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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!
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Have some fun in the travel section.
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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.
I’m sad to be living in Norway. My guess is we won’t get this feature until everyone else have been enabled.. sucks to be a small country :(
Come on, think people in Africa. Russia and China are the largest, but not on the list yet. :)
I’m sure they’ll enable it in next updates.
On the other hand, China has bicycle directions in Apple Maps but in the Netherlands (where it would make a lot of sense) it’s not a thing
@Pavel. That”s because people in China actually follow cycling directions. People in the Netherlands just cycle any way they want ;p
I think this is a small typo:
“ United States (Launch – Dec 2023”
Should that be 2022?
Thanks for highlighting this feature!
Doh, thanks!
Nice picture! I like how you made it into a mission to get as much windmills in your pictures as possible.
It’s the Viaanse molen in Alkmaar, next to the av Hylas track. It’s the track I train at. It looked very familiar when it caught my eye :-). @Raymaker, did you make this picture?
Yup, it’s a cool track. I used a drone for this photo. Sadly, I couldn’t actually run at that track. It was closed (and private, as you know) – and nobody was around to ask. :(
Yeah, you need a key to unlock the gate. This track is also known as the windy track ;-).
How does this function work if you follow the general rules on every track? Like doing your tempo’s in lane 1 and your rest in lane 2/3/4. Is it able to detect several lane changes during a workout? Or do you just set it to lane 1 and accept the inaccuracies of your rest.
You can swipe right and select a new lane, and while I haven’t experimented with it I think it will snap to the correct lane in most cases if you switch lanes.
So far, trackmode on my new forerunner 965 hasn’t been a huge success. I train once a week on a track and do intervals from 200 meter up to 1200. The distances my watch reports are about as off as my old 935 measured (400 meter is reported as 410! 800 as 820)
But then again, what”s the actual use of trackmode? I know the distance I ran, I know the time. So I know I hit my targets.
Trackmode is only for those who want perfect stravatrails, or want actual pace data in their logs.
(Well, that’s my opinion. Don’t have to agree with my and if you have an other opinion, that’s all fine)
Does it take into account the non standard tracks, I.e. those that are not exactly 400m in lane 1 ? I have that issue with Garmin and a few tracks next to where I live in France and that should be closer to 360m in lane 5… in track mode Garmin incorrectly records 400m for each lap.
Im my humble opinion, I still consider the Apple approach cheating 😁
I suppose this doesn’t work with third party apps like Workoutdoors, right?
Last week I noticed that somehow Apple snaps to lanes also in Workoutdoors 🙂. You don’t have the ability (yet) to chose lanes etc because that’s not programmed in WOD, but it was nice to see that it seems to work in thirdparty apps (see screenshot from Workoutdoors and track in Apeldoorn, Netherlands).
To add: the first screenshot is from Apple’s workout app but the training was done with Workoutdoors (see 2nd screenshot).
Thanks for the feedback!
if they’re not “learning” the track from satellite — are they getting it from OSM or did they go out and gather their own data?.
I suspect they’re doing a blend of using a known track database to kickstart it (there are a few), along with Apple Maps satellite imagery to figure out exact lanes.
For me the main limit to the use of this function is the Apple Watch itself. It is not particularly practical to time short and intense intervals on the track. Nothing beats a running watch with big, easily accessible buttons in those circumstances.
Hi, with latest Beta Garmin is adding this
link to forums.garmin.com
Adds database of 400m running tracks all over the world.