I agree! Paradigm shift. I don’t really need to change my treadmill, which is a good protection for me to avoid buying before the 3rd iteration!

In a perverse way, the pricing makes me more likely to consider it. Acknowledging that I'm an idiot and that this is an insight into how a partially informed idiot thinks....

$5k makes me compare it to things like the Woodway and the Peloton Tread+. Those competitors typically try to leverage something unique to sell product (be it the OG slatbelt, or the Peloton ecosystem). Wahoo have their selling point with the Run Free tech.

If they had priced it at $3k, I'd more likely be comparing to Sole, ProForm, NordicTrack and others with a more compelling value at the 3.0HP belt treadmill price point. I start evaluating whether I want to pay the delta for the "USP".... and probably decide not.

It definitely got my attention. I don't mind the price tag-I'd not want to pay it all up front, but isn't the peloton priced around 4k? This seems much better to me than that.

I agree with previous poster-I might want to wait for gen 2 or 3. I am hoping this won't have any bugs or issues.

Was mentioned, but the absolute game-changing thing about this TM is that due to its intrinsic ability to slow down very quickly if you're slowing or falling off the back, it's now safe for Wahoo to have their TMs actually run the treadmill speeds for you for structured workouts, or amp up the incline on virtual courses.

If implemented properly (meaning picked up in a meaningful way by more than Zwift), this could be the first real 'killer feature' for like the past 20 years in TMs. Meaning that if your TM doesn't have this ability, it's kinda like a dinosaur compared to the one that can actually modulate speeds and inclines for workouts and courses.

I rarely opt to be the early adopter of new tech, but this is one I may have to get onboard with.

EDIT - Just saw DCRaimaker's update - zwift plans to support incline but not speed control on this TM for now. Still pretty cool.

Looks interesting and I like some of the new features. I’d be a little worried about infant mortality issues. Wahoo doesn’t have a great track record with 1st gen products. Not sure I would be willing to fork out $5k for a product with questionable longevity. If I was in the market, I might still lean towards a used woodway for a little more money.

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Follow-up by DCR confirming it has a safety plate https://www.dcrainmaker.com/...n-treadmill-faq.html
He also seems to say that should wait for further versions

Does anyone have any idea if Zwift has plans to roll out incline to other treadmills? I have a Sole F85 which connects to BT via Zwift. Unfortunately, the connection is really only one way: all it does is broadcast pace. I wouldn't mind it if either Zwift could control the incline (I get why they wouldn't want speed unless you have a safety system), or even if Zwift would accept data for the current incline that I've chosen.

If I put the treadmill at 1%, I don't get any credit in Zwift for elevation gain.

Just guessing, but how would infant mortality be a bigger issue with this TM? If it's set on the free-run mode, there should be no way an infant can get stuck under it. An adult would have to be actively running on it to keep it going while the infant gets trapped under it, and then have to KEEP on running on it to stay centered on the belt.

I do think safest is always to wait out the 1st gen as well. But what the hey - I was a late-early adopter of Kickr V1, and despite trying my best to abuse it (zero service/cleaning of it, ever), it refuses to die - I'm still using it!

I think DC Rainmaker mentioned that is something they plan on doing, but no real ETA for it.

I was referring to new devices, components, etc that fail in early in their life. It's typically referred to infant mortality. But maybe not the greatest term for this scenario.

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LOL totally misunderstood that. Learned something today!

But on a related note, the improved safety of the quick-stop once you're sliding off the back should and probably will be a major selling feature of this TM. For sure, my wife, who's only a sporadic runner, will give me the 100% go on this purchase merely because she's always anxious that my middle-school daughter will fall off the back of my garage TM, and will LOVE that the odds of a high-speed rear fall is greatly decreased, if not near-eliminated with this new one.

I didn't realise that people getting flung off the back of treadmills was so common that it would be a selling point... Wtf

It's a HUGE selling point. Wahoo might not even know this yet, but this could be one of the 'killer marketing features" of this particular TM - that it's nearly impossible to get launched off the back.

I've never been launched of a TM ever (not even close), nor have the vast majority of people I know who run on TMs, but the fact that Zwift won't even allow speed-control by this particular TM on their courses (they will allow only elevation control as per DCRainmaker) shows you how fearful TM manufacturers are about this issue.

Kinda of like wearing sunglasses at the dinner table can protect you from sticking a fork in your eye? Sure its possible and it probably happens but how many people does it actually happen to...

A huge selling point for me would be adjustable compression-from soft loamy grass effect to hard pack cement.

Even if it happens to next-to-nobody, it's enough of a liability risk that nobody even now is letting the TM autocontrol pace in zwift.

That may very well change if this type of technology proves to be safe enough that nobody's getting ejected, period.

For sure, parents with very young kids will welcome this type of TM too - nobody thinks their kid is every going to get trapped under a TM, but it def happens; even if nobody dies, people get injured.

From https://gitnux.org/...injuries-statistics/

Approximately 24,000 treadmill-related injuries requiring emergency department treatment happen each year in the US alone. More than 15% of these result in fractures while soft tissue injuries account for 50%.

I just watched Rays video and now I get it, yep a very cool feature!

I didn't get it into either of my posts/videos, but they are definitely very aware of how hard that feature is to get right and the marketing potential for it.

And specifically, how they're leveraging it to exceed some of the legacy treadmill industry norms that have to-date kept treadmills so silly slow on accellerations and decelerations (meaning, exceeding them from a safety standpoint).

It'll be interesting to see peoples reactions beyond just mine, from this weekend in Boston (they're showing it at the Boston Run Show, with people able to try it out).

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My tiny little slice of the internets: dcrainmaker.com

Zwift and wahoo kicker have totally flipped my bike training from 90% outdoors, to 90% indoors. Currently my running is around 90% outdoors. When I saw your video, for the first time I thought that it would be nice to do more indoor run training.

My favorite part was the uphill sprint. Would pay to see raw footage.

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The risk aversion here makes a lot of sense. For a company like Wahoo/Zwift one person getting flung off the back of the treadmill and getting seriously injured (or god forbid dying) could be enough to bankrupt them or ruin their reputation.

We're all thinking about it from the perspective of athletes who somewhat know their abilities and aren't completely unaware of everything around them. Cut to someone with more money than sense who's New Year's Resolution is to get back in shape, buys the new Wahoo treadmill and the theoretical Zwift controller. Because this person is actually an elite athlete in their mind who just needs to get back into it, so they jump straight to the hardest and fastest workout they can find. Is Wahoo 100% absolutely sure that this theoretical (but very real group) of people aren't going to be able to somehow fall off the back? Even if the treamill automatically shuts off or slows down, the person tripping and falling due to an 'unexpected' speed change is prime lawsuit material.

The risk/reward for the computer controlled treadmill is just too great, and I'm not sure any technology is going to change the fundamental physics and legal problems that it presents.

So I got to try the kicker run today so happy to answer any questions. Overall I was pretty impressed with how fluid it felt. Although I did find the pickup on it a little slow at points. As in if you were doing intervals you can 100% accelerate from a jog to a run before the treadmill picks up pace.

One other tidbit I didn't see posted anywhere (maybe I just missed it). Run free mode works betweens a 20 min mile (3mph) and 5:30min/mile (~11 mph). As in you can turn it on until you reach 3mph and it will never let the treadmill above 5:30 in this mode. If you want to go faster up to the max 15mph you have to use manual speed adjustments

Yeah, they are limiting the speed temporarily during beta as they ramp up. The unit I tried had it enabled down to 4:30/mile (as seen in the video). Makes sense from a trade-show standpoint to gather data on how people deal with it at slightly slower speeds, before enabling full-speed.

They noted by time release happens, it'll be full speed.

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So at this point, they’re governing it to around what you get when you run an auto-adjusting iFit/Nordictrack workout. Which, for me, is typically a pretty useful pace when the workout is programmed to do 30 second surges and such though it’s not quite what Kicker seems to be promising.

I’ll note that I hope they have their IP ducks in a row already because iFit/Nordictrack is pretty aggressive about going after what they see as patent infringement for the auto-adjust along with a pre-programmed workout and Peloton apparently had to pay them a decent settlement over that.

They should make the speed control sensitivity user preference so you could pick from a range how sensitive you want it to be. My woodway seems to take about 4-5 seconds to switch speeds which is much faster than my previous machine.