My 5 Favorite Pieces of Gear Right Now: September 2026

Things haven’t exactly gone to plan here at Slowtwitch’s Pacific Northwest outpost as I build toward my two fall races. First, we had a massive wildfire near Mount Hood that threatened our home ski resort but also led to thick enough smoke that it has set off the fire detectors in our home twice. That also meant that a whole lot of my training over the last six weeks has been inside — even moreso than normal.

It’s meant that we’ve been putting in some heavy duty mileage on the bike over the past six or so weeks, since our last installment in this gear series. So we’re focusing on the tools of the trade that have been my keys to training, and keep me coming back for more.

Fizik Vento Argo R3 Saddle

On paper, the Fizik Vento Argo R3 isn’t really all that much to write home about. It’s a nylon shell, roughly 220 gram weight saddle that doesn’t stand out in any particular way. There’s a short nose, a little bit of padding, and that’s about all there is to say about it.

And yet, at least for me, it is way more than the sum of its parts. The shape of this saddle simply works for me, giving critical support when I try to ride aggressively either inside or out, and still comfortable enough when you decide to rotate backwards on your pelvis. For somebody who managed to break his pelvis the last go-round at a build like this, that’s a critical distinction. I’m able to ride long, or hard, or both, on multiple days in a row without discomfort. And that’s while still rotating through many of the same pairs of bike shorts I had last time around.

The lesson here is that shape matters a whole lot more than how much cushioning that people try to inject into these saddles. And once you find one that works, it might be smart to buy a bunch of them. For my $175, it’s the perfect drop-bar bike saddle for a whole range of riding.

OBED GVR with Shimano GRX

Well, you can’t have an indoor saddle without a bike. And there’s few bikes, in my opinion, better suited to the task of eating up mileage indoors than OBED’s GVR.

I’ve had this bike for almost four years now. I bought a GVR shortly after my long-term review of a Campagnolo Ekar equipped version of the bike in 2022. In that review, I made mention that the only thing that held me back from buying the exact bike I had reviewed was that it would have been the only Campagnolo drivetrain in our household. Well, we solved that by putting a 1X Shimano GRX drivetrain on, and it’s been smooth sailing ever since.

I can’t emphasize the next sentence enough. I absolutely love this bike. It is by far my favorite drop bar bike I’ve ever ridden. I’ve used this bike for cyclocross, for gravel, for epic long rides outside, and for hours on end in the garage on Zwift. It does it all and does it all quite well. If I had to nitpick, I might side with Eric and decide to go even narrower on bars than the current 40cm width on there, but otherwise I can’t complain.

The Shimano 1X drivetrain is also impeccably reliable. I’ve ridden this particular set of consumable parts (chain, cassette, cables, chainrings, pulleys, etc.) for almost 5000 miles and it still is dead reliable for shifting and smoothness. For a guy who is notoriously hard on equipment, that’s about as high of a compliment as I can give.

Shimano S-Phyre Cycling Shoes

Speaking of Shimano, I continue to be impressed by their cycling shoes. I ask a lot out of my cycling shoes. I sweat an awful lot. I have rotted out many multiples of shoes over the years, mostly from their inability to ever effectively dry out before I go and pound out more mileage.

Yet here’s a pair of shoes that the only thing I have had to do to them since starting wearing them is replace the insoles. Well, and the cleats too, but I don’t really count that as shoe replacement. Otherwise, this blue pair of Shimano’s top-end road shoes has been as reliable as the OBED that I frequently ride them with. The two dial BOA system lets me dial in the fit as I ride longer or make a quick adjustment on the fly. There’s plenty of width in the forefoot, it fits my relatively low-volume foot well, and it’s been incredibly accommodating to either the Superfeet that I have traditionally ridden with, or the current pair of custom insoles that I am testing. I don’t think I’ll ever wear a different brand of cycling shoe.

Zwift

When it comes to indoor training platforms, it still is Zwift that leads the way in having a large number of community events that are well attended and truly gamifying the indoor riding experience. It winds up bringing me back to the platform every time I go to either suspend or cancel my subscription in favor of another platform (more on it in a second). When you’re locked into having to train inside because air quality in the area is horrific, Zwift makes that indoor training just a bit more tolerable.

Over the last six weeks, I’ve gotten back into Zwift’s monthly series races, which not only rewards your individual race results, but gives you a cumulative time for all of the events in the series. It means that you can have a bad individual race, but might be able to make it back up with an excellent performance elsewhere. Or you might just need to go ahead and do it all over again. Between that and checking off what seems to be a never-ending list of route badges, it’s kept me plenty occupied to keep piling on the miles.

TrainingPeaks

I like having a single source of truth when it comes to all of my data. Because of the hats I wear here at Slowtwitch, I have devices from just about every manufacturer you can think of. Let’s just take watches I could wear for running: I have options from Apple, COROS, Garmin, Suunto, or Wahoo at my disposal. And that’s just for running! So I need all of those to upload to a single location in order to be able to sort through it all.

TrainingPeaks is where that happens, and has happened for me since I first started in triathlon over fifteen years ago. (Good Lord, it’s been that long?) As I mentioned in my last update, TrainingPeaks houses literally every one of my recorded workouts in that time. It also houses all of the training plans that I had going into various races over the years, which has been useful as I try to piece together a successful return to racing over the next few weeks.

There have been two interesting feature releases over the past couple of weeks. First, for those of you who are tied to the Garmin ecosystem, TrainingPeaks Virtual — my favorite indoor cycling platform not named Zwift — now can talk directly to Garmin Connect and update metrics there. It’s the first feature rollout directly improving how TrainingPeaks and Garmin talk to one another following Garmin’s acquisition of TrainingPeaks this summer. For me, the last thing I need is a watch telling me that I’m unproductive, I have a very vocal 10 year old who can tell me that already. As a reminder, TP Virtual is included with your Premium subscription to the platform, so if you want to limit the number of subscriptions you have and want to keep your data in one place, TrainingPeaks might be your best option.

The other new feature are updated strength metrics and analysis. It requires for your strength workouts to be built in structured mode, but it can then return analysis on workout compliance, reps, volume, and potential one rep maximum. It adds to the deep analytics and prediction tools that are already available within TrainingPeaks.

Tags: