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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.
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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 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.
Hi Ray! Sorry to get political on you, but what organization is sporting the “I Support the Oriental Christians” vests? It looks like an Arabic character on them? I am not familiar with this movement.
I was curious what the arabic latter is, and this is what I found:
“In Mosul, IS militants marked with a spray-painted ن (the Arabic letter for “N”) all Christian property to be seized after the ultimatum. “N”, or ن, is the first letter of the Arabic word for Christian, “Nasrani” or Nazarene.”
Sorry Dan, sometimes comments just suck – probably just like mine..
HEllo Dan,
you can find more information here : link to soschretiensdorient.fr
It’s the association ” SOS oriental christian” which help … the oriental christian. They tend to be very active these last months / years with all the things happening in irak / syria etc.
(btw i’m not member of this association).
the arabic character is “ن” it’s the twenty-fifth letter of the Arabic alphabet. and the first letter of the world ” نصراني ” which means “peolple from nazareth” aka the christian. it’s originally intended to mark the houses abandoned by Christians from Iraq in Mosul and more generally in the province of Nineveh.
hope it helps.
H.
I’ve seen tweets from the far right leaders supporting these guys. Don’t know why, but that’s not the kind of thing that makes me keen of supporting them.
Interesting, I don’t know much about them. Just the nearest thing to me on the course, and also without question the most supportive and vocal folks I saw on the course.
They were outside the Institute du monde arabe, which might make sense.
The fact that you cracked before completing the Xert workout seems to imply a failure of the Xert app. If Xert dynamically changes the workout parameters based on your performance in real time shouldn’t it have backed off the intensity for you so that you would have been able to finish the workout?
Was thinking exactly the same thing
Yes and no. The workouts don’t get easier because you don’t feel like pedaling (not that Ray didn’t feel like pedaling! This is a very tough workout!) The workouts adjust to meet the goals of the workout. There are either strain or fatigue targets established whereby the players will adjust power and/or intensity dynamically. Not *all* intervals are fully dynamic. Some like this one called “Let the Sparks Fly” that Ray did, simply have dynamic power and not dynamic duration. It’s one of the more difficult workouts. There are others that are easier and generally you should be doing those that reflect your training status. You’ll need to have a well-established Fitness Signature, more than just FTP which wouldn’t be enough to establish the targets for this workout.
HTH
I am curious what Ray’s actual MPA curve would have looked like for the workout he did which he could not complete. Would it show the MPA approaching the Power curve and eventually intersecting with it?
(With Ray’s permission .. see attached)
Ray’s activity recording environment is a bit *special* to say the least. He had one power meter controlling the trainer with Powermatch and another power meter recording on other devices. Turns out the power meter controlling the trainer was having a few data recording issues that we didn’t pick up until afterwards.
You can see that what should have been a hard workout turned out to be extremely difficult. His cumulative strain for the 45 minutes was nearly 100 XSS, making it a workout you’d only want to attempt when you’re carrying a very high cumulative Training Load.
MPA and power will touch/intersect when efforts are maximal based on your current fitness signature. Alternatively, sometimes workouts are just too hard in terms of too much strain. This workout looks like it may have fit into both categories.
Xert’s workout dynamic intensity corrections makes it more sensitive to data errors, especially when using Smart Trainers. Something we’ll need to address for his next workout.
What are the drone laws on Mallorca? Going there next month for a week to ride bikes.
+1 for losing luggage with Iberia, In my case..for a 3 week holiday to brazil (couple of years ago). I wonder how they do it in this digital age where pretty much every single thing is or can be tracked…
Often it’s not a case of “losing” your baggage or someone forgetting to load it on to the plane; it’s a case of airport/airline logisitics not being able to keep up with the rapid turnover of flights, delays in processing/loading baggage for whatever reason, and the airline making the decision that it’s better for the plane to leave without all the luggage on-board than to wait at the gate and force delays onto other services.
It’s not an accident, it’s just poor logisitics.
I have been using the Xert program for the past month. I don’t have a smart trainer, just a bike with a power meter. Let the Sparks Fly is very painful, but an excellent workout.
Any idea when u will post an updated review on the Spartan Ultra?
I’ve been working with Xert since the Fall of 2015, and have seen what it can do; it’s ability to intuit that which you have left in you, and ergo, how much more you may be able to give, is simply uncanny.
That said – YOU MUST approach these intervals FULLY prepared; that means you need to be adequately fed, hydrated, rested, and warmed up. I use a Moxy on my left quad to determine when I’m ready for these puppies, and even indoors, I drink probably twice as much, and use two Vornado fans. Air on the hands is just as critical as air on the face and scalp.
Here’s the deal; Xert shows you that you CAN hit interval values you may never have thought feasible, and it shows you how you can do it over, and over, and over.
When used with the Stress, Strain, XPMC and Threshold Histories, you’re really reaching into 4th-generation metrics and analytics that go beyond W’, AWC, FRC, etc. And if you DO break your MPA in an interval, well, that’s a BREAKTHROUGH – sort of like Chuck Yeager & the Sound Barrier. Boom! New Threshold or Anaerobic Capacity values.
The only issue there is —- it just makes the next breakthrough THAT MUCH HARDER TO ACHIEVE!!!
Xert = tough workouts but achievable. Keep up the effort, and watch your numbers grow.
I see you brought the Suunto Spartan along? Is it better now after the updates? I ran with my friend who owned one while I wore my Ambit3 – the distance on our watches was different by 0.25 km. Is it ever going to get fixed???
It’s better in some respects, but it’s not better overall.
Certain things work well for me, and yet other areas (such as openwater swimming), continue to be quite bad.
Hi Ray
Would you mind telling us what model of Kitchenaid that is please? Knowing what the The Girl does for a living I’d be interested to know what she has in her kitchen – did you go for the Professional version?
The silver part on the bottom looks like where the bowl locks into place, and I don’t see the bowl-lift arms. So that suggests it’s one of the tilt head minis or Artisans, rather than the professional model. Most of the pros are bowl-lift only. Although I’m sure the bakery has heavier duty equipment than what’s needed at home.
It’s just one of the standard artisans.
At the bakery we do indeed have some pretty big 40 and 50 liter mixers. You can see an ‘unboxing’ I did of one of them at the end of this post: link to dcrainmaker.com
That said, we actually do use a small fleet of Artisan mixers in the bakery (I’m really good at repairing them). The reason? They’re great for doing small batch work that’s common for custom cakes. So we may do a large batch of buttercream icing as a base in the huge mixers, but then we’ll take a bit of that to a different custom flavor for something smaller.
We like the Artisans over the Pro, because A) They’re cheaper, and B) Basically our batches fall into either ‘tiny’ (something small/custom), or massive. There’s not much in between.
I love Xert Workout ” Let the Fly spark”
I meant the The Fly Spark :).
My wife and I are heading to Mallorca this summer for 4 days. Do you have any advise on transit, lodging or places to visit?
I stayed this time at the PortBlue hotel, this specific one: link to portbluehotels.com
Hands down will absolutely stay there from now on. Awesome local for swim/bike/run, including two pools with lanes (one indoor, one outdoor). Plus bike shop built onsite. Oh, and you can even rent Canyon Tri bikes (seriously!). A quick look at the prices was about 30EUR per day for carbon bikes, less for alum bikes. Less if you reserved upwards of a week.
The rate is about 68EUR a night including breakfast, or 100EUR a night all-inclusive everything (even drinks). Pretty solid. Plus the pool areas (non-sport) look fantastic. Tons of cycling groups there.
Ray — cool stuff with Xert.
Have you thought about giving it a try for running (using the Stryd) or another power meter? I have been experimenting with it — with Armando’s support — and I think it gets to the whole point of using a power meter for running.
The ability to predict intervals is equally uncanny for running.
I haven’t too much, merely since Xert isn’t really focused on running. So in my mind it’d kinda be like the early days of Stryd where you had to fake it was cycling to see running, which brought up all sorts of other quirks/oddities.
I tend to be in the camp of if I see running with power data, I don’t want to sacrifice the core running experience of pace/lap pace, etc… Either on the device or on the web.
Paris is the most beautiful city in the world ;)
Ray, never ever fly with vueling. Worst airline in europe. Have some friend working there…I will never fly with them.
Lol. Current waiting to board our *Vueling* flight to Palma. Have just checked our massive duffel full of gear. Fingers crossed bag doesn’t have same fate as yours. Or else I’ll be biking in jeans.
Full review of the Xert apps coming? Xert is just power focused with no current plans for using muscle oxygen data, right?
Eli,
We do feel that SmO2 data can provide additional insights into the information we are obtaining from power data and thus plan to do more research. It’s a bit more work on our part since our preference would be to interpret the data rather than simply present it, as we do with power data. This will require more research and new models to be developed.
Thanks for your question.