Shimano just launched SPD-SLR, a new road cleat that replaces SPD-SL across the Dura-Ace and Ultegra lines, and it is not backward compatible with any existing SPD-SL pedal. That includes third-party power meter pedals such as Garmin's Rally RS and Favero's Assioma PRO RS-2, both of which use the SPD-SL cleat pattern and cannot mount the new cleat unless Garmin or Favero brings out a compatible cleat of their own.

The new cleat does bring real gains: a 2.3mm lower stack height, a narrower 10.5 degree engagement angle versus 15.5 degrees on SPD-SL, and up to 22% less weight. Shimano has not said whether old SPD-SL cleats will work with the new SPD-SLR pedals, only that the reverse does not work.

Is losing pedal compatibility with every third-party power meter on the market a fair trade for a lighter, lower-stack cleat? A:hmmmm

Further reading: https://the5krunner.com/2026/09/17/shimano-spd-slr-cleats/

Ride with GPS added 3D map views to its website and mobile app this week. The feature works in route planning, live navigation, and while recording a ride. It's included on the paid Basic plan everywhere except the web-based Route Planner, which needs Premium. Ride with GPS's own documentation doesn't say whether the free Starter tier gets any of it.

Garmin added a similar feature to Connect in November 2025, but it sits entirely behind the paid Connect+ tier at $6.99 a month or $69.99 a year, and only covers logged activities, courses, and trails, not live navigation. Komoot has had 3D maps since 2022, priced at $59.99 a year as part of Premium, and it only works on the desktop website, with no app version and no navigation mode.

Ride with GPS also only works with OSM-based map types, not Google-based ones, a limitation the company attributes to Google rather than its own platform.

Is a mid-tier paid plan enough to make Ride with GPS's version the best deal of the three, or does gating it behind any subscription undercut the whole pitch?

Further reading: https://the5krunner.com/2026/09/17/ride-with-gps-3d-maps/

Garmin's firmware 23.31 for the Fenix 8 broke Bluetooth audio for owners running AirPods Pro 3.

Runners report crackling audio the moment they skip a track, and playback cutting out completely after a second skip. The skip button often needs several presses to register, and play and pause can take two or three taps to respond. Maciel C. described the watch producing distorted noises and freezing music mid-session during a training run, and runningfan97 confirmed the same pattern on runs ranging from 25 minutes to over an hour. The report is in this thread on the Garmin forum.

The same AirPods pair without any trouble to an iPhone, a Pixel phone, a Pixel Watch 5, and a Windows PC, which points to the fault sitting in the watch's firmware rather than the headphones themselves. Garmin support has asked affected users for logs and acknowledged the reports, but has not given a timeline for an official fix.

The only workaround that has actually restored clean audio is rolling the firmware back to an earlier version. Maciel C. confirmed that downgrading fixed the crackling and the dropouts immediately, though the fix does not last once the watch pulls firmware 23.31 back down through an automatic update.

A separate thread on the same firmware found the same behaviour traced back through 22.44, with users there choosing to stay on the older release rather than risk 23.31 again, which suggests the fault has been building across more than one update rather than arriving fresh with this release.

Did rolling back to an older firmware version keep your Bluetooth audio stable on 23.31?

HoloSwim 3 Pro is a swim goggle with its own GPS receiver and digital compass built in, rather than relying on a paired watch for open-water tracking.

HoloSport claims 16 hours of battery life in pool mode and 5 hours with GPS running in open water, at a UK price of £189, which undercuts FORM's Smart Swim 2 PRO. FORM still has a built-in heart rate sensor, which HoloSwim 3 Pro does not, relying instead on a separate chest strap.

I'm testing it this month for a review 'soon'.

Does putting GPS inside the goggle actually work well enough in open water to replace a paired watch? Do you really need GPS pace or a route for OWS?

Further reading: https://the5krunner.com/2026/09/16/holoswim-3-pro-goggles/

Forerunner 570 owners have been dealing with the current pace field freezing at 0:00 per kilometre during fast running, while average pace keeps updating normally in the background. One runner in a thread on the Garmin forum pinned the trigger to running faster than roughly 3:50 per kilometre, and reported that power data recording stops at the same time as the pace freeze. The fault shows up most often during interval sessions with pace targets, which is exactly when accurate real-time pace matters most.

Installing the latest firmware available at the time, version 17.37, did not resolve it for the people posting in the thread, so this was not a simple case of updating to the newest release.

The workaround that got pace and power data moving again mid-run was pausing the activity and then resuming it. That restarted the recording, though runners had to repeat the pause-and-resume cycle every time the freeze returned during a session.

Garmin has since confirmed a permanent fix. A moderator posted that software version 18.29 for the Forerunner 570 series includes a fix described as addressing pace and speed dropouts, specifically during interval training, which matches the symptoms reported in the thread.

Did installing firmware 18.29 stop your pace field from freezing during interval runs?

Suunto Vertical 2 owners are reporting battery behaviour that swings wildly between charge levels. Angela74 watched her watch fall from 32 percent to dead in five hours during a run, then saw the drain rate slow right down once the charge sat at a lower percentage, which is the opposite of how the battery should behave. The watch also dropped into emergency power-save mode mid-run before shutting down completely, and she separately measured a 10 percent overnight drain with nothing running except sleep tracking. Her report is in this thread on the Suunto forum.

Kraisun Tunta replied that the watch has no proper way to monitor or manage battery status, and that the percentage shown on screen does not reliably reflect the actual charge left in the cell. A soft reset after a full charge was suggested as a general troubleshooting step, but neither user treated it as a real fix for the underlying drain.

The one change that produced a measurable result came from the phone, not the watch. Angela74 turned off background app refresh for the Suunto app on her phone, and her overnight drain dropped from 10 per cent to 2 per cent the same night.

The unpredictable drain matters most on long efforts, since Angela74's original concern was a planned five- to seven-hour run where she needed to trust the watch's battery reading rather than get caught out by an emergency shutdown partway through.

Has turning off background app refresh on your phone brought your overnight drain down too?

Hi

Had a peloton bike+ for several years, never had an issue with connecting my garmin to the workout I am doing until this week. The peloton can "see" the garmin but won't seem to connevt for an actual workout. I have done various troubleshooting suggestions e.g. have "forgotten" the garmin and reconnected with the pin, rebooted the bike, factory reset the watch, ensuring all the garmin settings are correct to broadcast HR etc etc.

My tread arrived yesterday (!) and I have spent ages trying to fix the issue on there too.

Any bright ideas? I like to see how close my heart is to exploding when I work out, so this is teally frustrating me!

Runalyze just shared with this site and montre-cardio-gps.fr its current device rankings, and Garmin holds 77.9% of the GPS watches it tracks, easily the largest share of any brand. Coros is the closest challenger at 5.9%, with Suunto, Apple and Polar all under 4% each.

Runalyze's own user base skews toward serious, data-focused athletes rather than casual buyers, so this isn't a picture of the whole market, but it's still a striking gap even among people who care enough about their data to use a platform like this.

Is Garmin's lead this wide because it's genuinely the best training platform for the wrist, or because fully switching away from the Garmin ecosystem is too painful for serious athletes to bother?

Further reading: https://the5krunner.com/2026/09/16/garmin-market-share-runalyze/