Heads up! The massive Sports Tech Deals list is here! Including huge discounts on Apple, DJI, Fitbit, Garmin, Google, GoPro, Peloton, Samsung, Tacx, Wahoo, and tons more! From the Garmin Epix at $449 (insane!) and Forerunner 965 deals, to the slightly newer Garmin Epix Pro & Fenix 7 Pro at $200 off, to the Apple Watch Ultra 2 deal, and the Tacx NEO 2T for $899. There’s huge savings, and constantly updated!
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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You can use the above link for any Amazon country and it (should) automatically redirect to your local Amazon site.Want to compare the features of each product, down to the nitty-gritty? No problem, the product comparison data is constantly updated with new products and new features added to old products!
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Think my written reviews are deep? You should check out my videos. I take things to a whole new level of interactive depth!
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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Check out my weekly podcast - with GPLAMA, which is packed with both gadget and non-gadget goodness!
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In Depth Product Reviews
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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 and Equipment 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! 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.
I guess i’m now really cancelling my Zwift account after this…
Zwift never had good structured workouts anyway. Their advantage was always – and still is – group rides and group races.
sorry for english, I did spend some time converting all the trainingroad workouts (of the plans i was using) to garmin connect workout but i guess i am not going to need it anymore, i wasn’t so happy about it because Garmin uses zone and hard to match to specific percent wattage so happy to go back on official way! link to imgur.com
The obvious next step for TrainerRoad is to do the same with the (still quite limited) running workouts they have. The concept of selling a wide range of training plans that you can execute on a trainer or on the road, with coaching advice along the way and a centralized data collection point is pretty good in my opinion.
In the past, I’ve put my TR account on standby for the outdoor riding season. This will giving me a reason to keep it active year round.
That and the existing ability to track your TSS over time, with linked workouts from outside (like Strava) already importing into the TR Calendar. These new outside workouts help broaden the offering from TR to become even more full-featured.
So, what about Wahoo?
We’re working with Wahoo to get workouts on their head units. We want to get this done ASAP.
Nate, this is great news and I really appreciate the way that as CEO Of a company you still take the time to monitor and personally respond to comments from your customers. Kudos to you
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Just started a subscription! Very excited to see the Wahoo integration. I’m assuming it’ll be using the regular Wahoo structured workout mode with Elemnt Companion app integration with TrainerRoad for loading the workouts?
I’ll definitely watch this space for such a feature too, great job guys! I hope Wahoo will be able to integrate TR as nicely as they do with their other partners.
I am so seriously happy about this, they seem to hit so many of the demands that they are asked for. I guess the forum feedback helps to filter and crystallize some of the users’ most wanted features.
I am a very happy customers of theirs, now if only I could integrate some video service (à la Fulgaz or similar) whilst doing their workouts without jumping through too many hoops, it would near perfection for my needs.
Thanks Ray for the rundown and explanations!
You’re absolutely right, the forum has been a huge help in focusing our energy on the features that matter. Having Product Managers that are both Pro level cyclists doesn’t hurt either 😉
Will they use Polars now available api to integrate with flow?
Our focus, first and foremost, is to get the Garmin and Wahoo head units up and running as smoothly as possible. When we finish optimizing the user interface with those two manufacturers, we will look into other head units, but this is will be further in the future.
As a newbie to power meters, how do you find outside roads that are conducive to the workout intervals?
Or is the point to match the targets regardless of the road?
You will have to ask your local cycling club to find quiet, low-traffic roads. It’s been difficult for me to match target power, but at-least on Garmin head units, you get a tolerance band around your target power.
I find that shifting gears leads to my output power being too high or too low, so I need more experience maintaining a target power.
Not knowing where you are it is hard to say, but I find that crit circuits or outdoor velodromes work best for flat efforts (in Melbourne at least). Climbs are a lot tougher to handle outdoors – consistent hills that last 3-5 minutes are rare and I’m often going too hard or running out of up before the effort is supposed to end.
You are also likely to find that you will see higher peaks and a lot more variability in general outdoors. Coasting, accelerating away from a stop, wind and downhill momentum all contribute. I find it best to use laps for each effort and focus on the lap power instead of the 3s/10s power – you’ll feel like a dog chasing his tail if you purely react to those numbers.
I’m in southeast Michigan in the US. It’s pretty flat, and there’s a stretch of road which I can use for intervals. I’ll try lap power next time I’m outdoors – thanks for that suggestion ??
Anirudh – I grew up in Western PA near Pittsburgh, not so much flat there 😉 The other trick with outdoors can be making sure to keep the recovery segments between efforts easy enough – I often find my power and/or HR are above where I should be and the later efforts suffer because of insufficient recovery.
Question for TR – are you pushing hard power numbers to the head unit or % of FTP numbers (then letting the head unit calculate power numbers)? I usually have a slightly higher FTP set on my Garmin vs my FTP set in TR. Just curious to know how the workout numbers will translate.
TR has clarified that they will only support one value of FTP, and not separate values for indoor and outdoor training.
You should reduce the FTP on your Garmin to match whatever you have in TR. TR will push hard power numbers on your Garmin (in the same manner as structured workouts that you make on Garmin Connect).
Clarification: hard numbers will be pushed once head unit integration is complete.
Anirudh is right, we’re going to be pushing target power numbers to the head unit instead of %FTP. That way we won’t have to worry about syncing FTP values which we can’t update at the moment.
I do the same since I ride rollers and keeping power on rollers seems to be hard than the road. (for me)
I set my TR ftp to my outside FTP and then do a lot of TR workouts at 95%.
Looks like I’ll need to get some Garmin head unit!
Will they ever sync workouts from Training Peaks to TrainerRoad?
I have a coach and he puts my bike workouts on TP so if I want to do it inside I have to:
download the .erg file
open TR workout editor
publish
open TR
click workouts
switch to custom tab
sort by date ( it doesn’t save sort prefs )
open the workout.
It would be so convenient if my TP workout of the day just showed up on my TR calendar!
I doubt that I’m the only one with this user case. I understand that TrainerRoad is trying to compete somehow with Training Peaks, but right now if you do triathlon, and have a coach, TR cant replace TP completely.
Can your coach not just pick a TR workout for you?
Their database is pretty extensive.
Any hope this can be done with sufferfest workouts…
I find it impossible to do power based workouts outside due to variances in terrain. I live in an area of rolling hills, you just can’t sit on 200W say and ride.
Why dont you just use the TP IQ app on the garmin? You don’t need to do anything
Is there a way to download .fit file of the outdoor version of a specific WO? While automatic sync to head units is in development it could be a workaround to manually put file on a head unit to follow up.
No. There is no option like that.
It sounds like the Garmin option is very close to release. They are finishing a fuller 1:1 match for inside to outside workout options, and will release when that is done.
Guys and gals trying to push workouts to your Garmin now, you can actually do this now from ERGdb with over 4000 Open Source workouts. See a short video here on how this works. It’s very simple.
link to ergdb.org