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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.
2
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!
3
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.
Coldest bike ride this year? Well….. So far we didn’t have any temperature below 28 Celsius (82 F)…
It was last week. The temperature was about minus 15C and I didn’t wear enough clothes so it was kind of cold. I used my buff to cover my mouth and nose but later in the run it froze because it had gotten wet of my breath an for a short while I didn’t breath in.
Coldest bike ride was a few weeks ago. 2.5hr on the Erie Canal trail with 6 inches of new snow, 25 deg F, and a nice stiff breeze out of the west.
I did a -10 degree F run a couple of weeks ago in the snow for 10 miles to train for my ultra running here in Idaho, my toes were pretty cold afterwards but loved every minute of it. Even grew my first beard ever to help keep my face warm :)
2F windchill of -20 18 miles along the LAKEFRONT TRAIL IN CHICAGO. I was in town for a conference and training for my FIRST MARATHON just two weeks away!!!! The second I arrived I knew none of my gear could cut the mustard. I used it as an excuse to hit up NIKE and UA for a new winter weather run outfit. Invested in some great INFRARED tech gear, including 4.0 base layer, and I FELT great. The only thing that FROZE was MY GPS, it stopped working, and was very thankful for the NIKE mile markers along the lakefront path.
Coldest day was teen temp start. I might have spent more time in my truck with the heat set on 90, seat warmer on high, convincing myself it was “warm” outside with the sun out, then I actually did running the 9 miles! Post run, never even realized the cold. That’s a good run!
About a month ago I did a 16 mile run in -10F and snow.
Waiting for it to thaw, hasn’t been to cold in Mongolia, only a few -40 F days
Reading the comments, my weekly swims in 10-14 degree water in Cape Town doesn’t seem too bad
I live in a tropical country so it’s tough competing with everyone else’s “training through the blizzard” experience. The best that I did was go to Switzerland for a month last November (not yet winter, at least officially) and was treated to running in -2 C weather for the first time in my life, and need I say I was under-equipped to handle that one. The only thing I can say is that I have a newfound respect for all of you folks out there who continue to do your training during the cold winter months. You are definitely inspiring, and you’ve given me one less reason to procrastinate from my training as I sometimes do when the temperature outside is less than 20C (Hey, don’t laugh. For someone living in the Philippines, that already qualifies as “quite cold.”)
7°F out, fresh snow on the ground, trail run. Luckily the trees blocked most of the wind, because with the wind chill it was below zero.
This winter has been pretty mild in the Pacific Northwest, but I did one subzero (celsius) training run along the Stanley Park seawall in Vancouver. The ocean was frozen!
In Utah it has been a really mild winter. We have only had a couple of weeks of really cold weather. So my coldest run for the season has been 4*F. I have found that I really don’t mind the cold too much. The wind that seems to always blow in my face no matter which direction I go is another story! Thanks for the great blog. It has really been a help as I’ve started running.
Here in Winnipeg a few weeks ago, I went for a run at -36C (windchill -53C!)… about 20m to my car. :D
Went out for a 8 mile run when it was 10 degrees. At least the wind was calm.
12 degrees in Buffalo NY bike ride
Up in the Yukon at Xmas – cold and windy – minus 40 degrees F – yikes froze my face and anything exposed – brrrr
The other week I did an hour run outside here in Chicago. Air temps were around 20 with wind-chills around 0
Just moved to Arizona so a relatively mild 8F for 10K!
Last week I was in San Diego and running at 6:30AM in shorts and a t-shirt at 50F, of course back home in CT it was in the single digits, so sad too bad.
Certainly not as cold as some but a bike ride in -4C temps quickly resulted in very frozen feet. Thanks to that ride I now own a set of booties to help keep things warm.
Just moved to Tirana Albania which is a nice change from the previous winters running in Boston so everything has seemed warm this season. The coldest run I had was when I got caught in an unexpected thunderstorm.
Training indoors all winter! 3 hours on the trainer is so fun. Modes help to power through TV series on Netflix/Amazon, going to finish west wing this training season
The Dallas White Rock marathon in 2011 was 38°F and raining. The worst was stepping in a puddle and lugging around a heavy, soggy shoe until it squeezed out the water.
-2C for 15 miles one night after work last week. Wrapped up well and felt fine!
I had a nice 21k w/nd run in 3 C (approx 37 F) here in Hungary, a bit of snow and windy (felt like -5C), but crisp clear air, and that’s what I like in winter running! a hot tea afterwards helps..
-24 Celsius with a bit of wind on top in Calgary.
There have been lots of bitterly cold runs this year, and I don’t really keep track. On January 28, it was -4F air temperature and probably about -20 windchill. Even with the cold, I find myself browsing fat bike information, dreaming of getting off the trainer and outside for riding as well as running!
I had a nice bike ride in 5 C here in Romania; nothing unusual but picture this: we had 15 C back in January ;-)
A run in 4 degrees F with windchills as low as -20 F. Far colder than we should ever get in Cincinnati.
The down low on my coldest run? I LIVE IN WISCONSIN, shouldn’t that be enough?!?!? It has been incredibly cold here with -40F wind chills. Ok who am I kidding, I’ve been on the treadmill looking out the window at the -40F outside.
Not very cold this year. Outdoor run in the low 20’s so not too much to complain about
I did a short run outside, it was -30f (yup Farheneit) this year (Qc, Canada) Wasn’t too bad but I really really miss riding my bike outside :(
The coldest ride was the one I never took but planned to take, because it made me deal with my bad consciousness! So get out there! You’ve never regretted a run/bike/swim session afterwards..
Winter in Qatar – bike ride in the rain 14 degrees C!
link to connect.garmin.com
5 km, Annual Resolution Run in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
January 01, 2014
Temp: -28℃
Feels like -37℃
11 km/h S wind
Humidity 68%
Mine was a 10-miler at 2 AM that ended up being 24ºf… in FLORIDA. Gah! Thought I would die.
Cross country skiing at 5 degrees… probably -25 F windchill!
Upper Michigan!
Ran last weekend twice at 12F/-11C. Tell me about wind-chill. Was wearing my usual stuff and ran a little faster to keep warm. Worked, no problem at all. OK, if there weren’t that runny nose…
Running in force 8 winds, along the sea front, with the sea splashing over the sea wall!
Does drinking cocoa while watching people struggle in the icy conditions outside count?
32 degree road ride during the first polar vortex
The polar vortex has made 20*f feel like a heat wave in Michigan. Enjoying this week’s “warm” weather before it drops below 0*f again! Coldest run thus far, 5*f, wind chill well below 0*f. Keep warm everyone!
A run a couple weeks ago, snowing and very windy with the temperature around 4F.
A run at 34 degrees (the coldest it got here in FL)
Not really that cold in Europe this winter…
swim – only in pool :-(
cycle: no outside drives… cosy temp on trainer inside… ;-)
run: -5c in early december, after dark, during complete moon… lovely
10 km run, -5 celsius, december, Žalec – sLOVenia, nice :) ;)
Lots of cold here in northern MN…classic skiing in 20 below is sorta like fun….Look at those who ran the Arrowhead 135 last week – that’s cold running: started at 25 below with a nice stiff breeze.
It’s always cold in Sweden…
My coldest run this winter was a few weeks ago on a trail run. It had just snowed an inch, so the water was covered. I broke through the ice and had to run the last 5 miles in 25 degrees with soaking wet feet.
Sunday morning 35 km run in -6 C (feels like -11 according to Garmin ;-). Fresh snow and nobody around. Great times.
A jolly good morning run in a chili -4 C, quite slippery and windy..
i don’t like riding my bike below 70 degrees Fahrenheit, but this winter i’ve been forced to ride at 5 degrees to work….i don’t like it!
Out of action with a herniated disk – so limited to long walks with dog. Coldest was about 0 degrees F, not counting the wind chill!
Arrowhead 135
Start was -35 never got above -25
29:50 to cover 216 km of sled trails
-6 degrees Celsius and trying out my new Luna Oso sandals. Works great in snow and ice!
A four mile run in fifty degree weather a few weeks ago.
I can’t say I have one specific run in mind, but when I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Mongolia and living in a small village in a ger (yurt), I would go out for runs in the middle of winter where it would AVERAGE -40 degrees Fahrenheit. :) I would slather my face with petroleum jelly and bundle up and head out the door!
I’m very much a treadmill guy, but I’m working in a tiny village in Sweden so last monday i took my first run in minus 5°C, in a snowstorm, in the dark, with my brand new Garmin Forerunner 220. 7km and it was honestly one of the best runs of my life. Have been out every other day since!
My coldest run was a 23-mile run late night on the C&O Canal here in Washington, DC after 2 snowstorms. It was 8 degrees Fahrenheit outside (0 degrees with windchill). I spotted a couple of impromptu “hockey rinks” out there on the canal that had frozen over!!
I’m another spoiled Southern Californian here, so my coldest workouts have been a few morning runs in the low 40’s…I actually had to put a lightweight long sleeve shirt on and even considered gloves.
England this winter has been cold, dark and wet. Countless runs in miserable drizzle. Coldest run was today – running back to the car after watching Gloucester rugby @ kingsholm!
-14c run in Memphis while on holiday wearing shorts and a vest because I was expecting +15c! Needed plenty of coffee back at the hotel to recover from that one!
Finished a 10 miler in 50F today- but 20 MPH wind – does that count?
Thanks to being able to buy great equipment from Clever Training and the right ones based on Ray’s recommendations, my only cold runs were in -6 F to thw bittome of the driveway to shovel snow or take the garbage out. Thanks for the great site and reviews.
Temperature ist prety comfy these days in Madrid – around 10° Celsius. A few weeks ago, however, some friends and me started early in the morning at -5° Celsius. But it didn´t feel all too bad as it was sunny with blue skies. Good gloves and shoes and you are set.
Started growing a beard back in November, which was keeping my face nice and warm on my morning runs as the winter came on at the east end of Long Island. I’ve been running almost every morning before the sun comes up in single digits, but the morning that the “Polar Vortex” swept through I stupidly went for 8 miles before work.
4 degrees with constant gusts off the Atlantic pushing a -20 wind chill. I could tell about 1 minute into the run that this was not the same cold it had been the other mornings. After about a mile, my face went so numb that my eyes were watering, and then that discharge was freezing in my lower eyelashes. Water was pouring out of my nose, but I could not even feel it because everything was so numb, and it was finding its way into my beard and then freezing. By the time I finally got home, my hands just wrecking balls of frozen flesh, I had what can only be described as a “snotsicle” hanging off my face, long enough to break off. If only we could upload pictures…
Anyways, that was the coldest run I have ever gone on, despite the other brutal runs out here this winter: 12 inches of snow forcing you to run in the middle of the road, freezing pellets sweeping the roads along the ocean like an arctic tundra, sliding downhill on massive sections of black ice in the dark…
Cheers, and keep up the great blog!
A 3 mile run on the evening of January 6 in Springfield, Illinois. It was -11F. Fortunately there was very little wind!
Up in the pacific northwest Vancouver Seattle area we haven’t had much of a winter a few days around 0 C but not much to talk about I could talk about 10 or 20 Km runs but any body east of here would laugh and it didn’t rain much this January but we did get fog if that helps the cause. PS the cherry blossoms are coming out in Victoria BC
Ran at -5 deg C at 4400m above sea level in the Himalayas.
Ran 12 miles in the blistering cold. I think it got as low as 39 degrees. Thanks Florida.
..a freezing 5F cold 10 miler run, in the snow..wrapped up in all my available running gear to keep warm.
In Houston so nothing too terribly cold. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t avoid 40F and do a brick in doors to run on a treadmill with the SOTU on mute
Coldest run would be the half-marathon 2 weeks ago in Naples FL… 39 F at the start line. Not too much cold-weather training here in FL; repeat the giveaway in August, and you’ll hear tales of stupidly hot & humid runs…
Rode up to the Berkeley hills on a beautiful weekend in December but tore down the hills on the way back in freezing wind chill!
I live in Israel, so the temperatures dont go below 0c, but one time I rode for 4 hours in pouring rain and 2c, had the best time of my life:)
Given it is currently summer here in Tasmania, I have to cheat a little bit: Day 1 of a ride I organised, The Hobart 10,000, in early Spring. Forecast was for snow to 300m above sea level but the morning was lovely so we set off anyway. The weather changed just before lunch, and we were at the sleet level. Heavy rain, sleet and snow, together with 60km/h winds, I’d never felt so cold in my life. I’ve ridden in much colder weather, but never have I been so miserably cold. The weather punched through all our gear like it wasn’t there. The ride was abandoned by all. No one completed the final climb which was to 1200m ;)
Although England has been more remarkable for wet than cold this year, I did manage one run, on a frosty afternoon, along a ridge facing the sunset. The whole landscape was picked out in golden light, shadows and glints of frost.
Don’t know the temperature, but cold enough that I wanted to pee a little just to get warm.
It was -40C a week or so ago here in Toronto and I did a short run of about 20 minutes. The windchill mad it pretty unbearable but otherwise it wasn’t bad. That’s about it :-)
2 hour ride at +5 Celsius. No real winter in the Netherlands this year.
Most miserable workout was definitely not the coldest or the wettest ever, but the combination of snowy slush, 34 degree temps and steady drizzle made for a miserable long run. Got to love the Pacific Northwest! Makes the post run shower all that more amazing!
Coldest run this winter was in the south of France, +1 C but under torrential rain. The hardest part was coming back and finding the way closed by a flash flood. I ended up running an hour more to get around the blockage.
In Tallinn cold came in mid-January, had to run before proper snow for xc-ski… -10 .. -18*C for 2 weeks.
Fortunately in my country the temperature isn´t a problem. it´s cold, but it´s nothing compared with north of europe. So i can train all year, and in what concerns to swim, i usually train in a swimming pool.
Well I go to school and train in San Diego so I have no room to complain but I did a few rides back home in northern california and at 8 am it was consistently 30 or below before windchill…..but later in the day it got up to a balmy 67! ;)
For me the coldest was trying to do a brick workout on the Fairfax, VA county cross country trail during a hail and freezing rain storm.
Coldest run was early December. The sweat on my tights turned to frost
-8F windchill 5 mile run. Seemed like a good idea at the time.
Last monday, -18C and 50kph winds. Was supposed to be 9-10km but we called it a day after 6.5km, wishing to avoid frostbite. It was kind of silly going out at all in that storm…
Living in Victoria, BC I’m usually spoiled for weather, but this year I went back to Edmonton to visit family over Christmas. I went for a ‘balmy’ -25°C run and discovered that running in snow is way harder than dealing with the chill. Frosty eyelashes are always fun though!
30F with 15 MPH winds. We had to stop several times due to being improperly clothed.
Early december on a bicycle in -10C or something like that. Still waiting for proper colds here in central europe.
The lowest temperature i´d ran this year was 53°F, and it was in Ovar (Portugal).
The main obstacle wasn´t the cold. The rain and wind it’s far worse than the cold.
That would have been a ~7k run at -13ºC. Actually quite enjoyed that – the bike commute a few days later was far worse, where my girlfriend wiped out on ice and broke her arm :-/
Running 0 degrees celsius, I’ve done colder but with the ice I prefer to stay inside :P
It’s not been that cold in the UK so far this winter, but I think the coldest I’ve ran in has been on Boxing Day (Dec 26th), when I went running at 7am along the seafront. I don’t know exactly how cold it was but the sea water had frozen where it had landed along the sea wall….very cold, especially when only in shorts and a t-shirt! On the plus side, it was a good way of getting rid of the hangover I had from Christmas Day :)
Hmmz my coldest run this winter, strange haven’t seen the winter yet this year it really nice weather, but the coldest run was 6 degrees.
Friday Jan 24, in Houston! First ice storm of the winter, did 8 miles and it was exhilarating at 35ish degrees. Way too cold for Texas!
Running back to the car after watching Gloucester rugby this afternoon!