Lanebreak from Peloton Announced on February 17 and My Experience with Lanebreak

Earlier this week, Peloton announced Lanebreak which is a new game mode that Peloton has offered to create a game mode for when doing bike ride. I tried the new Lanebreak on Thursday evening for my ride. It was a fun ride using the resistance knob to change lanes, it is a fairly easy process and allows for gathering points by changing the resistance knob to hit certain markers in the game. Turning to the left (less resistance) takes you to the left and turning the resistance knob to the right takes you to the right. Easy enough to follow and do the game. 

I started off on the easy mode to see how it would work. The first thing I noticed and later read on a 9to5Mac article was that Apple Watch could not be used for Lanebreak. The 9to5Mac article went on to say how silently Apple Watch had been removed from many of the workouts on Peloton except for those that are bike riding. As I mentioned, I went on a span of a few months where I was not using Peloton at all and then the past few months I have only done bike riding. Thus, I had not noticed that the Apple Watch had disappeared from weight lifting, meditation, jogging, etc. It seems like an odd thing to do especially when Peloton is struggling and there are discussions of being bought out by another company (i.e. Apple, Amazon, Nike, etc.). Especially for Peloton to remove the option quietly without any notice of the feature disappearing. 

Back to my experience on the Lanebreak feature. I did enjoy my ride and I had a good workout. It was fun because using the resistance knob to change lanes on the track, it took away that I was increasing or decreasing resistance. I was riding and realized I was going 115 with resistance at 45 or 50 and because I was playing a game, I did not realize I had it set so high or going so fast. There is a heads up display as shown on the Lanebreak blog site showing your resistance, speed, etc., but when playing the game the focus is not on those items and instead focusing on get points. Obviously, that is the point of the game.

I do enjoy using the bike with my Apple Watch, so I know that Lanebreak is in test mode as it said on the screen there might be bugs that I had to agree to before using Lanebreak. I am hopeful that at some point Apple Watch will be included in this new feature. For now, Lanebreak will likely be something I try once or twice a month, but for my regular workouts, I will continue to do “normal” bike rides on my Peloton.

Fantasy Football Leagues Finish Up and Here are the Current Totals for Leagues I Belong #FantasyFootball #NFL #Results #blog

Fantasy football season comes to an end as the NFL regular season wraps up this week. Many fantasy games completed with the games last week. For everything that happened during the NFL regular season related to COVID-19, it was a fun season. Remembering back to drafts that took place back in early September to changes made to rosters or trades made with other owners, the season was fun. While some games were postponed to be played later, the majority of games went off without a problem or maybe a player or two not able to play because of COVID-19 restrictions.

I play in two different fantasy football leagues. Both are groups of friends of mine that have been playing for a number of years. One is free to play and the other is money league. The money league which is the Chiefs Kingdom Fantasy League, has been playing since 2016 and Beer Gut Fantasy Football League has been playing since 2011. The Beer Gut League has been playing long before 2011, but I was not part of the early leagues and then probably in 2006 - 2009, prior to my starting in that league, they played on another provider. I played a year or two on that other service and we have been on ESPN since 2010.

In the Beer Gut Fantasy Football League, I have won the league twice. I have also had a number of seasons where I have come in last, or almost last, in the league. For a while in Beer Gut Fantasy Football League we would have whomever lost be the commish the next year. A few years ago, we changed this process in this league though as we found that it was better to have one or two people that run the league each year which helps to keep things consistent. The new process has worked much better in the Beer Gut Fantasy Football League. 

No matter the league, fantasy football takes a bit of luck. I am by no means a fantasy beast. I recognize players names, know those that I like and want to draft, but stats or history is not something I follow like others in both leagues that I am a member. Luck plays into the process a great deal where one week I will play someone that gets 20 or 30 points and the next they only get 10 - 15 points the next week where they were expected to get 20 - 25. This is what makes the fantasy football process so much fun to try and put together a roster that gets the maximum points each week. It certainly also has me watching more games because I want to see what the players on my roster are doing each week.

The Chiefs Kingdom Fantasy League we have had five different winners in the five years of existence. Not too shabby! In this league, we do a random draft compared to Beer Gut where we reverse the draft each year where whomever finished last the season before gets the first pick the following year.

If you have not tried fantasy games with your friends, or random people, I encourage you to give it a try. It is a lot of fun and offers an increased interest in that particular sport.