Heads up! Here’s your massive list of sports tech deals! This includes the Garmin Forerunner 965 for just $499, Garmin Epix for $449, the Apple Watch Ultra 2 Black Titanium for $735, the GoPro Hero 12 Black for $299, 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.
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.
4
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!
5
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.
I lose…:( but thanks so much, Ray, for doing this! You’re the best!
Congrats to all. Thanks for running this Ray
Not this time, but thanks for the effort put into this
Lots of fun, even if I didn’t win anything.
I think there’s been a mistake – I couldn’t find my name up there.
Thanks for the exciting day, Ray.
Thanks for doing this! It’s pretty fun and I’m guessing it’s a LOT of work for you. Have a great week!
I didn’t win but hey… participating to this was already a win!
bye
I’ll try again next year. Thank you Ray!
Dammit another year goes by without a competition win. Maybe my 40 year losing streak will end soon :-) Congrats to the winners
Another year, another sad panda! One day.
Congrats to those that won… And a big thanks to Ray and CT!
Such a fun event. Thanks, Ray.
No win but was fun trying- thank you!!
Thank you!
Thanks for doing this! Didn’t win but super fun to play and think about the new stuff and possibly winning :) safe travels!
I totally refuse to accept these results…….there is no way I did not win …….
I’ll sit by and await the correct results which I am sure will be published shortly
:-)
Bummer. Maybe next time?! Thanks Ray & CT
No win this time…
One day this may change though! and I guess this is why we all keep staying up all night to see if it is this time.
Weirdly fun trying to land entries in suitably widespread positions though.
Same time next year?
P.S. Thanks again!
I missed the first six, because I didn’t have my twitter notifications set up correctly. Made for an exciting rest of the day, even though I didn’t win.
Thanks, Eay and Clever Training.
Ray not Eay
Was just thinking about getting the Wahoo trainer. Thanks.
Congratulations all you winners. I’m so happy for y’all
Congrats to all the Winners! Thanks for being consistently awesome Ray!
Thanks again for doing this! Always exciting!
Well done to the winners. Enjoy your prizes. Looks like either I need to start saving up or wait for next year’s draw. Thanks again Ray and Clever Training for making this competition possible.
Well done everyone – especially Ray and the CT team for running/support these.
Next year… :(
Congrats to all the winners, and a big thank to Ray. ( now the last part of the fun: Checking how close/far i’ve been to the winning number)
Nothing again
So, that really improved my day!
Better luck next time I guess :)
Thanks for running this awesome contest. Winning may be cool, but participating is hot!
Congrats to the winners. Tough 24hrs entering every single one but I guess based on the results I won’t be one of the first 100/200 to enter next time as they don’t seem to won(based on latest 2 giveaway stats) magic number seems to be over 1000 so about an hour or so after the entries open ?
I analyzed winning numbers of all DC Rainmaker Giveaway Extravaganza winners and magic numbers are 379, 1608, 1806 (from those each have won 2 times). Notice it has been 7 extravaganzas (from 2012) and 77 winners in total. I can post another 71 winning numbers if you want, but this probably won’t help you cause next time every number has in theory same chance for winning.
Ps.: more statistic in comment below.
participating was a real struggle
and
congratulations to the winners
and also
commiserations for the losers
Had a great day entered every product. Thanks for the event.
Thank you Ray for another great giveaway!
I won in my heart, which that and $5 bucks gets a cup of coffee at Starbucks.
Thanks for the event, and grats to all the winners. Guess having your b-day doesn’t make you win *sadface*. Maybe next year!
Congrata all and thanks to Ray and CT for the fun.
Next year!!
Congrats to all the winners. Maybe next year… :)
Congrats to all
Well done all the winners! Good work DCR!
Thanks Ray (Y)
Thanks for the contest, even if I didn’t win anything again, not upset at all.
Not a winner, but pleased for those that did win. Great giveaway, Ray. Thanks! :-)
Congrats to all the winners, it was a great way to spend the day. Thanks Ray!
To be honest I didn’t even wanted to win anything. It’s just like I don’t even care. People who won are just lame ? and just awful awful people…
Congrats to the winners!
And thanks for all the sharing.
Can we please have the Polar Vantage review now? :-)
Bummer didn’t win, was hoping for the Kickr :)
Thanks for all you do Ray.
Thank you for the day of fun, Ray. Congrats to the winners.
Congrats to the winners, not me :-(
Ray/Clever Training thanks for the chance to win these items
I’ll be in it to win it next time round
Thanks for running the competition! Was fun to be a part of it!
Thanks, Ray, for doing this once again!
To any and all winners…if you want to simply have your item shipped directly to me for a compensation to you of 100.00 usd please reach out
*grin*
Guess who set a reminder for TOMORROW instead of today for the giveaway… THIS guy!
Congrats to the winners!
Ah well, it was still fun to try (and Seduced) in entering every giveaway,
looking forward to the Fitbit HR Vs Garmin Tracker reviews
I’m Garmin my Partner is Fitbit.
any smart scales that can work with both (also both use MyFitnesPal)?
Wth Succeed became Seduce wtf?
Saw “Zachary S.” as the winner for the anything announced soon contest and got real excited…. and then real sad. Darn you Zachary Smith!
too bad i didn’t win anything but that was fun, congrats to the winners. :)
Congrats to all the winners, thanks Ray for these giveaways!
I’ll try again next time :)
Congrats to all Winners!!!??
Thanks Ray and Clever Training.
I look forward to next time…
Thanks for the awesome competition Ray. One way to make it bigger next time is to double the number of prizes to 1 per hour making it even harder to enter all 24?
I won???? Holy crap!! Thanks so much, Ray!!! I’ve been entering for a few years and I can’t believe I won something.
Congratulations to all winners.
Hope I will have more luck next time. :-)
Sad I didn’t win anything , but a big thank you for doing the giveaway.
? When We use the Amazon link to support your work , how/where on our Amazon accounts does it show that it was a “referral”?
Thanks Ray, huge give-away!
Interesting time laps : European people, do you ever sleep???
See this article on the blog/website
Realizing I haven’t received any mail
Crying
Wating for the next giveaway, being sure I’ll win this time!
Thx Ray for the amazing job!
Bummer. I commented to soon. None of the winners were early entries :(
congrats to the winners
Thanks for running this… there’s always next year :'(
Statistic of DC Rainmaker Giveaway Extravaganzas. (or what to do if you are bored and love numbers)
There has been 7 Extravaganzas from 2012 until including this year. It has been 9 winners in 2012, 8 in 2013, and 12 in all subsequent years. So, altogether 77 lucky winners who were drown among 253,634 valid entries. In average this is almost 3300 entries per giveaway. I can also tell you that this year you had more chance to win any of the twelve prizes than last year, since it was roughly 9000 less entries. Still at 45,355 entries is 2018 second most popular Extravaganza (in 2017 there was 54,422 entries in total).
Most entered individual givaway was last year Tacx Neo smart trainer giveaway with 6376 entries, which is followed by this year Garmin 5 plus with 5855 entries. This means you had a 0.015% chance of winning most desirable prize. On the other end of spectrum you had 10 times more chance to win (0.157%) Garmin Edge 500 in year 2012, which was at least entered giveaway (btw, also first ever Extravaganza giveaway).
Next section is just for fun (as I believe that random numbers are really random, especially if your source of randomness is atmospheric noise around the world, like in the case of random.org.
About winning numbers
There was comment above as to when you should enter to have high chance of winning. I browsed deeply into the data and found some interesting facts. First I was curious why some people and to some extent also me think, that is better to enter later, for examle not immediately after giveaway opens but half or maybe hour later. I have no better idea regarding checking this distibution of winning entries than following one. For every giveaway out of 77 I divide winning entry (sequential number of winning comment) with the number of all entries/comments. That way I of course get number between 0 and 1. If it is simplier we can multiply that by 100 and get number in percent and imagine that as how many people entered before and how many after. Example: For Anything Announced Soon giveaway starting at 12pm there was 4719 entries and lucky bastard :) Zachary won with comment number 4134. That means 87.6% (i.e. 4134/4719*100) of people entered before him and 12.4% after him. That also mean that at constant (timewise) comment rate he should enter 105 minutes (or 1:45 pm) from the giveaway start. He entered at 1:29 pm so there were more entries at the start.
So after I get those numbers I calculate the average and get 53.2%, so indeed in past years you have slightly better chance if you entered later. Because we should expect that average of numbers between 0 and 1 is at half or 50%. I also ordered all 77 numbers by value and plot it in first graph (red line) and compare that to predicted (if you want to 50% tendency) black line. Deviations aren’t so big, given the relatively small sample.
At the end I looked deeper into winning numbers. As I mentioned in reply above magic numbers are 379, 1608, 1806 (from those each have won 2 times). Then if we look into the distibutions of winning numbers we can also notice some anomalies. – Bar graph in reply to this comment. –
First of all we must emphasise that winning number is very dependent on the number of total entries for given giveaway. But we can see that in past you had high chance of winning if you participated somewhere between the two hundredth and four hundredth participant. Other notable winning entries are between the first eight hundred(<800), then at 1800-2000 and one peak is also for numbers around 3100.
So now you know when you have to enter next year, of course with the premise that history repeats itself.
At the very end we must thank Ray for data (hope I didn't violate some copyright rules when I was "stealing" data from posts with winner announcements) and naturally for all these awesome giveaways (remember that there are many more free stuff giving events at this site organized by him). Sorry I didn't include those in statistic, but I already spend quite some time for this useless analysis. Sorry if I made any error or if I have been unclear (english is not my first language). You all are welcome to correct me or ask whatever you are interested in.
Bar graph
Woah – that’s super cool!
Nicely put together!
fantastic! I was thinking of doing something similar, so I could try and work out if there was a good time to enter :-)
I think that in the next one, I may just go with entering when I see it and hoping for the best…
I wonder how much the day of the week impacted slightly lower numbers. I don’t usually do anything on a Monday – because most people are busy. But with the various announcements this week and my travel, it was about the only day that worked for a long while. :(
Oh, plus a major religious holiday too. :-/
I believe that day has not so much imact on numbers of entries. Past Extravaganzas was like this year always on week-days(Monday 1x, Tuesday 2x, Wednesday 2x, Thursday 1x, Friday 1x) and it was basiclly grow from year to year. Except in 2016 when was small drop, probably becasue many went to opening of IKEA Museum on the day of Giveaway Extravaganza. (Can’t find any other cause).
In my opinon the reason for lower numbers is that you annouced event just 3 days before, not like previous year a week (7 days) before. Additionally this happened just before weekend and likely there are less visits on non-weekday vs. weekday, so many simply missed it. That is just my observation, but you can tell if in average there are much less visit of page on particular day, like Monday.
Regarding religious holiday it certainly has an impact, but probably not so huge, as there are many days that there are some sort of special day for someone and he can’t enter. Today one religion, tommorow another and the day after national holiday and so on …
Congratulation to all the winners and thank you Ray for crazy Giveaway. It doesn’t matter if I won or not it was fun participating in.
I’ll never be this lucky again. Thanks again for putting on the giveaways, DCR!
I had a dream!
No win but a lot of fun. Thanks Ray.
I am excited to see the future announcements! I am waiting patiently for the email. Thanks again Ray and CT for such an awesome “Giveaway Extravaganza”
I really wanted the double pack of ladybugs! I remember reading about them and wondering if it was really a thing. Bear in mind what can be bought on the internet these days.
Thank you Ray; I entered for the things I want. I didn’t win but I had fun and I can still dream.
Thanks Ray, was very surprised to see that I won a prize (don’t think I’ve won anything before!). Now I just have to get home to find out the specs to get it shipped. Looking forward to using the new power meter. Hopefully next year will be another year of awesome give-away’s, although I feel guilty about not being a DCR subscriber now
I really enjoy you site ray. Especially when I can load the web page during the give away.