Quick Tip: Start Hot Rides Earlier
When it’s going to be extremely hot, the simplest way to beat it is to beat it out the door. Roll out early, and you can finish your ride before the day turns brutal.
The hottest part of the day usually falls between noon and 3 p.m. It isn’t just the air temperature, either. Radiant heat from the sun is strongest in the afternoon, so you’re getting cooked from above at the same time the thermometer peaks. A ride that feels hard at 1 p.m. can feel easy at 7 a.m., even on the same route at the same effort.
That’s why the old racer’s trick is to move your start time by a couple of hours rather than tough it out. If you’d normally leave at 9, leave at 7. On a really hot day, a dawn start can get you home before the worst of it arrives. The general guideline is to ride before about 10 a.m. or after about 5 p.m., but the earlier you can go, the more heat you dodge.
An early start pays off in other ways too. The roads are quieter, the light is better, and you’ll often see wildlife that disappears once the day heats up. You’ll also start the ride with your body already rested and cool, instead of stepping out into an oven.
If your schedule won’t allow a morning ride, flip it to the evening. Waiting until after 5 or 6 p.m. lets the sun drop and the pavement start giving back its heat. It’s not quite as good as the morning, when everything has cooled overnight, but it beats the middle of the afternoon by a wide margin.
The bottom line: on hot days, the clock is a free tool. Move your start time earlier and you can ride the same miles in far more comfort. Readers, do you do this in the summer already or have a different approach you like to use to beat the heat?
that is about all you can do
in the south though, you find the air is so damp that you can;t sweat
dewpoint is the key
as this says too though, in mid day, the air is drier, so you can sweat better, but now the sun is beating down on you adding heat to your body
the only thing morning and afternoon really do is, you may find some shade on the east or west side of the road due to sun angles being lower
Also keep in mind the position of the sun, in Indiana the hottest part of the day is around 3 – 4 PM, due to how far west we are in our time zone..
This is good advice, Mid-day summer heat is something that is increasingly tough for me physically since I passed 60.
Nevertheless I’m more of a “start at 1-2pm and ride to sunset” guy than a crack-of-dawn guy (we call it a crack-of-noon ride start). First couple of hours are mellow then more sporty as mid-day heat relents.
Unlike morning into mid-day heat, the cooling late-day temperatures and golden-hour sunshine make it easy to make the ride go longer, even into the after-sunset evening with a headlight. Also works well with a “work in the morning, ride in the afternoon” job scenario.
I remember once riding in 98 degree heat and not feeling much in the way of discomfort — but I was around age 30 at the time. Last year, I did a ride in similar heat, but suffered heat exhaustion — weakness climbing stairs after the ride, and I almost passed out in the shower. I did not drink enough and was definitely dehydrated. (This was at age 66.)
These days I generally avoid riding in temperatures much above 92 degrees. One technique I’ve developed when riding in the heat is to soak my shirt in water at the start of a ride. The evaporation keeps me cool for a while, but I generally find that the shirt is dry after about two or three miles. (I suppose I could rewet it at this point, but I haven’t tried that yet.)