Getting cold when stopped.

[Andy W]

Occasionally I'll buy a hot drink after 20 /30 miles, then head home. Today when I stopped for 10 minutes, I got so cold I felt like I was being crushed by the cold. I nursed a hot coffee but my hand went white. I don't normally stop even on a 70 mile ride. It took 5 miles of moderately hard pedalling to have any semblance of feeling back in my hands. Has anyone else experienced this? Is it a condition? Or am I overthinking it? I'm reluctant to stop now except t a wee.

[rafletcher]

I thunk you’re overthinking it. Once is not a pattern.

[Hot Flatus]

I got cold today stopping for an egg bap at midday. It really hadn't seemed that cold prior to that.

[hellymedic]

At rest, an adult generates around 90W heat and is in thermal equilibrium wearing indoor clothes in a room at 21C.

A cyclist generating 300W is in equilibrium wearing quite thin clothing a 0C and might even be sweating. Cyclist then stops. Outdoor temperature is still 0C. Wind cooling might be reduced but clothes are still thin. Cyclist now only generates 90W. There a still a thin layer of sweat on the cyclist.

I wonder why the cyclist is cold...

 

[rafletcher]

Grief, I’ve a long way to improve to keep warm! 

[chrisbainbridge]

I would classify that as a normal response to significant cold exposure.

[fuaran]

Low blood sugar?
Add more sugar to your coffee. Or eat some sweets.

[freeflow]

Probably insufficient clothing before the stop so that your core temperature was reduced which made you more susceptible than normal to the cold whilst stopped.

[hellymedic]

Clothing that is sufficient when you're riding won't be enough when you stop, especially if you've been working hard.

Fuel is needed for heat production so you will get cold more easily if 'running on empty'.

Alcohol increases heat loss by causing vasodilation. It also inhibits the liver's glucose production and might impair the drinker's judgement. It's not really a good idea...

[Tomsk]

Also, we've had quite spell of mild and wet weather and I certainly haven't acclimatised to the colder weather. I think it takes longer to adjust, the older I get ...

A couple of days ago on a 100km jaunt I stopped for a takeaway coffee and snack, and got cold quite soon, despite putting my lightweight down jacket on straight away. I was definitely a bit damp from sweat - it was misty and cold, about 1 degree C - I was glad I had my ski mitts with me for the rest of the ride.

[philip]

Grief, I’ve a long way to improve to keep warm!

A cyclist is typically less then 25% efficient, so if you are cycling at a modest 100W you will be producing 300W heat.

[bairn again]

Lots of the observations ^ ring a bell. 

Ive always felt the cold more readily than others and now at 55 Ive found that my constant companions (on a ride of any non trivial length) now include a light down jacket and a dry warm hat, to be donned at anything longer than a pee stop.  If I didnt Id get the uncontrollable shivers.   

[Lightning Phil]

Dress light enough that you don’t sweat. Water has a thermal conductivity 25 times that of air.  If you have wet layers against the skin, when you stop you’ll chill. Throw an insulating layer over top as soon as you stop, take it off when you get going again.

[Andy W]

I'll be 60 in a few days and am probably not as resilient as I was. Lightening  Phil has a point. I was wearing too much. A medium weight  helly hansen base layer and the Gore windstopper top was a really thick thornproof MTB  jacket. I deliberately  took it easy so as not to sweat too much but misjudged it. Ill take a tip from Tom's and put in a request for a packable  down jacket.

[The French Tandem]

What I have observed on myself, with no claim of scientific accuracy, is that every time I go indoor immediately after a hard effort in the cold, I tend to sweat a lot. Then my clothes become soaked, and as soon as I'm back outdoor, I feel awfully cold. The strategy that works best for me is to take off all my clothes, well, almost all, as soon as I go somewhere indoor, and to put them back on only at the last moment before going back outdoor. This way my clothes stay dry, and I do not suffer as much from the cold.

A

[Kim]

Normal for me.  Combination of accumulated sweat^[1] evaporating without the associated power input and circulation returning to cold body parts lowering my core temperature.  Normally I manage this by adding extra (preferably boil-in-the-bag to reduce evaporation) layers when I stop, or not stopping for more than a few minutes.


_{[1] Lightning Phil's advice is flawed, in that it assumes that you can somehow not sweat while exercising simply by being colder.  My body doesn't work like that.}

[Ashaman42]

Ditto, I just have to think about exercising and I start sweating.

Which fine, whatever. But it grates when people then declare "Oh look how sweaty you are! Obviously not as fit as you claim." Any attempt to explain that the two aren't related just gets dismissed as defensiveness. /grumble.

[Kim]

Ditto, I just have to think about exercising and I start sweating.

Which fine, whatever. But it grates when people then declare "Oh look how sweaty you are! Obviously not as fit as you claim." Any attempt to explain that the two aren't related just gets dismissed as defensiveness. /grumble.

Usually I find those comments are about weight rather than fitness.  And yes, there is something to that: Being soaked in sweat without an insulating layer of lard means you get cold dangerously quickly.  But the absence of lard doesn't stop me sweating in the first place.

[hellymedic]

All the energy you eat but don't store, ends up as heat. A small proportion results in kinetic energy. 300kcal is about 1.2 MJ. 'Burnt' over an hour, that's 333 watts, which is enough to keep you warm till you stop and heat output drops by 75%.

Don't stop outdoors without donning more clothing.

Try not to lose too much by evaporation if you stop indoors. For better and worse, evaporative cooling is VERY efficient!

[zigzag]

when cycling i don't like to stop, be it summer or winter. but especially winter. i rarely sweat, but still get cold very quickly if not moving (and dressed for riding). during my last long ride in 2-3'c i used to up the tempo for few minutes before every planned stop so that i didn't cool down too much during the breaks. the danger is when the legs are too tired to push harder, and you are already cold on a bike - this was during the final seven hours of festive 500 '20.

punctures on winter club rides were unwelcome for the same reason (before many switched to tubeless wheels/tyres).

[Brucey]

I got cold today stopping for an egg bap at midday....

is that why the chicken crossed the road?...