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.
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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.
Long overdue but great to see this feature! No more dropping contact info awkwardly in comments.
Tiny point, but the default depends on your profile visibility. If you have your profile set to `Followers Only`, the default messaging privacy setting will be the Mutuals option (you both follow each other).
Interesting. Good to know!
Is this for everyone or just subscribers?
Everyone.
When do you think Strava will have an auditory option for following a route for either running or riding similar to what Google Maps does. More for running than for riding I find myself exploring a route with my phone in my pocket and having to dig it out and figure out where I should have made a turn. With head phones on an audio prompt would be great.
Hard to know. Routing is very very very tricky, especially off-route. It takes most companies years (2-3 years) of dev time to get to a halfway functional routing feature, and then usually another few years until it’s very reliable.
Fyi: Komoot does this excellently imo!
A way of organising group rides would be good (i.e group chats). Maybe one for a future update?
My bad. It already supports this.
Ray, off topic but what is the cell phone case you use I’m the photos ? Is that Peak Design ? Thanks
Yup, the Peak Design one. Used to use Quadlock, but switched over about two years ago – both myself and my wife for all our bikes (non-race bikes mostly, like cargo bikes/commuter bikes/Peloton bike/indoor bikes). Love it.
I’m having a hard time getting giphy to work …… ????
So type / to get the gifphy command, and then if you want memes about Kiwis, just type Kiwi and press enter. It won’t actually send a message with the text Kiwi, it’s merely sending it to Gifhy as a search.
It’ll then show you a kiwi gif, but you’ll see above that there’s still the option to ‘Shuffle’ – press that till you find the right Kiwi, and then press to send the actual message over.
As a few pointed out, this is apparently how it works in Slack. For better or worse, I escaped the corporate world before Slack became a thing, thus, I wasn’t aware of it. That said, I think it’s actually a really good example of something that probably seems secondhand to tech people, but is completely unintuitive to regular people. Having to press shuffle a bunch is pretty silly compared to on my phone selecting an icon from the text page that lets me scroll endlessly through Gifphy images and pick it quickly.
On the flip side, I do appreciate that if the dev option is nothing or /, I’ll take this over nothing.
I don’t intend to use this feature other than to share contact info, but appreciate the explanation on how to send GIFs. One would think that feature didn’t exist the way they’ve advertised it.
no Strava messages function in China,
Thanks for the heads up so I could immediately disable this feature…
I have all Strava notifications disabled (cut the noise), so additionally disabling this means that no one’s unanticipated message sits there unread for eternity. In the use case you describe of needing to share something non-publicly, I could temporarily enable it.
I wonder how much of the already rare comment activity will move to chat, making the platform appear even more devoid of communication than before to newbies/underconnecteds. I guess that’s what kept Strava from doing this earlier. But this effect could also be seen as strengthening Strava’s profile, as the platform where you can fill some lingering “social media desire” but that is still 100% about *doing*, not about talking.
OT: if you do the Arona Escalona Vilaflor Retamar climb (would be there right now if conditions were a little less unfortunate), you *have* to do the return leg going left in Vilaflor, to Granadilla. It’s the nicest descent I know and I know quite a few: not terribly fast (a long melody of switching between gentle breaking and pedaling), plenty of 180+ curves but no silly hairpins, and mostly good visibility of (absence of) oncoming traffic. Then from Granadilla back on the TF-28 via Valle San Lorenzo, some rolling climblets but still mostly downhill.
already had two spam, which idiot thought to roll default of on !!
I’m confused how you’d have spam. Outside of being entirely off, there’s only two options:
A) Only if you follow them
B) Only if you both follow each other
Thus, you’d have to follow an account to get messages…unless you’ve followed a spam account?
The way I see it, if you go with Following (sometimes the default) only the other party needs to follow you to be able to spam you. You don’t need to follow them to receive their spam unless you set it to Mutuals.
Never mind. I think I got that wrong.
You write “This new feature lets you (optionally) accept direct messages from nobody, everyone, or only people you follow”, but as far as I can tell there’s no way to accept messages from “everyone”…. just followers or mutual-followers, or no one.
Good catch, 2nd item should be mutual, not everyone. Fixed, thanks!!!
I will disable this. No need for another chat app. Keep it simple!