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I’m DC RAINMAKER…
I swim, bike and run. Then, I come here and write about my adventures. It’s as simple as that. Most of the time. If you’re new around these parts, here’s the long version of my story.
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Smart Trainers Buyers Guide: Looking at a smart trainer this winter? I cover all the units to buy (and avoid) for indoor training. The good, the bad, and the ugly.
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FAQ’s
I have built an extensive list of my most frequently asked questions. Below are the most popular.
- Do you have a privacy policy posted?
- Why haven’t you yet released a review for XYZ product you mentioned months ago?
- Will you test our product before release?
- Are you willing to review or test beta products?
- Which trainer should I buy?
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- I’m headed to Paris – what do you recommend for training or sightseeing?
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- What kind of camera do you use?
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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.
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!
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.
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!
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.
Monterra meaning this? link to buy.garmin.com
Yup, that one.
Coul you tell me where you get hot chocolate for 2 euro in Paris? I’ll be in Paris this week and I would like to try it.
Thanks
The linked list in the post includes all the top ones, including a few others we’ve been too that have enjoyed.
The one that we went to is: Un Dimanche a Paris, 4-6-8 Cour du Commerce Saint André, 75006, Paris
link to un-dimanche-a-paris.com
The 2€ (well, 2.20€) hot chocolate is served in the chocolate store section of the store (vs the cafe section).
thank you very much
Eat ham and drink chocolate is a little disgusting ;-) ham and red wine. Chocolate and cake or fruit. I follow you because you are a nice tri but you have to do something for your cucking. Sorry for my terrible English. Best Fulvio
See the table. ;) There’s wine on the table. Chocolate was the second stop.
Can u please give me a complete report on the pioneer power system. Did u evaluate this yet
Per the above, I’m working on a full in-depth review for the next few weeks.
Nice work on the mussels, pretty cool you bought them uncleaned! Quite a pain to clean them, but worth the effort.
Did you mean to write a 45-50km loop — as opposed to 45-50m? If you can log 50 kilometers in an hour, that’s pretty impressive. Fifty meters … not so much. ;-)
The ‘m’ in this case is minutes. ;)
You are not the only one to object to the BBC commentary! link to bbc.co.uk “Olympic snowboarding commentary draws complaints”
The CBC Olympics coverage is really good as well.
CBC’s Olympics coverage is usually fantastic; I stopped watching Olympics when I moved back to the States because it just didn’t measure up. My favourite was Albertville: because of the time change, they covered the events live (starting at some ungodly hour Eastern), then did the primetime coverage, then got like two hours of sleep before starting again the next day. Fantastic coverage coming from a bunch of people who were walking zombies by halfway in.
I’m fairly new to cycling and bike equipment, so this may be a dumb question. How do you attach multiple cadence sensors to a bike’s pedals and rear wheel? Or can multiple bike computers read the data from the same cadence sensor?
If it’s ANT+ multiple headunits can use the same sensor
Yup, Sam is spot-on. I can connect multiple devices to a single sensor with ANT+. With Bluetooth Smart devices, while the latest spec announced in December allows for multi-connections, no devices yet take advantage of it (I suspect by fall, all new devices will).
The BBC reporting of the Sochi winter games was NOT the normal standard.
More than 300 people complained to the BBC over the quality of commentary during the snowboarding slopestyle final at the Winter Olympics.
Viewers complained that they cheered when Jones’s competitors fell, and that the commentary was of a low standard.
link to bbc.co.uk
Dick
I was going to post that. The BBC rugby union commentary can get pretty one-eyed, but they do generally try to do better than that.
Yeah, we thought it was kinda low-quality commentary even before the cheering incident. Having watched a ton of ski racing over the years, it just seemed a bit off. Shrug. Watched some other stuff today and wasn’t too bad.
I’ll have to look into seeing if I can rig-up CBC streaming from here.
yep – it’s been much lower quality than the usual sports coverage. Aimee Fuller in particular was unremittingly annoying
Hi Ray. The Giant rear wheel is 80?
70. It’s actually a PowerTap Enve wheelset. I just managed to pop the only other suitable tube for the front wheel when I was inflating it. Grrr. Replacement tube was held up in customs with a bunch of other things, so I didn’t have it in time. Not that it matters too much on the front.
DC , you have move up another gear in my admiration .The choice of ones ultimate meal is a tough one but Moules Marinere et Frites is my number one and with its Belgian connection will always have strong cycling connections .Respect & keep up the Good work.
Kenny
Curious how you cook Mussels. Here we like the Belgium/Dutch way.
Rinse the mussels with water (hand warm) and tap them one by one, the must be responding (closing shell) (yes they are cooked alive, sorry)
Take a large pan and fill with 1 liter heavy dark beer (Triple yeasted Belgium), vegetables (onion, garlic, leak, broccoli) some salt and pepper, Add the good mussels and fill rest with water, close the lid and cook for 5 to 8 minutes. The mussels must have opened by now and show the nice colour. (vegies are only for flavour, you can eat them if you want but they are cooked in beer).
Ready to enjoy!
Somewhat similar. I washed/cleaned them in running cold water once by hand, and then placed them in a cold water pot for 20 minutes. That allows them to breath and spit out more sand/stuff. Then, I dumped out said water, and rinsed them again (quickly), and put them back in more cold water.
During that initial cleaning process, any ones that didn’t close up were tossed. Then from there I prepared the vegetable stuff and got the chicken stock heated up on a separate burner. Finally, I tossed the vegies in with the mussels in a new pot and ladled in stock until it covered it. Closed the lid, and about the same 5-8 minutes later was done.
Hi Ray, what a fantastic weekend :-)
Practical question as I need help on this: when you lost sixty pounds a few years ago, how did you do it in terms of food and exercise?
Thanks
Mostly, I just applied training for a marathon on top of my existing non-exercise plan. I didn’t make drastic shifts in diet however. That stayed mostly pretty similar. I just added exercise. In my case, 6 days a week. Mostly running at that time, but eventually I blended in triathlon-focused items.
From a diet standpoint, I never was a completely bad eater (i.e. burgers and fries every day), rather, I just enjoyed eating in general. Over time, that slowly builds up. I generally ate (and still do eat), fairly healthy. When it comes to things I do to try and either lose weight, or otherwise maintain it – I tend to try and focus on repeatable and ‘known’ foods. For example, I’ll prefer going to Subway over some local place, because I know the calories in subway, whereas an unknown I don’t.
THANKS! that was clear and straight to the point :-)
Really like your road bike…Can you share some specs? I can tell is a Giant TCR, but that’s it…
Paris, such a beautiful town !
You can sponsor one of those Jardin des Plantes bench (see here in french).
If you want to test some gps swimming device, outdoor, take a look at the swimming pool of Nogent sur Marne (close to Bois de Vincennes, 50 meters in outdoor). The facility is a bit old but not overcrowded during the winter.
Very cool. Any idea on water clarity, or if it’s nice and quiet mid-day or so? Sometimes I need to take shots for review, and having an empty (and clear) pool is ideal.
Water clarity is just great. Tomorrow (due to holidays) is opened from 10:00 to 22:00 and next Friday 11:45/13:45 + 16:30/22:00
here is the web site : link to vert-marine.com
Thoroughly enjoying the blog!
I am intrigued by your reference to the ‘BBC option’. Is this a legit feed/method? I ask as I would love to be able to get the BBC here in Lithuania.
I sure miss English language TV, especially the Beeb.
It’s widely used. We pay $5 a month to unblock-us.com, which also covers BBC actually. Allowing us to watch anything on BBC (as well as allowing us to use our paid Hulu/Netflix subscriptions) and a host of other US services.
Great tip! Already enjoying BBC.
Thanks very much.
Hello Ray! Tell me you went to the Amandine for hot chocolate? Could you specify where that spanish place is? I used to live in Paris, now run marathons and live back in Prague. We are flying to Paris in March 6-9, definitely stopping by at the Cupcakery :) Greetings from Prague.
This time it was Un Dimanche a Paris, see the link in reply #4.
The Spanish place is link to tripadvisor.com – just a block or two away from the Odeon metro station.