Week in Review–February 9th, 2020

The Week in Review is a collection of both all the goodness I’ve written during the past week around the internet, as well as a small pile of links I found interesting – generally endurance sports related. I’ve often wondered | Continue reading


@dcrainmaker.com | 4 years ago

Bikes, Beer, and Tech Live Podcast/Video from TDU Posted!

I’ve got a quick Friday post for folks today, which is a posting of the Bikes, Beer, and Tech ‘studio audience’ edition of the FIT File podcast recording we did at the Tour Down Under (TDU) about two weeks ago. | Continue reading


@dcrainmaker.com | 4 years ago

Garmin Vivoactive 4 Smartwatch In-Depth Review

It’s been about 5 months since Garmin first introduced the Vivoactive 4 series  (alongside the Garmin Venu). Both watches, screen aside, are nearly identical. And in that time Garmin has also introduced a number of themed Vivoactive 4 variants (such | Continue reading


@dcrainmaker.com | 4 years ago

Pioneer Exits Power Meter Business as Shimano Buys Their Cycling Business

Pioneer announced today that as part of an agreement with Shimano quietly penned back in December, they’ll be exiting the cycling business. That includes ending their power meter and bike computer product sales. Shimano has purchased unknown assets in conjunction | Continue reading


@dcrainmaker.com | 4 years ago

5 Random Things I Did This Weekend

Gone is the warm weather of Australia and Singapore, and now it’s back to the mostly dreary weather of Amsterdam. Though honestly, it wasn’t that bad this weekend. In fact, it felt unseasonably warm for the first weekend of February. | Continue reading


@dcrainmaker.com | 4 years ago

Week in Review–February 2nd, 2020

The Week in Review is a collection of both all the goodness I’ve written during the past week around the internet, as well as a small pile of links I found interesting – generally endurance sports related. I’ve often wondered | Continue reading


@dcrainmaker.com | 4 years ago

GoPro Media Mod Accessory In-Depth Review

The GoPro Media Mod is finally shipping, some four months after GoPro first announced it back in early October alongside the Hero 8 Black. The Media Mod is part of GoPro’s strategy to compete with slightly higher end vlogging setups, | Continue reading


@dcrainmaker.com | 4 years ago

Polar’s New H9 Heart Rate Strap: Everything you ever wanted to know

Polar has announced today a new heart rate chest strap, undercutting slightly their higher end H10 strap with a less expensive offering that ditches the onboard storage, while still maintaining the trio of connectivity choices (ANT+/Bluetooth Smart/5kHz). Essentially, it’s Polar’ … | Continue reading


@dcrainmaker.com | 4 years ago

The StagesBike: A Quick Hands-On Update

It’s been almost 5 months since Stages first announced their StagesBike at Eurobike. At the time they stated they planned to ship in Q1 2020 (which is, sometime between Jan-Mar 2020). Beyond that, it was mostly pretty quiet – as | Continue reading


@dcrainmaker.com | 4 years ago

5 Random Things I Did This Weekend in Singapore

Phew – it’s been a whirlwind last 10 days! Flying to Australia for the Tour Down Under (with more posts to come, especially some cool behind the scenes bits on tech), and then now just getting back home this morning. | Continue reading


@dcrainmaker.com | 4 years ago

Garmin Adds Bluetooth Heart Rate & Running Data Broadcasting for FR245/FR945

Garmin has quietly begun offering the ability for users to start re-broadcasting their heart rate over Bluetooth Smart with certain wearables, via an open beta program. While virtually all Garmin wearables made in the last…ever…support re-broadcasting of heart rate over | Continue reading


@dcrainmaker.com | 4 years ago

New DC Rainmaker Partnership with Wiggle for Europe/Australia/New Zealand

I’m excited to announce a new partnership here on the site – this one primarily focused for Europeans, as well as Australian and New Zealand readers (and other places Wiggle delivers). A perfect fit for right now given I’ve spent | Continue reading


@dcrainmaker.com | 4 years ago

Bike Computers of the WorldTour Pro Peloton

Never have I ever seen so many Garmin Edge units in one place, than is on show at the Tour Down Under this year. That’s of course partly because Garmin in recent years has shifted away from being a major | Continue reading


@dcrainmaker.com | 4 years ago

Tour Down Under 2020: Sports Tech of the Pro Women

Each time I inventory the women’s pro ranks, things get better and better in terms of equipment. Back a few years ago, it felt like a push to even have the same bike frames on a team. Whereas this year | Continue reading


@dcrainmaker.com | 4 years ago

Hands-on: Wahoo adds Specialized ANGi Helmet Sensor Integration

Wahoo and Specialized have announced a new integration that lets Wahoo users automatically start and stop the Specialized ANGi helmet live tracking and crash detection features, directly from their Wahoo ELEMNT/BOLT/ROAM computers. This integration (as you’ll see), seems more of | Continue reading


@dcrainmaker.com | 4 years ago

Tour Down Under 2020: Power Meters Of the WorldTour Men’s Teams

The Tour Down Under represents the first race of the UCI WorldTour season, and as such, establishes what we’ll see in terms of equipment as the baseline for most tech on the teams this year. This has more or less | Continue reading


@dcrainmaker.com | 4 years ago

NPE Runn Treadmill Smart Sensor: Everything you need to know

A few weeks ago when Zwift announced their new running track within Watopia, a bunch of you were curious about the NPE Runn device I showed briefly within that post. But then yesterday Zwift sent an e-mail out to about | Continue reading


@dcrainmaker.com | 4 years ago

A Look at EatMyRide: Automated Nutrition Planning with Strava/Garmin Integration

While at CES last week I had the chance to get a bit of a demo from the one of the companies within startup pavilion. This pavilion is a bit like speed dating for companies. They’ve got a very small | Continue reading


@dcrainmaker.com | 4 years ago

Week in Review: January 12th, 2020

The Week in Review is a collection of both all the goodness I’ve written during the past week around the internet, as well as a small pile of links I found interesting – generally endurance sports related. I’ve often wondered | Continue reading


@dcrainmaker.com | 4 years ago

First Look: Amazfit’s Crazy Treadmill & Wall Display System

The most common question I get while walking around the CES show floor each year is: What’s the coolest thing you’ve seen here? Every…single…person asks me that. Every hour, every day, every year. And generally speaking this year it was | Continue reading


@dcrainmaker.com | 4 years ago

Stages Further Lowers Power Meter Pricing to $299

No matter how you feel about single-sided power meters, there’s zero denying that Stages and their timing of the decade deal with then Team Sky, dramatically increased power meter consumption. In the rising tide lifts all boats department, they took | Continue reading


@dcrainmaker.com | 4 years ago

Suunto 7 with Wear OS–Maps, Music, Payments: Everything you ever wanted to know

There’s only two words to describe the just announced Suunto 7 GPS watch: Hail Mary.How this story ends will take a few years to flesh out, but just most Hail Mary attempts it only ends on one of two ways: | Continue reading


@dcrainmaker.com | 4 years ago

Coming Up Next Week: The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2020!

If I had to summarize what I expect I’ll see next week at CES into three words it’d be: Huh, that’s different. CES, the Consumer Electronics Show, is of course the annual gathering of the world’s tech companies to show | Continue reading


@dcrainmaker.com | 4 years ago

Zwift’s Running Track Is Open: Here’s what a structured track workout is like

Yes, I just ran in Zwift. For real. On purpose.And somehow, someway…it didn’t suck this time.Earlier this week in an apparent New Year’s Eve ‘let’s do this’ moment, Zwift rolled out its last course edition of this year: A 400m | Continue reading


@dcrainmaker.com | 4 years ago

The Didn’t Get What You Wanted $500 Gadget Giveaway Results/Winner

Last year…err…I mean earlier this week, I held the ‘You Didn’t Get What You Wanted $500 Gadget Giveaway’. Wherein some 5,014 of you awoke from your holiday slumber just long enough to enter and express your desire to one-up the | Continue reading


@dcrainmaker.com | 4 years ago

The Didn’t Get What You Wanted $500 Gadget Giveaway

I’m sure many of you received various sports gadgets over the last few weeks as part of the holidays.  But for those unlucky elves who received only a half-eaten gel packet in their Christmas stocking from their not-so-significant others, I’ve | Continue reading


@dcrainmaker.com | 4 years ago

GoPro Light Mod Accessory In-Depth Review

Way back when the GoPro Hero 8 was announced, the company also announced a series of ‘Mods’, err…accessories as the rest of the world calls them? In any case, there were three announced accessories at the time: 1) The Media | Continue reading


@dcrainmaker.com | 4 years ago

Just Got A New Sports Gadget? 37 Tips To Get You Started

So, you just got a new gadget under the tree (or, perhaps for some other holiday – or random sale - in the last while). Congrats! Now, you’ve gotta figure out how to channel your inner sports geekdom to get | Continue reading


@dcrainmaker.com | 4 years ago

5 Random Things I Did This Weekend

As we wind down the year, it seems just as busy as ever before. Here’s what we were up to on this holiday, geek, and bike-themed weekend wrap-up! 1) Year-end photo consolidation (Warning: Photography geekery ahead, skip to the other | Continue reading


@dcrainmaker.com | 4 years ago

Getting the Christmas Tree Home via Bike: 2019 Edition

In now it’s 7th year, we’ve been moving the Christmas tree home by bike. It started when we lived in Paris, using a bike share Velib to make the trek from our favored Christmas Tree vendor at the flower markets | Continue reading


@dcrainmaker.com | 4 years ago

Friday Tidbits: Trainer App news, FR945 gets major update, KICKR Bike gets profiles

Here’s your quick round-up of news that I didn’t quite get to this past week. Or, that wasn’t quite worth of an entire separate post. Either way, it’s Friday, let’s get on with it.Rouvy & RGT (Road Grand Tours) News:No, | Continue reading


@dcrainmaker.com | 4 years ago

DJI Mavic Mini In-Depth Review

The DJI Mavic Mini is DJI’s first drone under 249 grams. It’s a fact you’ll see and hear a lot when anyone talks about this drone. And in some more limited than people realize situations, that means something. For example, | Continue reading


@dcrainmaker.com | 4 years ago

A 2019 Sports Wearables Recap with DesFit (Video)

Okey doke, happy Sunday! Here’s a quickie of a post for you. Albeit, not a quick video. But that’s alright, quality over quantity. Or something like that. As you may remember, DesFit was over here for the DCR Open House | Continue reading


@dcrainmaker.com | 4 years ago

Zwift Begins First Day of New Crit City Race Course: My first go of it

To my surprise, that was more fun than I expected. Also, it hurt my lungs more than I had planned for this Saturday afternoon. But more importantly – I could actually see doing it again. Which is not something I | Continue reading


@dcrainmaker.com | 4 years ago

Fisher-Price Smart Cycle Trainer In-Depth Review

We have arrived: The pièce de résistance of my five consecutive days of indoor smart trainer reviews. We started the week at $3,500 with the Wahoo KICKR Smart Bike, and yet we’re going to finish the week with an $89 | Continue reading


@dcrainmaker.com | 4 years ago

Kinetic R1 Smart Trainer In-Depth Review

It’s been 16 months since the Kinetic R1 was first announced at Interbike 2018. That was back when Interbike still existed. Since then Interbike has dissolved, Kinetic started shipping the R1, then stopped for half a year, then resumed again | Continue reading


@dcrainmaker.com | 4 years ago

Fascinating Stats from Strava’s 2019 Year End Report

Ahh yes, December – time for eggnog, pepernoten, and Strava’s year end report. Bu yes, of course I’ll once again point out that the report technically only covers data from Oct 1st, 2018 to Sept 30th, 2019. I think for | Continue reading


@dcrainmaker.com | 4 years ago

4iiii Fliiiight Smart Trainer In-Depth Review

The Fliiiight is a different kind of trainer on so many levels. First off – it doesn’t use any sort of traditional trainer resistance technology to provide resistance. Instead, it recreates gradients and wattage levels by moving magnets, which depending | Continue reading


@dcrainmaker.com | 4 years ago

Elite Suito Smart Trainer In-Depth Review

It’s been about five months since the Elite Suito was first announced back in July. The Suito made a name for itself by essentially copying the same Elite formula as a few years ago: Offer a good medium-range product that | Continue reading


@dcrainmaker.com | 4 years ago

Wahoo KICKR Bike In-Depth Review

At $3,500 the Wahoo KICKR Bike is Wahoo’s most expensive product. And one of the most expensive indoor training products you can buy. It’s also the company's first go at creating not just indoor bike, but actually an entirely different | Continue reading


@dcrainmaker.com | 4 years ago

Garmin Venu GPS Smartwatch In-Depth Review

It’s been a bit over three months since the Garmin Venu came out, and since even before the announcement day it’s been on my left wrist – day in and day out. It’s definitely been one heck of a long | Continue reading


@dcrainmaker.com | 4 years ago

DCR Open House Winter 2019 Photo Recap!

This past weekend we held our 6th annual DCR Cave Open House (now the 2nd winter one in Amsterdam, or 3rd counting our first summer edition this past July). It was once again a sold out crowd, for both the | Continue reading


@dcrainmaker.com | 4 years ago

Skydio 2 Autonomous Sports Drone In-Depth Review

It’s been just shy of two months since Skydio announced the Skydio 2 drone, which is virtually entirely dedicated to sports tracking (in the consumer realm anyway). I previously tested the R1 drone about two years ago, which did incredible | Continue reading


@dcrainmaker.com | 4 years ago

Black Friday & Cyber Monday 2019 Sports Tech Deals Round-Up!

It's that time of year again when there are tons of sales on all sorts of sports technology items.  Everything this year is pointing to earlier sales than normal, as manufacturers and retailers alike try to lock in your dollars | Continue reading


@dcrainmaker.com | 4 years ago

Sports Technology Buyers Guide: Winter 2019-2020

Each year around this time I publish my complete guide of sports tech recommendations, covering a wide range of sport gadget areas.  My goal here being to give my specific recommendations – exactly the same recommendations I’d give to my | Continue reading


@dcrainmaker.com | 4 years ago

Tacx NEO Bike Smart: $700 off, Scratch & Dent Sale

You know when you hear a story, raise an eyebrow, shrug, and then continue along your day? That’s roughly what happened back about a month ago when I heard that a huge shipment of Tacx NEO Smart Bike’s got delayed | Continue reading


@dcrainmaker.com | 4 years ago

Stages Dash Gets Radar Supports, Outlines Future Firmware Plans (and a 30% off sale)

Today Stages released firmware 2.0.0, which adds a whole bunch of performance tweaks and an even bigger pile of bug fixes. It also improves the battery life. But in conjunction with that, they’ve announced the next firmware version (2.1.0), which | Continue reading


@dcrainmaker.com | 4 years ago

Apple Watch Series 5: Sports & Fitness In-Depth Review

It’s been two months since the Apple Watch Series 5 came out, and the watch has been on my right wrist every one of those days. Swim, bike, run…and plenty more. You may remember my initial thoughts on it back | Continue reading


@dcrainmaker.com | 4 years ago