Riding in extreme heat

[Townzeene]

Well boys (and girls) I hope you're all enjoying the comforts of an airconditioned room right now? Man is it stinking hot at work today, on that note what are your thoughts on riding or more importantly doing a hard ride in this extreme heat? Being that Graydon is on holidays this week I thought I'd pass my question to the rest of you to help me out, at one point a while back he had mentioned to me that if there is any type of smog warning or anything of the sort that you could possibly do more damage by riding hard than not riding at all...any thoughts...

[2nd2fignon]

My suggestion is to get up at 4:45am, there should be enough light to ride by 5:30am. Riding in the evening doesn't work because the products of sunlight mediated pollutents are still abundent.

It's actually not that bad out there. I think the media makes it sound as if it is 40C (without humidex). Be sensible, if the temp is 37C or higher, you can't get rid of heat.

[Brownie]

Do your hardest workouts in this extreme heat. what doesn't kill ya and can only make ya stronger. same with riding in extreme cold. And to make it even more interesting do a hard workout in this heat without any water, I'm talk 2-3.5 hours, thats what I always do
Thats my take

ahah

[Chris Helwig]

If it is above 40 degrees with the humidex here are some options to consider:

1) Ride indoors on the trainer (if you have air). Shorten your workout volume and ride shorter but include the intervals you have scheduled for the day.

2) Ride super early. Heat, humidity and pollution are much better at 6:00am.

3) Do a light Z2 ride and move your harder intervals to later in the week. If you are scheduled for a hard Tuesday ride just do a Z2 ride in the heat and move your harder ride to later in the week. This works well to move to Wednesday, but if you have a high priority race on Sunday best to only move it to Wednesday and not all the way to Thursday.

There are a few options to consider.

Chris

[SIBO]

Whats the Cancel rule for Wheelers? Long way to drive tinight for a race to be cancelled...

[Chris Helwig]

There has never been a Tuesday race cancelled because of heat. I haven't heard anything from Doug or Dawn so I am 99.5% sure the race is on.

[Wanna B]

Played hookie this AM and left for a basic endurance ride at about 7:30AM. By 8:30 it was already freakin' hot and I was pretty much baked by the time I got home at 9:45.

Even a long cool shower couldn't stop the profuse sweating. I'll spend the balance of the day hiding in air conditioning behind my desk and trying to re-hydrate.

I can't imagine how tough P&FG would have been last night!

[old cervelo]

For those of you that didn't show, it was a real scorcher tonight. It seems that the heat didn't prevent several of the big guns from showing up as the tempo for the last two-thirds of the race was extremely high. Unfortunately there was a crash tonight on the second lap. Hopefully there were no serious injuries.