Week in Tech: Strava playback, new WiFLi, Sidi goes casual, free tattoos
Sidi sneakers, Strava's Activity Playback feature, a top-tube-extending headset from Chris King, free tattoos, and wider cassettes from SRAM
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Strava’s Activity Playback feature
Strava’s development labs are always playing around with new features. A recent favorite is Activity Playback, which allows users to look back over a ride in real time, watching tiny bubbles representing each Strava rider in a given area, including themselves, move across a map.
Time can be sped up, slowed down, and paused, and a “Activity List” shows all the riders you came in contact with throughout the day.
Strava put together a sample from Paris-Roubaix, which includes pros like Niki Terpstra as well as amateurs out to watch the race.
Watch Paris-Roubaix Activity Playback > >
Sidi goes casual with Insider sneaker
Italian cycling and motorcycle shoe manufacturer Sidi is going casual, and will bring its new Insider sneaker into the U.S. beginning in May.
The shoe will feature a suede upper, rubber sole, reinforced toe and lace-up closure. It will be available in black and gray; the black version gets fluorescent orange laces, the gray version gets green laces.
The price is precisely in line with what we expect from the high-end shoe brand: $150. Availability is set for May 5.
Free temporary ‘Clean’ tattoo with purchase of ‘Pro Cycling on $10 a Day’
Phil Gaimon’s journey “from fat kid to Euro pro” is a humorous, inspiring tale and a fantastic read. Gaimon, a pro with Garmin-Sharp who also writes a monthly column for Velo magazine, has always been a vocally clean athlete and, as a mark of his commitment to clean racing, had a bar of soap etched permanently on the inside of his enormous right bicep. You don’t need to go quite that far, though — buy “Pro Cycling on $10 a Day” and you’ll get a temporary tattoo for free.
SRAM adds new WiFLi cassettes to Red group
SRAM’s top-tier Red group will get two new, wider cassettes this summer, an 11-30 tooth and 11-32 tooth.
Both will use the company’s PowerdomeX design, with 10 of the 11 cogs machined from a single piece of high-grade tool steel and the final cog made of aluminum. That means that riders who love the WiFLi wide-range gearing now have significantly lighter options available to them: the 11-30 will weigh just 185 grams and the 11-32 will weigh 196 grams.
Retail price is set at $374. The 11-30 will be available in June and the 11-32 will hit shops in July.
Chris King Buzzworks offset headset
Need a bit more top-tube length, but don’t want to buy a new frame? Or, are you simply too tall for even the biggest size? Chris King has you covered with its prototype offset headset, which adds 8mm of reach to your top tube.
The headset was developed for the Santa Cruz Syndicate downhill team and was spotted by VitalMTB a few weeks ago.
No word yet whether the headset will ever make it into production.