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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 2024 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.
First time for you in the Basque Country?
Make sure you enjoy the land.
I think so – super pretty area!
Sad to see no Polar… Even Bryton produces bike computers…
Yeah, I suspect the cost structures of Polar vs Bryton are vastly different…
Many ppl using Polar would kill for new cycling computers with navi. Even sigma produces rox with mapping
Polar totally lost that market. So sad. I doubt that we see any new bike computers by Polar.
I use my Vantage V2 as a bike computer (mounted in the handlebar). When I need routing I use a Wahoo Blot (maybe a Roam2 in the future)
I bet the riders with Edge 840s were thrilled to get the Climb Pro fanfare every time they reached the top of a climb!
That’d be amazing to be at the top of a Climb and record the audio.
Even more if they were getting it a couple of minutes after they reached the top, considering the bugs still present in ClimbPro
My understanding of the multi-minute offset though is that’s from Strava Routes (and maybe some Komoot routes), where they’re sending over the elevation wonky.
Curious that so many teams are rolling with Shimano power meters. Aren’t they notoriously terrible? I’ve seen both you and GPlama tear them apart.
Also, why no pedal power meters?
Yeah – I was wondering this.
Shimano sponsors the team so they use Shimano power meters. I think Ray said during training they may use other power meters. They also probably have a decent idea where the Shimano PMs are deficient and know how to account for it.
Sadly, there’s not much you can do to account for it – mainly because it’s specific to gearing combinations and pedaling style. So, unless you know which gear the rider was in (e.g. which front chainring), it’s incredibly difficult to backwards compute.
Is it likely or possible that shimano teams use a left side PM (eg stages or 4iiii) within the DA crank arm, but without any logos? Then just ignore the notorious shimano one?
Bought a Garmin 840 when it came out, to have one run/bike ecosystem, after owning both iterations of the Wahoo Elemnt Bolt. And as much as I like the unit: Man, it makes a lot of noise! The Climb Pro summit fanfare made me turn off all sound…
Somone please record some sound, when the peloton crosses a summit!
Totally agree on the noise of a Garmin head unit. I have an edge 530 and I turned off the sound years ago, the thing just does not shut up!
dcr, are Israël already riding with a Karoo 3?
They’re riding the Karoo 2.
Nice try!
Given the inaccurate Shimano power meter, do you think those teams use a different PM for training and just ride with these on the bikes in public races?
Yup, they definitely do. Not all of them, and not all riders. But some of them do indeed.
Hero Session 5 for the win! GoPro missed the mark with the “mini”
Ray do you think that these have been supplied/refurbished by GoPro, found in an old storage locker or have just been looked after to stay alive?
I’ll ask around, but I suspect these are largely the same cameras that are carefully looked after, or occasionally re-sourced. I know the GoPro people still know that crew, but I can’t imagine GoPro has many of those cameras lying around.
Noticed the same aspect that has already been raised by others: many of them are using the Shimano Power Meters, which are known (here) to be very unreliable.
Are they managing to add some additiona source of PM reading, or are they simply ignoring it (or doing the best that they can with those unreliable units), as far as you know?
Thanks for this post. It must have been exciting to be in the middle of all that! Looking a the photo you have of cav, my first question was “what watch is he wearing?”
Wonder if Wood’s actually used the climb feature on the Karoo 2 to win Stage 9 up the Puy de Dôme? Now that would be a great piece of marketing for Hammerhead.
Interesting to hear Victor Campaernants from Lotto Destiny saying that his power meter doesn’t work because of the heat. I’m wondering if it’s the 4iii or Shimano one…
Do you know what camera they use for on bike footage during the race.? Those mounted at some of the rider’s saddle?