… Like many other folks 50 and older, the 63-year-old Anderson has been commandeered by the step-tracker craze that began about a decade ago, and her dog is an unwilling victim.
Anderson has bought into the $26 billion global step tracker industry and matches her daily count with her Fitbit-wearing friend, Landy Sorensen, 43. The two women have become inseparable Fitbit fanatics and competitors at the Arlington Food Assistance Center, where they amass additional steps every Friday morning while volunteering in the food bank. Now, they diligently count each other’s steps on their cellphone apps in real time — and compete to record just one more step than the other.
“My Fitbit made me a friend I’d have never had,” Anderson said.
… the new Garmin FR945 at $599 contains every single bit of software functionality as the MARQ Athlete. Seriously, all of it (and has better battery life). Instead, buying something like the MARQ series is because you want the look of it. Whether or not one feels said look is worth that price is a different question, the reality is that people are buying these watches just like I buy expensive camera gear. And just like that camera gear, these watches will be mostly obsolete in 3-5 years. But we’ll get back to that a bit later. … there are some interesting twists in here. For example, above you see the ski resort database, which is new to Garmin starting with MARQ. They’ve had a ski mode, but not a ski map aligned to that while actually skiing. So that’s cool. However, Garmin Connect Mobile (on your phone), lacks that map overlay – so things do fall apart a bit once you upload your ski day. Still, it’s progress.
… ‘We listened to the consumer who told us they wanted more robust mapping capabilities,’ Mendez said. ‘Our teams took on the challenge, developed the software and came up with Roam.’
These new developments led to a lot of new features such as Back On Track (on-demand re-routing) and Get Me Started (routing to a start point), to accompany the existing Take Me To (on-demand, on-board route generation).
… During the trip I put the Inreach into extended tracking mode and set it to update every 4 hours. This mode turns the Inreach off and then it turns itself on to send the waypoint and then back off again until the next waypoint is sent. Also several times a day I would send one of the preset messages (usually 3 to 4 times a day.) and at least once a day I connected it to my phone via Bluetooth and sent a custom text message or two. Doing all this I still had almost 80% battery life left after 7 days.
One feature I didn’t think I cared about but I used a lot was the weather reports. It was nice to get a more accurate weather update day to day especially in a place like Alaska where the weather is never constant and can be vastly different in one spot versus another that might be 50 miles away.
By the end of the trip I actually got pretty proficient at texting directly on the mini rather than using my phone paired to it.
sportswear retailer 2XU has launched a series of new eCommerce sites in the Nordics on Salesforce Commerce Cloud with the help of digital commerce consultancy Tryzens.
The launch is part a major transformation project which will see Tryzens work with 2XU to consolidate their global eCommerce properties on Salesforce and manage ongoing support on a global scale.
2XU is a multinational retailer that designs, develops and sells cutting-edge sportswear including compression garments, triathlon, cycle, running, and general fitness wear.
OrthoLite, a leader in insole technology, announced the hiring of Rob Falken as vice president of global innovation.
Falken, who has deep expertise in sustainable product development and holds more than a dozen pending and granted patents, will help OrthoLite with its continued efforts in developing eco-conscious products that not only help the footwear industry introduce more responsible products, but also help answer consumer demand for products that protect our environment.
… Nearly twice as many cyclists have been killed in New York this year than in all of 2018—an alarming statistic that prompted Mayor de Blasio to release a $58.4 million bike safety plan last week that will be implemented over the next five years. The Green Wave, as the plan is called, will see the expansion of the city’s bike safety network with new protected bike lanes, the retiming of traffic light patterns, and the redesign of 50 dangerous intersections all in service of protecting riders.
The city has yet to announce which intersections will be targeted for redesigns, but city data and real estate listings website Localize.city has the jump on some that may be. The website used public data from 2014 to 2018 to identify which intersections have seen the most cycling injuries and fatalities during that period.
Every few years, a new sensation comes to the rescue of a beleaguered U.S. bicycle industry. In the 1970s, 10-speed bikes from Europe sparked a boom stateside. A decade later, mountain bikes renewed the business. A few years after that, American Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong caused a surge of interest in the sport—before his fall from grace.
Now, once again, as bikemakers find themselves confronting years of sales declines for their bread-and-butter product, a new kind of bike is fueling a renaissance in the $6 billion industry: the e-bike.
According to the NPD Retail Tracking Service, unit sales of bikes with electric motors rose 73% last year at specialty shops, after more than doubling the year before. Across the industry, that comes to about 400,000 e-bikes. In contrast, traditional bike sales fell 8% last year.
University of Minnesota, The Gender Policy Report, Greg Lindsey from
… Cycling is a gendered activity. Dr. Jennifer Dill, an international authority on the gender gap in bicycling, has shown that “women are far less likely to bicycle for transportation than men,” and she cites concerns about safety as a major reason for this disparity.
Recent research here at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs shows that women have real reason to be concerned. In a field experiment, we found that drivers were significantly more likely to encroach—i.e. to pass closer than three feet—on a female cyclists than on male cyclists. Our study illustrate the scope and pervasiveness of the gender gap in cycling, confirms female cyclists’ concerns about safety on the road, and underscore the need for greater investment in safer facilities like protected bike lanes.
Learn how men and women are constructed differently—and therefore why they each have a distinctive running gait—to be better equipped to manage, and prevent, female-specific lower-extremity sports injury.
A new study finds that your “critical speed” threshold drops in the last third of a marathon, which may explain why the distance produces so many blow-ups
Neuroscientist Shane O’Mara believes that plenty of regular walking unlocks the cognitive powers of the brain like nothing else. He explains why you should exchange your gym kit for a pair of comfy shoes and get strolling
… [Daisy] Martinez had just completed the Fool’s Traverse, an unofficial endurance event that spans some of the most challenging terrain in the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument, located just northeast of Los Angeles. Created by seismic upheaval (the range is bordered by fault lines, including the famed San Andreas to its north) and comprised primarily of shattered granitic rock, the San Gabriels are notoriously rugged and unstable, the kind of terrain that seems to swallow hikers whole—just Google any combo of “hikers,” “missing,” and “San Gabriel Mountains” and you’ll see.
When should you pitch your tent? Or when is it better to opt for lodging? When should you visit to avoid the crowds? Let’s have a look!
How to read
We plotted the number of nights spent per month in each park. We separated four categories of accommodation: lodging, RV, tent, and backcountry. Each accommodation type comes with their own characteristics which determine their popularity over time.
The Trump administration’s latest pick to manage nearly a quarter-billion acres of public land doesn’t think the government should own land. But can he do anything about it?
A study led by KU Leuven for the first time explains how a promising type of perovskites – man-made crystals that can convert sunlight into electricity – can be stabilized. As a result, the crystals turn black, enabling them to absorb sunlight. This is necessary to be able to use them in new solar panels that are easy to make and highly efficient.
Wearable devices could soon be more flexible – in future they might be powered by stretchable batteries.
Nicholas Kotov at the University of Michigan and his colleagues have developed a conducting component for a lithium-ion battery that maintains its electrical conductivity even when stretched to a strain of more than 300 per cent.
The conductor is made from multiple layers of polyurethane and gold nanoparticles. Polyurethane is a polymer used to make common objects such as foam sponges and garden hoses.