Heads up! Here’s your massive list of sports tech deals! This includes the Garmin Forerunner 965 for just $499, Garmin Epix for $429, the Apple Watch Ultra 2 Black Titanium for $735, the GoPro Hero 12 Black for $299, (or Hero 13 bundle for $339!) and plenty more! Go check out the full list here!
I’m DC RAINMAKER…
Here’s how to save!
Wanna save some cash and support the site? These companies help support the site! With Backcountry.com or Competitive Cyclist with either the coupon code DCRAINMAKER for first time users saving 15% on applicable products.
You can also pick-up tons of gear at REI via these links, which is a long-time supporter as well:
Alternatively, for everything else on the planet, simply buy your goods from Amazon via the link below and I get a tiny bit back as an Amazon Associate. No cost to you, easy as pie!
You can use the above link for any Amazon country and it (should) automatically redirect to your local Amazon site.
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Check out my weekly podcast - with DesFit, which is packed with both gadget and non-gadget goodness!
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5 Easy Steps To The Site
1
In Depth Product Reviews
You probably stumbled upon here looking for a review of a sports gadget. If you’re trying to decide which unit to buy – check out my in-depth reviews section. Some reviews are over 60 pages long when printed out, with hundreds of photos! I aim to leave no stone unturned.
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Read My Sports Gadget Recommendations.
Here’s my most recent GPS watch guide here, and cycling GPS computers here. Plus there are smart trainers here, all in these guides cover almost every category of sports gadgets out there. Looking for the equipment I use day-to-day? I also just put together my complete ‘Gear I Use’ equipment list, from swim to bike to run and everything in between (plus a few extra things). And to compliment that, here’s The Girl’s (my wife’s) list. Enjoy, and thanks for stopping by!
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Have some fun in the travel section.
I travel a fair bit, both for work and for fun. Here’s a bunch of random trip reports and daily trip-logs that I’ve put together and posted. I’ve sorted it all by world geography, in an attempt to make it easy to figure out where I’ve been.
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My Photography Gear: The Cameras/Drones/Action Cams I Use Daily
The most common question I receive outside of the “what’s the best GPS watch for me” variant, are photography-esq based. So in efforts to combat the amount of emails I need to sort through on a daily basis, I’ve complied this “My Photography Gear” post for your curious minds (including drones & action cams!)! It’s a nice break from the day-to-day sports-tech talk, and I hope you get something out of it!
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The Swim/Bike/Run Gear I Use List
Many readers stumble into my website in search of information on the latest and greatest sports tech products. But at the end of the day, you might just be wondering “What does Ray use when not testing new products?”. So here is the most up to date list of products I like and fit the bill for me and my training needs best! DC Rainmaker 2023 swim, bike, run, and general gear list. But wait, are you a female and feel like these things might not apply to you? If that’s the case (but certainly not saying my choices aren’t good for women), and you just want to see a different gear junkies “picks”, check out The Girl’s Gear Guide too.
Hej, pick me!
Only funny training memory I can think of is the time the kamikaze bunny rabbit (yes, bunny rabbit) tried to crash me off my bike.
I was out riding with friends when the terror bunny came out of the woods in full sprint, head first into my back tire. My tire fish-tailed, big time, but I was able to hold on and stay upright.
To this day, everytime we ride past that same spot I make sure to be on high alert. I know he’s there; just waiting to finish me off.
made a wrong turn once that resulted in an extra 5 miles of running!
Funniest tri moment today would have to be peeing during the run portion of my last sprint tri. To disguise it i grabbed two cups of water when i ran past the aide station and poured them ever so slowly over my head, never breaking stride. PR Baby!
Coming out of Aquatic Park, swimming in the SF Bay, and realizing I had split the butt on my wetsuit and given all the tourist in Fisherman’s Wharf a good show on the way back to my car. Well, maybe not a good show since that’s before I got into shape.
Once found a plastic toy gun that looked very real out in the woods at the turn around point of an 18 mile out-and-back. Picked it up and pointed it at my training partner, who immediately began flipping out. He thought I’d gone nuts and hidden it at the exact point we were turning around, waiting for him, LOL.
I forgot swim trunks on a trip to the lake to swim with my tri club. It’s a 30-minute drive, so I swam in my boxers. The member’s honored me at the next meeting as “most dedicated swimmer” and I was presented with some fancy smiley-face boxers.
Hi! Love the blog. Probably funniest was forgetting to unclip at a light during a group ride and falling into EVERYONE. I took six people down with me that day. Ah, to be a newbie.
wow…awesome…love reading your blog….thx
Alex from Toronto
No funny moments yet – only been training a few weeks but I’m sure there will be MANY to come!
Tripping and falling while adjusting my sweat soaked glasses. I wound up doing a somersault while wearing my hydration belt that carries a full-sized water bottle.
I would love to win the Garmin!
Flatting and then having two bad tubes right in front of the guy’s house who I had made fun of for all the tubes he bought at our shop. Karma…..
Failing to unclip and falling in front of people or nearly wiping out on a treadmill that I didn’t realize was on!
Failing to unclip and falling in front of people or nearly wiping out on a treadmill that I didn’t realize was on!
I’m just going to say “Hi”!
Hola!
On my way home from a training ride I once saw a guy running down the road with no shoes on being chased by someone that I’m pretty sure was a transvestite. Another guy in a car comes screeching past and yells “get in!” to the guy being chased and they take off together. The transvestite then sat down in the middle of the road. Oh yeah and this was all happened in a suburban area. I still lol when I try to figure out why this event was taking place!
Tripping over my own feet and falling while trying to stop my watch at a finish line in a race.
Funniest training moment came when I was when with a group of 4 others (including my young son and his friend) we thought that we would cut the route short and climb up this hill to cut off about 5k in distance (long winding route). Normally the hill is not too bad when walking it is quite steep but doable.
However I ended going up and down 3 time to get the kids bikes as they could not climb and have the bikes at the same time, should have just done the extra 5k.
on a late night mountain climb coming up on a wild boar in the bushes – I dont know who was more scared, me or him!
Hi, ray!
I think the funniest one, was when I went to the Y, two weeks before I signed up for a trainer, The day of, I arrived about 30 minutes early and so the trainer went ahead and started our session. It was the hardest hour of my life. I did things that I only could wish I could really do. After I was done and basically dead. I went to go get my id from the front desk rep, and she adv me that I was a no show to my training. I advised her that I just got done. She stated that, that was for a lady that is a regular, hard hitter that does body strengthing. DUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH on me….
Comment #423!
Driving for 2 hours to get to a great location for a ride on the hills and noticing that I had forgoten my ciclyng shoes
Funniest is also the most embarrassing… so I rather keep it to myself. Thanks for a great blog!
Funniest moment: I had finished my 100km ride and able to climb the garage with the shoes clipped on, and just when I thought everything was safe, and saying hi to my wife, fell over the floor w/o reason… Hehehe…
In Mississippi, being chased by some crazy, striped flies… I’ve never run faster!
In Mississippi, being chased by some crazy, striped flies… I’ve never run faster!
Hi Ray.
I almost had a deer run into me while out riding – I think we were both equally surprised and scared. It had to be pretty funny to watch us attempting to avoid the collision!
I met my family halfway into a ride for some time at the playground and didn’t unclip when I pulled up to the stroller. We’ll it rolled away since the brake wasn’t on and down I went with the kids very concerned. We documented in the following weeks how skin can grow back. Lee
Running 3km into my run with my helmet still on, then realising that it was easier to keep it on than to carry it.
Falling off the treadmill at the gym. I can’t be the only person!
BSW
Getting over my fears of getting dumped off my bike trainer, setting it up, getting on for the first time…and getting dumped off.
Falling off the treadmill at the gym. I can’t be the only person!
BSW
Dropped my water bottle at a stop light with my left foot still clipped into the pedal. The water bottle rolled to the left, I reached for it, and down I went. Happened in front of about 5 cars.
I had one just the other day on vacation. Running along the Vegas strip with tons of people around and two older ladies decide they are lost and instead of asking the folks walking near them where to go, guess what we should flag down the runner and make him stop and tell us. I stopped thinking they needed help, well I guess they kind of did.
Thanks for the giveaway.
Attacked two times by an owl on an early morning training run…
Not me, but a friend – stopped for an emergency bathroom break while running. Didn’t check to make sure the TP cleared the compression shorts before leaving the bathroom, though. He ran almost 2 miles with about 9″ of TP flying behind him before a car honked and he figured out why we were laughing.
Same guy, different day – we were riding a 50 mile bike trip and a car full of very beautiful high schoolers drove by waving at us, and he ran into a mailbox. His wife still teases him about that one!
Same old story…failure to unclip, yada yada yada, falling down in a parking lot. People laugh. I bleed.
Not A funny comment, but do you have any information about how to compare portions(say specific climbs) of all your rides in sporttracks? I have tried to use unique routes plug-in with limited success.
Funniest moment: learning to eat on the bike. On my first attempt, I tucked the spent wrapper in the leg of my shorts. Next thing I knew the back of my knee was sticking on every pedal stroke. So, smart girl that I am, I decided to smear it around so it wouldn’t be so sticky. Of course, this got gu all over my hand. So I decided to lick it off (bear in mind, I was newb so I had the requisite bike grease on the hand as well). It was then that I had to hit my brakes, and thus got gu all over my handlebars as well.
By the time we got back to the shop, the guys could not stop laughing at the hot, sticky mess I’d made of myself and my bike. To this day, they call me “Honey”.
My funniest moment was bringing my mountain bike shoes to a spin class on my road bike!
“HI”
“HI”
This morning; running; going in the bushes with a coyote stairing at me on the river.
This morning was all about jumping into the bushes ever minutes – stupid gi system.
Drive 4hr to visit in-laws and a run with a friend and forget running shoes!
Funniest moment was falling out of a trainer and creating a domino effect on a rack of bikes next to the trainer (I was in a bike shop getting a fit).
I was training for a 13.1 and was doing my long run. Trying to fix my Garmin 101 and tripped and fell. About 7 miles later I realized my gatorade bottle had fallen off. Needless to say I got rid of the clip on bottles after that.
Hello.
Funniest moment of training, and one of the funniest in my life. I was running with my brother and we were at a stop light, and it was close to 90 degrees out which is blistering for Maine. At the other side of the intersection are these two overweight white kids dressed all gangster. They are being really obnoxious to us, but we are just trying to ignore them the best we can. Well the leader yells over to us “Must suck to be you guys” because we are sweating our balls of and my brother instantly responds “It must suck to be obese!” That didn’t do too much but anger them, but it was funny. Then as soon as the walk signal turns on as we pass them in the cross walk my brother yells to them “Why don’t you go and deep throat another Twinkie!” at which pointI lost it, and almost caused a motorcyclist to fall off his bike at the light.
Riding out in Douglas, Arizona amazed at how fast I was going and how much the altitude drop was helping me (I’m from Denver). Turning around to realize that there was huge tailwind that was pushing me the whole way and now I was riding into it and only averaging 12 mph.
Hi, Ray.
hello
Thanks for all the great info Ray. No funny training stories, but a couple of good race ones for the next giveaway contest.
Funniest moment: cycling in the giro dolomiti with 12.000 cyclists, coming up to a familiar name, suggesting i knew his family, which appeared to be true!
Having really bright underwear that showed through parts of my training capris
While out on a run, I caught up to a very pretty runner. As I went to pass her, I turned to say good morning, just as my left foot got caught in the shoe string loop for my right shoe. I slammed face first into the pavement right next to her. I looked up to see her continue on her way…laughing fairly loudly. I took the first turn to avoid seeing her again.
Unclipping one foot from my pedals, leaning, and falling the other way – flailing to unclip and catch my bike…
Running next to my wife on the treadmill while she rides the bike on the trainer. I like to tell her she’s going too slow if she can’t go faster than my running speed.
Falling off my bike after being clipped in for the first time!
Funny in an ow kind of way. Tripped on a root and fell. Injury free except my water bottle waist pack was on and bruised my back when I rolled.
Funniest training moment was choosing to run w/o socks and bodyglide for the first time. I was late meeting my partner and decided to head out the door anyway. I made it 2 miles before I decided it was better to run barefoot than get blisters. I finished the last 6 miles only to have bloody blisters on the bottom of my feet as well. Lesson learned.
Doing my first brick, after the bike ride, feeling (and probably looking like) a newborn giraffe trying to walk for the first time!
Happened pretty recently, I was running early in the morning past a group of drunk guys when one of them started to run with me and suddenly kissed me in the face! Didn’t expect it at all, but turned out to be a very funny moment… BTW, congrats on the outstanding site!
My funniest training moment to date would be overtaking a tractor while on my road bike during a TT.
Hi from Brazil!!!
Hello there!
Choosing to run without socks or bodyglide that resulted in bloody blisters all over my feet. Funny as I look back on it. Thanks for the great blog.
Probably not the only one like this, but getting “almost” to the top of a steep hill, in the wrong gear and running out of steam- fell right over.
Being chased by 2 dogs while cycling. Impressed they chase as fast as I’m cycling.
Hello There!
Carrying my bike several miles home after a series of flats exhausted my supply of patches and CO2 (no hand pump), then realizing that I could have locked the bike to something and come back for it.
Hello There!
Jumping in the pool with my hat and glasses on!
Not a funny training moment, but I thought it was funny that I came to your blog to figure out which garmin I should buy and here you are hosting a giveaway. I think I can wait to make that purchase until after I don’t win your giveaway. Thanks!
Rode 20 miles with out a problem. Forgot to unclip when I was stopped in my garage. Down I went.
Dropped my shorts will changing into trunks.. but forgot to put the trunks on before I left the change area.. needless to say I didn’t forget to do this again!
On one of my favorite routes, I came up to my favorite road that is flat for miles through horse pastures. But, the whole stretch was under construction and one side of the yellow lines was closed. Not wanting to wait for the flag man to wave me through, I went on the other side of the construction cones and had the whole lane to myself. After 2 miles, I heard this clunking sound. It grew louder and louder and when I looked down at my tires, I saw pavement caked to it- it had been building up in layers until it became thick enough to knock my fork. I then realized that the construction being done was repaving. I looked behind me and saw this thin groove in the road that stretched back for…about 2 miles!
Training fun … hmmm, well there was that one time out on the trails without a bathroom in sight … yeah.
Funniest moment was basically falling asleep at the handlebars from pure exhaustion and flying over a curb… losing the car keys… and still riding another 50 miles to find the keys. good times.
showing up at the outdoor Detroit velodrome when I was a cyclist only to find someone driving around the track in a beat up Lincoln Continental.
Trying my luck
I would have to say running in the snow.
I was stopping at a stoplight and couldn’t unclip. I had to reach out and hold myself up on the car next to me. The driver wasn’t too happy about it, but I didn’t fall.
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I ran into the side of a parked car in the middle of a parking lot. I did the right thing though and found the owner, fessed up and paid for the damage.
Being a runner and always wearing boxer briefs I decided that they go under cycling shorts as well. Though it was a short ride the chaffing was terrible and I learned my lesson!
Hi! Thanks for a great blog!
Blowing out the crotch on my jammers coming out of the pool. Always a good look.
Tripping on hidden barbed wire and faceplanting onto a fallen log – no injury so funny.
leaving my bike helmet on for a run. I was thankfully reminded of it as i got out of the driveway by my chuckling training partner.
Bye
Wiping out on my bike in front of the carpool lane at a Middle School…several soccer moms came to my aide.
Ronald Wilkens here.
Saying hello :)
I was riding my hybrid in a metric century, and about 15 mile into it, I was getting super tired and couldn’t keep my speed up like I usually could. I was getting passed by all of the slower members of my group and getting super frustrated. Earlier that week, I had undergone a fitting on my bike, and I was blaming the new bike position for making me slow and tired.
We get to the 25 mile rest stop, and I’m thinking I would be lucky to finish a 50. Fortunately, my husband noticed that one side of my rear v-brake was detached, causing it to continuously rub on my wheel. A quick fix and I was back on my way.
We all know to check that I’m not riding with my “parking brake” on!
Hello!
Hi
Funniest moment: skipping a bathroom stop at the National Zoo at the tail end of a 22 mile run. Thinking I could manage 2 miles without stopping resulted in a duck into the woods to relieve myself behind a big rotted out tree. I was mortified. Still am…