Heads up!!! Here’s your massive holiday sports tech deals list! This includes the Garmin Epix for just $419, the Apple Watch Ultra 2 for just $699, the GoPro Hero 12 Black for $249, (or the brand new Hero 13 or $299!) and plenty more! Go check out the full list of 100+ deals here!
I’m DC RAINMAKER…
Here’s how to save!
Wanna save some cash and support the site? These companies help support the site! With Backcountry.com or Competitive Cyclist with either the coupon code DCRAINMAKER for first time users saving 15% on applicable products.
You can also pick-up tons of gear at REI via these links, which is a long-time supporter as well:
Alternatively, for everything else on the planet, simply buy your goods from Amazon via the link below and I get a tiny bit back as an Amazon Associate. No cost to you, easy as pie!
You can use the above link for any Amazon country and it (should) automatically redirect to your local Amazon site.
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Check out my weekly podcast - with DesFit, which is packed with both gadget and non-gadget goodness!
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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.
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!
3
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.
4
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.
When it comes to a single, annual sporting event, the Champions League final regularly has a larger viewership than the Superbowl.
…and there was this event…
From a TrainingPeaks blog link to trainingpeaks.com
And people wonder why the seemingly trivial things are not being fixed in the TrainingPeaks app. (I added the asterisks)
“Recently, TrainingPeaks commissioned a research firm to analyze why athletes come to TrainingPeaks. The results were humbling as they show just how much more opportunity we have to serve the needs of the endurance athlete.
**As a result of this, we have successfully shifted demand away from software releases to coaching services**.
Simply put, more than 500,000 unique athletes come to TrainingPeaks monthly looking for your services.”
i have some requests for simple bugs for Android App, but they don’t want to fix em, now 3 days ago they closed them :-\
Can’t help but think there’s going to be a big backlash from consumers soon over devices getting bricked. Sonos has probably started the mass awareness here and a weight scale bricking after 4 years is madness!
I can’t find what “Open Water Swim Dead Reckoning” is in the Garmin Fenix 6 update (or with any other watch that has it). I checked Ray’s Garmin Swim 2 review and didn’t see anything there. Can anyone share what that feature does?
Garmin MARQ also got a similar update to the fenix 6 – I know they’re the same underlying software, but they both have their own firmware update cycles.
With the new firmware for Fenix 6 will TP start supporting swim heart rate?
When Garmin introduced the Swim HR, TP had issues with the new FIT files (as the HR data is added to the end of the file when it’s downloaded from the strap). The HR data was interpreted as an activity, which was filled with garbage.
Their ‘fix’ was to simply discard the HR data. This was back in 2015.
I wouldn’t hold my breath on the HR support. :(
Hi,
That part about the added hr data have I heard of before.
But I thought that hr from swim2 and Fenix 6 was a “normal” data file.
The annoying thing is there is little to no reason for most products to absolutely require company hosted processing to function. Well, little reason beyond letting big companies collect and sell your data. The storage/processing needs of a scale are trivial and could be handled locally just fine. The same for GPS watches, honestly, a local program could query Google maps just as easily as their servers and auto-posting your last run data to social media isn’t something your phone, let alone any half decent computer, couldn’t handle.
Until consumers start demanding there, at the very least, be available local programs as a backup, we’re going to keep ending up with bricked items when there’s honestly no reason nor excuse for it whatsoever.
Not a word about coolrunning.com shutting down?
Hmm, forgot about that one.
Ray I’ve not seen you mention the suunto 3, is it a meh update?
Suunto updates are a bit wonkier to try and find, since they’re spread all over the place. I believe the last one was a few weeks back though, and was just a date/time bug fix. link to suunto.com
There’s a new suunto 3 sans fitness. link to suunto.com
Ahh – that.
Yeah, at this point I’m putting that in the camp of “just a color/band change”. I’ve seen some talk of an updated Valencell sensor in there, but that’s not confirmed. Either way, there was virtually no interest in that previous review, so given this basically just a new materials/color update, no plans to cover it.
With rare exception when something else is changing substantially at the same time in software, I don’t tend to cover new color editions of existing modes.
The news on the UA scale makes you wonder whether any similar actions are in the works for UA’s other non-apparel products like MyFitnessPal or MapMyX platform. Or was there something especially bad about the scale that it was worth dumping
“Seems odd to randomly draw the line in one place versus another.”
What? It wasn’t random at all. They very deliberately drew the line so as to allow the already widely available and widely used Next%s while excluding the AlphaFlys that only existed in prototypes and were not yet publicly released and hadn’t yet set any official records.
It’s a compromise that won’t satisfy either side of the debate, but it was the easiest path to choose. Multiple world records were broken over the last year and a half by runners in the VF Next%s, and it would have been an even bigger controversy if they had banned shoes that were used to set the men’s marathon, women’s marathon, and men’s half marathon records whether or not they allowed the records to stand. Not to mention there would be a lot of questions and debates or at the very least an air of illegitimacy about Olympic qualifying times set in the newly banned shoes. They picked the easiest, least controversial route–though it fully pleases almost no one. Not random at all.
They drew a line to benefit one company and model, along with a bizarre 4-month ‘availability’ specification, without actually defining what ‘available’ means. For sale, in-stock, what exactly? First consumer? And who defines consumer? A pro athlete, a brand but unpaid ambassador, a media reviewer, someone from a normal retail shop – but only shipped a single unit? Having seen how this type of thing works with the definition of ‘shipping’ within this industry repeatedly, companies will twist this a hundred ways. Still – why 4 months?
And – to that end, why is the Olympic record trying to be preserved? I’m pretty sure most people care more about the WR in this case, not the OR.
Perhaps random was the wrong word – but in the greater context of a 100 years of running shoe advances, it seems pretty random, and seems rather reactionary and designed to benefit Nike.
“designed to benefit Nike”. Who have no links to the people setting the rules LOL. I find Ross Tucker’s output on this topic to be pretty good but you’re no doubt all over that Ray.
Thanks as ever
You clearly misunderstood what I said, but I can’t tell from your response exactly what you thought I said. At the very least it seems you are conflating my statement about Olympic qualifying times with my statements about world records. I said nothing at all about Olympic records.
It’s easier to get people to accept changes going forward than to get people to accept going back and “trying to change the past.” I think a lot of people think that because of how long the VFs have been out and how widely they have been used and how many WRs they’ve already set that the cat is already out of the bag on that one and that it would be too controversial to try banning them after the fact at this point. I’m not saying I agree with that point of view, I’m just explaining it. It is the path of least resistance to allow everything that’s already out there while drawing a line and saying, “No further,” regarding the next iteration. There’s a reason why the concept of “grandfathering” exists and is so common that we even have a word to describe it.
The reason for the availability requirement is due to the unfairness of athletes running in prototype shoes that give them a significant performance advantage over all the other athletes who don’t have access to those unreleased prototypes. The most high profile example being the 2016 Olympic men’s marathon where all three of the podium finishers were wearing a prototype of the VF 4%s that no one else even knew existed at the time. This is a clear violation of the stated spirit of the rules which aim to ensure a fair race where some athletes don’t have an advantage over others due to having advanced shoes that others don’t have access to.
If you actually read the press release, the definition of “available” is not nearly as vague as you are trying to portray. They very clearly state that the shoes must be, “available for purchase by any athlete on the open retail market.” They reiterate, “If a shoe is not openly available to all then it will be deemed a prototype…” The rules clearly state that the shoes have to be available for any athlete to purchase, so I don’t think there is any confusion at all about, “who defines a consumer.”
The only part that’s potentially strange is the 4-month part of it. Clearly the intent is to prevent a company from releasing their new shoe on the morning of the race giving other competitors no chance to purchase the shoes in time to use them, much less have time to evaluate them. But yes, 4-months does seem a little long, and it could create weird scenarios where amateurs are wearing shoes that the pros can’t use yet (though the brands would almost certainly time their releases carefully to line up with major marathons). But it seems WA wanted to err on the side of having more time to catch any unforeseen dramatic advances in a future shoe before someone goes out and sets a new WR in them.
“If you actually read the press release, the definition of “available” is not nearly as vague as you are trying to portray. They very clearly state that the shoes must be, “available for purchase by any athlete on the open retail market.” They reiterate, “If a shoe is not openly available to all then it will be deemed a prototype…” The rules clearly state that the shoes have to be available for any athlete to purchase, so I don’t think there is any confusion at all about, “who defines a consumer.”
Except, in the industry, that leaves the door wide open.
Let’s take the Tacx Bike. That bike was “available to buy” in September 2018. People put money down for them at that time, paid the whole bit. But, they didn’t start trickling out into the market until a year later – September 2019. Exact same thing for the Wahoo KICKR CLIMB, a year later until it actually got delivered to real consumer hands. Between those dates, it was available for sponsored athletes to use, media people, etc… The cycling industry is famous for this. UCI has a semi-similiar rule, and it’s basically ignored these days.
My point is that the wording is empty. The 4-month bit basically converts the ‘availability’ term into an announcement term. The product effectively must be announced, but not shipping, four months prior to an event.
Hi Ray,
Just spotted the new Wattbike Atomix on their website… any ideas on this interesting looking machine?