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.
-
Check out my weekly podcast - with DesFit, which is packed with both gadget and non-gadget goodness!
-
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!
5
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.
you’re American, stop using Km. Its miles!!
Ray has chosen Europe…
In metric, one milliliter of water occupies one cubic centimeter, weighs one gram, and requires one calorie of energy to heat up by one degree centigrade — which is 1 percent of the difference between its freezing point and its boiling point. An amount of hydrogen weighing the same amount has exactly one mole of atoms in it. Whereas in the American system, the answer to ‘How much energy does it take to boil a room-temperature gallon of water?’ is ‘Get lost,’ because you can’t directly relate any of those quantities.”
PS.: it is km (kilo meter). Not Km, not KM, just km…
It’s only miles for the US and the UK, with just a handful of other countries that have limited inofficial usage of Imperial units. 95% of the world’s population are using the metric system. While a lot of Imperial unit users will understand metric units intuitively (because they are in a minority and have to convert them all the time), it’s not that easy to convert miles to kilometers if you’ve only learned metric like me. My guess is that Ray wants to have his site as accessible as possible for everyone.
There is even an advantage to it: While a majority of the world does not speak English and has to be bilingual for good reason, US and UK folks are bilingual in unit conversion. I wish I could also do that on the fly!
Which is precisely why most scientists and engineers here in the US use the metric system most of the time, rather than the imperial system. My particular branch of engineering (structural) is one of the few exceptions, but this is because we need to convey information to builders, who use the imperial system (except for plywood manufacturers, but that is a whole other kettle of fish).
Also, in my opinion, cycling should always be in km. It drives me nuts when I am forced to watch the terrible NBC coverage of cycling events instead of a stream based in Europe and they use miles. Even as an American I get highly confused when distance to the line is reported in miles.
I believe the girls’ names are Keelo and Mitra.
Miles is usually a boy’s name. :)
That is a lot of discussion for a joke! I am an engineer in the nuclear power industry and we use them all. Metric, imperial… As a matter of fact I have seen both unit systems used in safety reports in different areas. Don’t get me started on radiation units, rem/sievert and curie/becquerels..
But I do use mph on my bike because all of our speed limits use those limits. Thus, miles do make the most since when you are using mph constantly.
Yeah, at the end of the day I use both. It really doesn’t much batter to me. Roughly half my audience is North America, and the rest outside. The UK though would push it above the half-way marker for non-metric.
As I’ve said before, the whole notion that miles is somehow harder to understand for the people that grew up with it is silly and misguided. People using miles/feet etc are able to get by just fine, and nobody in normal every day life is converting the weight of a cube of anything at home in their kitchen by head, nor caring how much energy it takes to boil a pot of water. Not to mention that for every day weather temps, the *F system gives us more granularity without having decimal points (since, no weather station says highs/lows with that precision for metric weather). Albeit, it’s darn near impossible to spell.
As The Real Bob says, it really doesn’t matter to most in sport in the US, we can use them all pretty interchangeably.
Fahrenheit not only gives more granularity but you don’t have to use negative numbers nearly as often. I think we’ve gone below zero F once or twice this winter, while we’ve only just this week risen above 0 C.
As for conversions, a km (and a unit you need to chunk into thousands isn’t the right one for the job) is roughly 2/3 of a mile, so it’s easy to convert. A kg (again with the thousands) is about 2.2 pounds, which is again easy to convert; because my Withings scale flips from pounds to kg to stone, I have to do that conversion in my head a lot. A meter is 10% longer than a yard, so they’re roughly the same (not that I use yards very often). I don’t care how many BTU’s it takes to boil a barrel of water; I can just look that up if I actually need to . And the earth is roughly 1 A.U. from the sun; I have no idea what that is in km or miles or kellicams. French imperial units are no better or worse than English ones.
nut balls???? LOL
Man lives in NL, and takes 2 kiddos out on a cargo bike. That’s pretty Dutch right there.
The was fun to watch. Thanks a lot and say hello to the nut balls!!
Funny you show the Amstelveenseweg. It feels like that was the only bike lane properly plowed in Zuid.
Kudos for cycling around in the snow, looked like a lot of fun
Yeah, Zuid is sorta my jam. But I found almost all the main bike lanes in Zuid were well plowed from Sunday afternoon, and certainly by mid-day Monday. Neighborhoods were totally ignored of course, but once you got out of that, all the major routes that I’d use day to day were pretty solid.
As for snowplowing the bicycle paths, there were complaints about is. What happened that roads were plowed and piles of snow were dumped into cycling paths. It was actually discussed in the Amsterdam city council. It was said that if we really want to be bicycle-friendly, and advocate bicycle use over car use, we should give priority to plowing cycling paths.
The city council answered that the criticism was not correct and that the bicycle paths had “the highest priority”
link to at5.nl
That was a treat! Thanks, Ray. Nice to see you out biking with the Peanuts. I was impressed how well you did on the non-studded, non-fatbike tires. What tires were they and what tire pressure were you rolling at? Did you have any moments of slippage at all? That kind of info is helpful for us mere mortals.
Love what you do. Keep it up. Regards to you and your beautiful family..
Unrelated, but can you review the new Favero Assioma update with autocalibration? How it functions and wether it works good or not? Thanks for a great resource for anything exercise-tech related, keep up the good work :)
productive in your blogging, it seems that the kiddo are back in school ?
Oddly, this week we lost schooling for the oldest child. They had scheduled vacation week. Sigh…
But yes, having the two younger ones back in school has helped immensely. :)
Love these videos! Just wonder if is this a time with fever products to review than a normal year? Might just be me visiting your site very often too :)
Yeah, typically February is the quietest time of the year. April/May and Aug/Sept tend to be the peak season. But these days we see less seasonality in sports tech, and it ends up everywhere.
In this case, videos like this are things that perhaps in the past I’d have done purely as a standalone post. So, doing a video kinda it a bit more fun.