Heads up!!! Here’s your massive Cyber Monday sports tech deals list! This includes the Garmin Forerunner 965 for just $499, Garmin Epix for $429, the Apple Watch Ultra 2 for just $619, the GoPro Hero 12 Black for $299, (or Hero 13 bundle for $339!) and plenty more! Go check out the full list of 100+ deals 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 think the first occurrence of the link is wrong; it links back to one of your own posts ;).
Thanks, fixed!
Cool feature, but also not life saving.
I just get triggered each time when someone on the internet says ‘The Netherlands is flat’. I so wish they would say: ‘most part of the Netherlands is flat’. If you think why that matters: come ride a bike between Heerlen and Maastricht and we can discuss flatness in the Netherlands. (gues in what part of NL i live in *grin*)
To be fair, I didn’t call it flat. I called it a perfectly flat crepe.
Sometimes, rarely, crepes get little deformed parts that stick up. :)
Sorry Pal, living in Switzerland, the route from Heerlen to Maastrich for me is still “flat” ;-)
Ray did mention a particularly lumpy bridge once…
This reminds me of a conversation I had with an Austrian in a bar years back.
Where are you from?
Poland.
Holland? Holland is flat.
So there’s that 😉
In my part of the the world we do our climbing on overpasses 😜
That’s so cool… more encouragement to go up those hills!! :)
All this work from strava this year and yet when my distance reads 7.00 miles on my watch it still shows 6.99 miles on strava.
I thought I was the only one that gets annoyed by that.
I don’t recall seeing inline ads before.
Or is this something different?
Hi JD-
They’ve actually been in place for a few months now. Though not typically on posts this short. I think the logic is on posts with at least 3 sections (so on a review, that’s a lot of words). I’ll have to check with the ad company on this one.
Cheers!
first time i’m seeing ads today as well. the kind that follow me and play videos and i keep having to ‘x’ out of constantly.
thankful that reader view is there to the rescue, otherwise it’s not even worth visiting pages that have them all over the place like this :/
You can consider becoming a DCR Supporter and not have any ads at all: link to dcrainmaker.com
Cheers!
It looks great. Now if only they could add a useful feature like comparing all the segments you have in common with one of your followers for a bit of friendly rivalry. (Which 3rd party sites used to do before Strava changed it’s API)
I have played around with it a bit and it really only looks good in non-urban environments; the buildings aren’t rendering as 3D so it looks extra fake. It looks really nice for some Patagonian hikes I went on before the pandemic but for my DC based runs it is just kind of fine. The rendering speed and activity grouping on zoom-outs is a huge improvement from the previous heat map; however, this is still isn’t a feature I would try to sell my friends on why they should pay for Strava. In my opinion, this is where a lot of the premium features fall – they are fun to have but not hugely beneficial to training. I enjoy what used to be called the suffer-score and the safety beacon, everything else just extra benefits.
As a subscriber I find this feature completely useless. One thing that has stopped working is the ride match, that was extremely useful. Most of my rides now look like I was alone when in fact I rode to a group ride. This was primarily how I found new people to ride with. A social networking site enabling real world social interaction, how novel, but alas they changed it last year and it no longer works and my interactions with strava tech support have confirmed this is on purpose. I wish strava would focus on its core features instead of these gimmicks.
This is likely because the people on your ride haven’t re-enabled the correct privacy settings: link to dcrainmaker.com
I think they have as they show up in the fly-by portion of the site. Strava told me that if I don’t ride more than 50% of my ride with them then they won’t show up, even though we’ve done a 25 mile loop exactly together.
When they finally add the OSM CYCLE map layer. 3Dterrian Function not needed.
Just a quick tip:
In that other tool, Google Earth you can in fact scale the landscape, so even in flatter regions (Belgium/Netherlands) you can see those hills you’ve been running/riding on to be just as daunting as in real life.
Nice! I have to admit this feature was the last nudge to push me to take some months of subscription this summer (together with the Assiomas I recently took).
The added value of Strava is really exploiting your own ride history over the years – I am OK to pay two or three months each other year for that (I am absolutely against full year commitments).
PS: guess where my parents live (and I grew up) and spend a week each year doing some rides?
That’s cool, where is that?
At first I was thinking it’s kinda like the elevation from Bourg-Saint-Maurice up to Les Arc, but the town/river profile doesn’t fit.
The front is Austria, town of Hallein. My parents are very close to the local saltmine. The interesting part is in the very back background, across the border to Germany (Berchtesgaden) – the track is the hidden secondary road up to Eagle’s nest (Kehlsteinhaus, they built two roads up for Hitler, for security, he only went up once but too afraid of heights).
Nice climb: link to strava.com
That looks awesome!