A Trio of Summer Riding Articles

By John Marsh, Editor & Publisher

Welcome to Summer (to all of our Norther Hemisphere readers)! It’s the time of year we roadies live for – when the weather allows us to ride just about whenever we want.

Of course, we do have to keep top of mind the effects of the sun and the heat on our bodies as the temperatures begin to rise.

We offer a trio of articles today with a range of advice aimed at exactly that:

• Coach John Hughes leads off with a piece based on his own deep well of experience riding in the heat. He is a 2-time winner of the Furnace Creek 508, a bear of a race through the Mojave Desert and Death Valley, with about seven miles of climbing thrown into the oven. He’s refined his heat-handling advice over another couple decades of coaching everyday roadies like us.
• Coach Rick Schultz follows with a primer on sun-protected cycling apparel. There is ever-more of it on the market, but – as with sunscreen – it sure helps to understand what all the jargon and acronyms actually mean. Coach Schultz lays out the details for us.
• I follow up with a similar piece about sunscreen that explains the letters, the numbers, the government labeling regulations, water resistance claims – in short, the gamut of sunscreen knowledge. There’s also a tip about what time of day the sun is at it’s most potentially damaging.

We hope this trio provides some useful info to you as you make the most of the summer riding season. Enjoy, don’t overheat, and stay protected.

July 4 Week – Condensed Issue Likely

Happy Independence Day next Tuesday to all our American readers! Hope you have a terrific weekend doing whatever you do to celebrate.

My personal “celebration” will include picking up and dropping off my 17-year-old son at two different camps this weekend (he’s working as a counselor). And, as the holiday falls on Tuesday, our time to put together next week’s issue will be somewhat curtailed.

We’ll still publish next week. But you may notice that the Newsletter is slightly shorter than normal.

Again, Happy 4th of July! Enjoy your holiday!

John Marsh

John Marsh is the former editor and publisher of RBR Newsletter and RoadBikeRider.com. A rider of "less than podium" talent, he brought our readers consistently useful, informative, entertaining info that helps make them better road cyclists. That's what we're all about here—always have been, always will be. Click to read John's full bio.