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Andrew Van Til

News January 13, 2022

Zwift Game Update 1.21 Deprecates Pre-Windows 10 PCs

Zwift updates are pretty common, and generally very welcome. The latest one removes support for anything pre-Windows 10 on the PC side of things. Personally, I don’t see this as a bad thing, mostly because anything pre-Windows 10 isn’t supported from Microsoft either, so it’s a security landmine. It’s never awesome when something that was working before stops, for no reason besides progress. But, on the flip-side, keeping support for unsupportable things…

News January 13, 2022

Garmin Edge 530/830/1030/1030+ 9.22 BETA Brings Back Di2 Battery Percent

I wasn’t a fan of the changes Garmin made to the battery display for Shimano Di2 in the 9.10 release, so I’m thrilled that among some other changes, they’ve brought back the percentage display. There are builds for all the latest gen EDGE devices, 530 is linked below. Changes made from version 9.20 to 9.22: Changed gear battery data field to display percentage remaining if available, which affects Shimano Di2 single-battery systems.…

Blog Featured January 11, 2022

Specialized Praxis Works Chainrings Are a Scam

It’s no secret that Specialized resells Praxis Works chainrings, but I was surprised by what I discovered when looking into what they are actually selling.…

News January 7, 2022

apeman SEEKER R1 – Asscam + Lasers

Looks like a good time to be in the market for an asscam tail light, because now there’s another option. But naturally the apeman SEEKER R1 is better, because LASERS. Unfortunately, these aren’t the kind of lasers that would let you blast hostile drivers. More the boring kind that draw lane markers around the bike. Still a very useful feature, just not as proactive :). Also, if you’re the mount-a-phone-on-you-bars kind of…

Featured Review January 6, 2022

Stone 110BCD 5-Bolt Spider for SRAM AXS 8-Bolt Cranks

I was searching for a good solution for running 5-Bolt 110BCD road chainrings on a SRAM AXS crank I recently picked up for a good price, and found this spider from Stone Bike which promises exactly that. Unfortunately, it is not fit for purpose.…

Blog Featured January 6, 2022

Hitting the wall isn’t bad…

Until relatively recently, I’d never failed to complete, or even had to pause, a structured workout to make it all the way through. Back then, I took a small amount of comfort from this artifact. Now, I think that’s backwards, and I couldn’t have been more wrong. My current thinking is that I wasn’t pushing hard enough in my structured training. So I wasn’t identifying areas of improvement. Finding a limit is…

Blog Featured January 4, 2022

Wonky Wahoo TICKR HRM? Might be the strap…

After roughly three years of hard use, my original Wahoo TICKR gave up the ghost at the end of the summer. Given how well it had worked for me, I picked up a new, updated version without hesitation. This was August. The photo above shows the new strap on the left, and the older (replacement) strap from my original TICKR on the right which I purchased to troubleshoot my original TICKR. Notice…

Blog Featured December 26, 2021

Shimano E-tube 5.0.3 Incompatible with SM-BCR2

I can get that Shimano is SUPER excited about their new 12 speed Di-2, but in that excitement they seem to have forgotten that the overwhelming majority of their Di-2 user base is running the previous generation. Most of these folks, are probably using the SM-BCR2 to charge and connect with the bike to do things like firmware updates, setup shifting, and configure the gears. Because if you don’t have a D-Fly,…

Blog December 22, 2021

TIL: Zwift Tron Bike Is The Fastest TT Bike

Given the outcome of some previous testing, I was beginning to suspect that the Zwift Concept (Tron) bike is the fastest TT bike, but I didn’t have the proof until today. This came as quite a surprise because the best available information seems to indicate the opposite. The biggest caveat is that I don’t have the fastest time trial wheels that Zwift has; haven’t made it to Level 42 yet. So I…

News December 20, 2021

TOOO Cycling Kickstarting DVR80 Asscam + Taillight

Having a rear-facing camera on the bike is very useful, for a lot of reasons. Integrating one into a taillight is very cool. Personally I see two issues with this though. The first one is that rear radar (i.e. Garmin Varia) is always useful, where a camera is only useful when there’s an event. So displacing my Varia isn’t going to happen. The other, is that light and potentially resolution are going…

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