventually, it'll last a whole lot longer than any one pair of shoes. This also cuts down on waste.

The third most important aspect is the design. The plate is split at the forefoot, to allow good independent movement laterally, which is important for off-camber terrain. And the specific carbon layup also allows for good lateral flex while keeping responsiveness and rigidity front-to-back. These specific design choices were key to making a trail-specific plate and highlight why just taking a road shoe and adding lugs isn't enough to make a great trail shoe. It also speaks to some of the very specific challenges in translating the performance gains seen on the road into similar gains on trails.

For me, personally, without a plate, the shoe is still very good, but not magical. It reminded me of what was missing in the original Bondi B. The shoes were comfortable, but had no pop. They didn't *feel* fast. Even for an easy run, the plate is great. At least for me. But it does feel different. Knowing what the emerging research is saying about training with a plate, I may use it less often. But it's hard because I really just enjoy the feeling so much. It makes the shoes feel alive. I wouldn't give it up because of any sort of training performance benefit – though there does seem to be some; but the potential for injury risk from the carbon plate does make me appreciate that I have the option to take it out, and I probably will do so more often – it's very easy – especially on easier runs.

BOA Laces And PerformFit Upper

The true wisdom of the BOA lacing system was evident on my first run where I realized I had left them a bit loose for technical running. I Just reached down and made a few clicks. It was easy to do one-handed. And it was really fast, taking only a few seconds. Compared with relacing a pair of shoes, I was like, "oh, this is way better."

I had piloted some BOA-lace shoes when I was at Zoot, but they weren't nearly as refined. Those shoes had only a single dial and the overall upper design wasn't explicitly built with BOA dials in mind, and I think that kept it from being as effective as the BOA on the GS:TAMs.

There are two BOA dials per shoe. The forefoot dial hooks into two wide bands and the upper band connects into a pyramid shape band that offers a ton of medial arch support. The straps are made of PerformFit, which is a proprietary material developed by BOA specifically for use with their dials. The forefoot has some TPU around the outer perimeter, fairly standard for a trail shoe. It's a wide half-circle – or maybe a rounded box – that offers a lot of room, especially for your pinky toes. This is not an upper that's going to become cramped if – and when, during an ultra – your foot swells. It's possible to run it quite loose on double-track, but you'll want to tighten it up for technical descending, especially if you have relatively narrow feet. I'm a B-width, and I found my foot would slide laterally if I didn't remember to tighten the dials down before descending. Even when run tight, it's still very comfortable, and the BOA dials are so fast to adjust that I think it makes sense to go a few clicks in either direction to suit the terrain. Though you'll have no problem leaving them tighter for a more technical run or leaving them looser if you find yourself mostly on fire roads.

Overall, the upper itself is purely a Speedland creation. PerformFit is both a material (or, really, materials) and approach designed to work well when replacing traditional laces with BOA dials. If you look, for example, at La Sportiva's Jackal or Altra's Mont Blanc, they are some obvious similarities to the GS:TAM's upper. But they are not the same. Each shoe has distinct features, defined both by the overall last but also things like toebox reinforcement – the GS:TAM has the common-on-trail-shoes TPU layer over the front.

The tongue-less design and elastic-knit collar do a great job of keeping out debris; you won't find yourself stopping to shake out stray pebbles or grit. And I doubt you'd need gaiters except on super gnarly runs. The roomy toe-box meant I could comfortably wear slightly thicker socks, and I mostly ran in Injinji toe socks in their standard weight, so I could take full advantage of the roomy toe-box. If you're an Altra fan, I think you'll love the Speedlands. It's a similar anatomically sensible toebox, especially for trail running. And the upper is designed around the BOA dials, both ensuring that the thinner "wires" – which appear to be a high-strength textile (Kevlar or similar?) rather than actual metal wiring – never cut into your foot. And the broad straps also ensures that you get a much more supportive fit – more similar to a full lace-up – than you'd expect from just looking at the dual-dial system.

Michelin Outsole

The trails that I run are not overly technical. Certainly not in comparison with what serious trail runners may encounter. Accordingly, I wouldn't say the outsole was of particular importance to me. I'd actually prefer something slightly less aggressive, as the GS:TAM is not great on the paved sections that connect some of the trails I run. It's fine, but it's not a shoe I'd ever choose for anything even remotely close to a paved run. Likewise, I don't think I ever really stress what an outsole needs to do – no wet roots or rocks, no loose scree. The sole has held up relatively well over 200 mi+. But I've had road shoes – including racing flats – that have performed entirely adequately in terms of traction on these same trails, so this just isn't something I expected to be remarkable. I'd have confidence in the outsole for treacherous conditions because Michelin has proven they know sports – Michelin bike tires are superb, especially when it comes to grip – and because Speedland is just so obsessive about the details. But I can't speak directly to this aspect of the shoe with any sort of experience.

Reuse And Recycle

Uniquely, the shoes are also meant to be "recyclable." Certain components – like the BOA laces and dials – are reusable and/or repairable. Other materials may be recyclable, if they are properly separated out and sent back to the correct facility. This was something that I didn't cover with them in-depth, but it's yet another area that shows Speedlands unique approach to shoes. Along with donating 10% of all sales to the charity of choice of the elite athlete for which each shoe was designed, it's reflective of a sense of purpose that extends beyond just performance. Their motto is "Run With The Land," and it's important gestures like this that reveal the depth of this commitment.

The Total Package

Each individual component is selected to be the best choice for its given role. But the GS:TAM is certainly meant to be more than just the sum of its admittedly superb components. And it is. More than anything else, it's fun. It's a shoe I want to run in. And every time I ratchet – rather than lace – them up, I head out the door with a smile on my face.

photos 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 © Speedland. photos 2, 9 © Slowtwitch.com

[edit: a previous version of this story incorrectly noted that the PSG is named for Mt. Pisgah in Tennessee, for which the Litespeed mountain bike is named, as it's an offroad haven. Turns out there's *another* Mt. Pisgah – in Oregon – which is the one for which the shoe is named.]

The post Speedland GS:TAM first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

The People

It's impossible to discuss Speedland's shoes without first discussing its people. Kevin Fallon and Dave Dombrow have been designing and making shoes together for over twenty years. They have worked together at Nike, Under Armour, and – as they joke, the other German shoe company – Puma. They bring a unique perspective to footwear, and in speaking with them, I was immediately struck by how much of the Speedland ethos resonates so deeply with my own beliefs about the benefits of engineering-driven design.

We ended our interview with a simple statement that encapsulates the way Speedland approaches footwear. Engineering at its best allows you to just enjoy running.

To achieve this simplicity, they apply an unprecedented level of thought to literally every decision about every aspect of the shoes they build. But the practical aspect of development is paramount. They have their own YouTube show – Speedhacks – that offers insight in what they describe as their, "method of working." Speedhacks is the running version of Top Gear. And they think of themselves in similar terms. At the end of the day, they want to make something that someone can actually wear and actually run in.

And their approach is in-demand beyond what they can achieve with their own company. Speedland also runs a consultancy business – something (in what will become an obvious running theme… sorry… I had to) that is unique to this business. And they consult with a wide-range of businesses including HP (yes, the computer company…), Descente, Arc'teryx, Tracksmith, their old employer UnderArmour, and more. This consultancy stems both from their incredible expertise and unique perspective and also because they aren't really a competitor with … well, anyone. Speedland is absolutely focused on what they call hyper-performance trail and mountain shoes. They are – in their own words – obsessed. The vlogs on the decisions that went into each major "component" decision on their first shoe – the SL:PDX – reveals a singular passion for making shoes.

Especially given their history at major shoe brands, one never gets the sense that they want Speedland to follow the model of Hoka or ON in terms of becoming a major footwear brand. They remind me a lot of Lotus – another quirky, performance-obsessed brand that loves its niche and is happier playing in that niche than expanding beyond it to the mass market.

Shoes As Equipment

The shoes-as-equipment approach works, in particular, because good trail shoes are the result of such explicit choices. To a certain extent, all trail shoes are equipment. Lug patterns, in particular, matter a lot for terrain. But Speedland takes it beyond issues of simple traction. This is a bedrock philosophy for the brand. It's grounded in the belief that there is a right way – and a wrong way – to design and build a shoe. Kevin and Dave would like people to think of shoes – at least trail shoes – more like skiers and cyclists think about their gear. The closest analogy I have experienced is track cycling. Track bikes are highly-specialized, incredibly optimized pieces of equipment – or, more specifically, multiple pieces of equipment put together into a composite "thing" that we call a bike. Track bikes are a good analogy because there is a very clear limit on what's required. No brakes. No bottles. One chainring. One cog.

A shoe is similarly bound. Outsole. Midsole. Insole. Lacing system. Upper. And, nowadays anyway, plate. When you come up with an explicit set of requirements, you can then make careful, objective decisions about what each piece needs to do both individually and as part of the collective. As a quick glance at the pricing of Speedland's very small range of products will reveal, price is not a consideration. Though the price – while high – is no longer outrageous thanks to Nike readjusting everyone's perspective on what ultra-performance footwear actually costs.

Why Trail?

The high end road market is saturated. Because this is the mainstream, competition is higher. And so it's harder for a niche brand – however competent – to go up against the likes of Nike and ASICS. The road is also just simpler, and there is less clear opportunity for design influence. Trail lends itself more to explicit design. A shoe with a narrow profile where you *might* be more likely to roll your ankle might very well be a reasonable tradeoff on the road. But not on trails.

Likewise, the specifics of various trail conditions offer nearly limitless opportunities for optimization. Pavement is pavement. Asphalt and concrete are just not meaningfully different. But arid Southern California desert trails are dramatically different from the forested trails of the Pacific Northwest which are then massively different from the Deep South. Type of rock, type of dirt, type of mud, lack or likelihood of water, etc. All these conditions make a difference for trail shoes, in particular around outsole design. There is no single right tread. Likewise, the cushioning requirements on soft loamy trails might be very different than on rocky trails. Distances also vary much more widely on the trail. While there are notable ultras on the road – Badwater being likely the most iconic, most ultras take place off road. A shoe that's good enough for a road 10K is likely at least passable for a marathon. But a weight-optimized trail shoe for an equally short trail race will never be sufficient for a 100mi. The variety of distance and topography on trails just dwarfs what you see on the road.

Accordingly, trail running just lends itself to both interesting problems and also niche solutions to those problems in a way that road never could. What's the value of the rapid adjustment of a BOA lacing system as compared with a few extra grams of weight? How do you value lateral stability against overall weight? These are nuanced discussions without a single right answer, unlike on the road. High performance trail shoes are a reflection of the terrain, the designers, and the athlete who chooses them. And it's the way athletes make choices that inform the way that Speedland makes shoes.

The Athletes' Needs

Even though two-of-its-three (current) shoes are high-stack, ultra-focused shoes, Speedland is not an inherently high-stack brand. This is in obvious contrast to the brand that seems most similar – Hoka. At least, original Hoka – when it was still Hoka One One, and when it was still the niche creation of Nic Mermoud and Jean-Luc Diard. Their perspective as mountain athletes certainly influenced what they wanted Hoka to be. And in this way it's most obvious that Kevin and Dave's perspective primarily as designers accounts for a lot of the difference. Jean-Luc Diard is of course a designer as well, but ultimately Hoka seems to have been a response to what its founders wanted to wear, whereas the repeated line in my interview with Dave and Kevin was, "what do our athletes need?" The question they ask is, simply, "what would make THE BEST trail shoe?"

Initially, this was the SL:PDX, which is not a high-stack shoe. Because it wasn't meant for ultra-distance racing. It wasn't not meant for ultras, but it was more about traction and stability. And it was also about establishing what Speedland stood for. They wanted to, in their own words," do what we do." And, in doing so, "create a market." They wanted to show what was possible and to create a product – and an appetite – for shoes that represent the absolute pinnacle of design and execution for that very specific purpose.

Interestingly, they said footwear tends to move in seven year cycles. And they believe the era of high-stack, ultra-cushion, and carbon-plated shoes may end – or at least evolve and give way to something new, in the same way that minimalism gave way to high-stack. I'm less sure. I think the performance benefits of both carbon plates and high-energy return foam are too much of a paradigm shift. And, fundamentally, people just really do seem to prefer super-cush shoes that are obviously comfortable to minimal shoes that may or may not be more "natural" (whatever that means) and certainly don't – as the class action lawsuit against Vibram revealed – necessarily "strengthen your feet." But I also don't have nearly the perspective or history in this area that the Speedland founders do, and I'd definitely not bet against them. And certainly the pace of innovation in footwear is not slowing. We've now pretty clearly moved beyond EVA, and based simply on the embrace of new materials for both uppers and midsoles, I think that it's entirely reasonable to think that shoes may change again. There certainly are the first indications that maybe training in ultra-responsive carbon-plated shoes may not be optimal – thanks to Alex Hutchinson (@sweatscience) for sharing the link to this research

We'll talk more about the carbon-plate – which is removable – in the follow-up article on the GS:TAM itself, but Speedland's design gives you a choice here, as well as allowing you to re-use this part of the shoe that won't wear out as fast as the rest of it. While they didn't build their shoes in this modular fashion because of this research, it did stem from the empirical data that is showing up along the same lines. Athletes like to be able to train without a plate.

Conclusion

I'll admit to an inherent fondness towards tinkerers like Kevin and Dave. People who not only enjoy thinking about how to solve interesting problems, but who go out and start tinkering with things in an attempt to actually apply that thinking in a practical way. As fantastic as their shoes are, I think that Speedhacks – their YouTube show – is their most important contribution. Along with their consulting, which allows the impact of their processes and approach to innovation to be larger than Speedland as a brand while also serving to grow it beyond what it could achieve simply through the sale of shoes.

But the shoes are, of course, the realization of all of this thinking. And they are superlative. The fit and finish is incredible. And the subtle innovations really do just make running more fun. I'll cover my adventures in the GS:TAM in a follow up, but I didn't think that piece would have made nearly as much sense without understanding the process that led that shoe to be the way it is. And I hope this provides that. I love the shoes. But I love everything that Speedland stands for as a brand even more.

Epilogue: The Bra Shoe

Even when they were at mainstream companies, Kevin and Dave were innovating. Me – "when were you guys at UnderArmour?" Kevin and Dave – "mid-2000s." Me – "were you there when Chris McCormack was sponsored? I remember UnderArmour came out with this crazy shoe where the upper was built to mimic the approach they took to making sports bras." Kevin and Dave – "yeah, that was us…"

UnderArmour never really made the sort of impact I think they were hoping in triathlon and, given the overall headwinds the brand faced around that time, it's impossible to know if this was just an idea that should have got more traction than it did or if it was just – like many trials – a neat idea that didn't really work out. It's more of a "the sports world is surprisingly small…" type of story that I think readers on this site, many of whom remember these various footnotes, will enjoy.

All photos © Speedland

[edit: an earlier version of this article misstated the Speedland's founders on the specifics of footwear cycles and their belief that era of high-stack, carbon-plated will end. We've edited the phrasing to better reflect their position.]

The post Speedland: The People first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

The influence of the Team Sky/Ineos partnership on the technical direction of both KASK and, especially, Pinarello has precipitated two of the most astonishing shifts in engineering excellence within the sport of cycling. These were not brands that were known for absolute technical innovation, in particular with regards to aerodynamics. But, like the pinnacle brand of Italian engineering-meets-style – Ferrari, both KASK and Pinarello have kept their flair while blossoming into two of the most innovative and engineering driven brands in all of sport.

Notably, Bradley Wiggins chose a British Cycling track helmet over any KASK model when he set the hour record aboard a Pinarello designed with Jaguar providing much of the aerodynamic expertise. Contrast that with both Dan Bigham and Fillipo Ganna decimating that record while clad in an off-the-shelf KASK helmet and aboard Pinarello track bikes that, at least outwardly, were the byproduct entirely of in-house engineering, albeit with Bigham's considerable input and insight.

KASK's helmets have always been comfortable and stylish. But they now boast some of the best aerodynamics of any helmet brand. I've always been a fan of aero-road helmets, ever since I raced in the first real entry into the category – the Specialized Evade – back in 2013. In particular, I think aero-road helmets are often the best choice for age-group athletes, where awareness on a crowded course and the physical strain of keeping a longer tail helmet tight against the back for a very long ride offset any potential aero losses. Aero road helmets also are generally notably lighter than dedicated TT helmets, which in my experience makes a meaningful difference on the run. I was shocked to discover how much better I felt running after cycling in an aero road helmet, as my upper back and neck were just that much less fatigued.

While the narrative around road helmets during Ironman has largely focused around "heat management" – especially in Kona, in my opinion the weight discrepancy is the most impactful. It's hard to measure the impact of neck and back fatigue on posture, and then the effect of posture on running, but in my own experience, it was meaningful. When you factor in the added awareness that comes with a helmet that does not cover your ears and impair your hearing, aero road helmets really become incredibly compelling as race-day options. As their aerodynamics have continued to improve – though there is so much variance with regards to head position that I think it's probably a fool's errand to try to quantify it too deeply, there's even less reason to choose a TT helmet for long course racing.

Fit

Fit has always been KASK's strongest feature. I have always been able to wear KASK helmets tighter because fit is so good. This adds a sense of confidence around safety, since the helmet manages to hug my head without digging in. While I wear other helmets so that they don't move much, I can wear a KASK so that it doesn't move at all.

In particular, KASK's faux leather chin strap is just better than the nylon webbing found on virtually every other brand. Again, you can keep this strap more snug and it never digs in or disturbs you. I realize that head shape varies, but in my experience with multiple KASK helmets, the fit on all of them is superb. Maybe that's just my head shape, but in talking with other riders, it is a consistent theme. KASK gets fit right.

The retention system is superb – especially in terms of fitting glasses. You can fit the end of the stem of your glasses under the cradle (the plastic "web" of the retention system – the part minus the dial) to help keep them secure, but the cradle has a slight outward flair to prevent it from tightening the stems into your head. You don't need to loosen the cradle to keep your glasses secure. Again, it's a small detail but it matters. The Utopia Y fits so well riding around that I have that much more confidence that it would stay put and do its job in the event of a mishap.

While I found the Utopia Y to be nearly flawless – it's a joy to wear and has easily taken the role of my every-ride helmet – the vertical adjustment system is … odd. The height of the dial adjustment system at the back can be moved up or down very easily. Too easily I think, though I'm increasingly ambivalent. The helmet moves a bit up and down when making large movements of your head – say you stand and look back as you might as a stop light. In these cases, the helmet notably shifts a bit. Some of this is likely – certainly – because as I said I wear KASK helmets tighter because the overall fit is so good, but comparing the vertical adjustment to other helmets I have, it's clearly designed to shift more easily. Now, that also might be by design, since maybe part of that comfort comes from the helmet's ability to move when you make large movements of the head and neck. I increasingly think this is likely, because this movement never happens while you are actually riding. Nevertheless, feeling the vertical adjustment shift in certain moments does take a bit of getting used to. At first, I thought something was wrong with the helmet, but as I've worn it for more miles – I've got somewhere between 500 and 1000 miles in the Utopia Y since receiving it, I've largely forgotten it or at least just gotten used to it given how much I like the helmet overall.

This is a new retention system – it is really the primary change from the original Utopia to the Utopia Y. But having not ridden in the original Utopia, I can't speak with any certainty to what exactly might have changed (or not). Overall, I found the new OCTOFIT+ system to be very comfortable and functional, aside from the somewhat unexpected – but not necessarily problematic – movement of the vertical adjustment in very specific circumstances.

Function

Because there's so much variance and individuality, I didn't set out to try to quantify the speed of the KASK Utopia. I can, however, say that it's "fast." I am a creature of habit, and I have thousands – tens of thousands – of miles on my favorite local routes. At comparable wattage, I recorded some of my fastest times on my most regular routes in the Utopia Y at comparable wattage to what I ride normally. I'd say the helmet is at least comparable with my old Scott Cadence, which tested fast enough that uber-cyclist Sebastian Kienle chose the Cadence as his race-day helmet for Kona in 2016. I would say the Utopia was faster for me, but the pure aerodynamics is not really the focus of this review. KASK has proven with their pure TT/Track helmet that they understand aerodynamics. And I think that's earned them some trust when it comes to overall helmet design. The Utopia Y is, generally speaking, "fast." I'll stand by that but nothing in more explicit detail. Helmets are just too individual. Even if I was to take it to the velodrome, I don't know what that would meaningfully add to this review.

From a "how cool is it" perspective, I'd say it is marginally worse at low speeds than a heavily vented "climbing" helmet, but it is significantly better at high speeds because of consciously directed airflow. At low speeds, air often has no trouble flowing through even poorly designed vents. But at higher speed, thoughtful aerodynamics makes a difference. It's often faster to direct air through the helmet – and over your head – than around the helmet.

It's especially notable how obvious the changes in airflow are when turning your head to look behind or to the side. It's most obvious how effectively the Utopia directs airflow in your normal riding position when you deviate from that position. You can feel the vent on the leeward side of your head completely stall out – no air flows through it at all – when your head is turned, and then immediately feel the airflow return when you straighten your head.

Flair

No discussion of an Italian helmet would be complete without talking at least a bit about style. The Utopia Y looks good. Well, at least as good as any large styrofoam hat can. The flat gray that's all the rage on high ends cars currently has grown on me. I chose it for some fun after many years of white helmets, and I think it looks distinct. White is still my slight preference for racing, though I'll admit it likely doesn't really matter. The quality of the flat gray with its gloss finish is very good. What you'd expect from a premium helmet with a premium price tag. The overall cut and silhouette of the helmet is also very nice. It's a helmet that lends itself to selfies, for whatever that is and isn't worth.

Safety

A section on safety might seem like an obvious necessity for a review of helmets, but I almost didn't include this. My rationale is that discussions around safety "features" tend to stray too far into the unknown realm unless that's the explicit focus of the piece. I can give some semi-objective feedback on aerodynamics just from experience on regular routes and power data. But even there, I don't want to pretend to offer data that I don't have. On the safety side, I have literally nothing to offer. The helmet meets all the standards you'd expect – EN, CPSC & AS/NZS. KASK has their own testing protocol that they go over on their website – kask.com/en/safety, but I'd not want to speak to it any further than making you all aware of it.

Further, while the Utopia Y has not (yet) been tested, KASK helmets have tested well in Virginia Tech's protocol, and they have a 5-star helmet in the even-newer (and more expensive) Elemento. The much older Valegro scores 3-stars. For more on Virginia Tech's helmet testing, visit their site – helmet.beam.vt.edu

I had no concerns that the Utopia Y would protect my head as well as any helmet and, given what I believe is remarkable attention to detail on fit, I actually have more confidence because the helmet fits so well.

Conclusion

When spending $300 on a helmet, there are understandably expectations that come along with that. The Utopia Y ticks all the boxes in terms of comfort and, as best as I can tell or would vouch for with something as individual as helmets, aerodynamics. If KASK's helmets fit your head shape, the Utopia Y would be an excellent choice for long course racing. It's light, very comfortable, and shows the meat of KASK's increasing focused on engineering performance and excellence.

The price point doesn't really make sense for a training helmet – though there's nothing wrong with enjoying free speed in training, but the economics certainly change when that's the price for an everyday helmet that also can – and should – be a first choice for race day as well.

Jordan Rapp is the Chief Technology Officer at Slowtwitch.com. He holds a BSE in Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University. He was a professional triathlete for over 10 years and is the 2011 ITU Long Distance World Champion and a 6X IRONMAN winner.

KASK provided the helmet for this review. For more information on the Utopia Y, visit KASK.com

The post KASK Utopia Y: Race Day Aero. Every Day Comfort. first appeared on Slowtwitch News.