Riding - or anything else - in the extreme heat takes some getting used to but the reality is that you can get used to it. Plenty of liquid with electrolytes and salt stick capsules, eat often even if you don't feel hungry and take energy gels.
Agreed with the basic premise, you get used to it. The heat is often not as brutal as the humidity as that effects the ability of the sweat to evaporate. This is why it can often be better to just keep moving, if slowly, rather than stop, unless you can find the useful combo of some breeze and shade.
Before you start the ride drink a full 24 ounce bottle of water and keep that up. Drinking whilst riding is not easy to do because you just don't remember to do it with the consequence that by the time the body starts screaming for water, it is too late and you are playing catch-up. Actually, the body dosn't really scream, the blood gets thicker and the body ceases to have the energy or strength to make much of an effort. Where you were doing maybe 18 MPH for the first miles you will be hard put to go much more than 12 MPH by hour four or five. Eventually the body starts to shut down, you will begin to lose balance and weave around a bit and then simply have no energy to continue and will have to find a nice cool place in the shade to sleep for a few hours.
That's a ~800ml bottle of drink, 29.3kph, 19.6kph, in sensible units...
Agreed with the sentiments, in hot weather I actually carry a pulse ox in my bag, it can be useful for doing a self check, when you might not be able to fully check your vitals otherwise. This has been useful in the past when having issues with heat stroke and dehydration. It weighs little, takes up little space, but I find it useful. But then I have a buddy in SAR who monitors my tracker, and is an EMT, so often useful to relay info for 2nd opinion. Yay for irridium...
The head needs to be as unencumbered as possible with just a well designed helmet with plenty of air slots, bandanas are a bad idea. White arm 'coolers' work fairly well if you can keep them moistened but eventually I remove mine because there is more heat retained than sun effects bounced off.
I wonder if there is some mechanism related to supersaturation in proximity to the skin that deminishes the effect...
If the opportunity arises to allow water from a tap to soak your head so much the better.
Remember that your speed on cool days will not be replicated on hot days and you will take longer to finish. Spend as much time outdoors every day to become acclimated.
Around here, the temperature has been in the 90's for the last two months and Saturday's ride of 70 miles for me was in 105 degrees by ten o' clock and where I might have ridden that in say 4 hours 20 minutes during the cold times, this day it was 5 hours 30 minutes. Be aware of the dangers of high temperatures, but with sense and planning, there is no reason to stay at home, it will just take longer.
That's 32°C, and 114km, 40.5°C.
Or YE gods that is hot!
I know it peaked at over 30°C on some of my recent rides, including 34°C in Belgium of all places! What was the humidity like where you are? Here it's basically a swamp (complete with mosquitos).
This is where being BRITISH is generally a disadvantage, on account of our usual quota of two weeks of hot weather (plus a freak weekend in March) per year. It's not that our weather's particularly extreme, it's that we're both unprepared for, and don't get time to adapt to it.
It's quite nice that we've had such a prolonged spell of bonkers heat, it means that those who have taken the opportunity have been able to adapt to the heat somewhat. I'm certainly coping with the heat a lot better now than I was a month ago.
Would short exposures help? Say a weekly Sauna session?
After my earlier post, I remembered something else to add, consider carrying extra pairs of shorts and changing them more often, even on a 200 or 300, swapping shorts at the halfway point can be very useful, the pad area doesn't really get much chance to dry out, and even with the best chamois cream in the world, it's going to be unpleasant, Shorts don't weigh much, so sticking an extra pair in your bag can be very useful,
In fact, our weather is rather unextreme.
Very much this. Even now. Sure it looks parched out there, So what? It's like this every year, in France - so it's a bit further North this year, yaaaay!
Yes and no, It is substantially outside the norms for the area, being as it is several standard deviations from the norm. It is not extreme on a global scale, but in terms of the UK or Netherlands, a prolongued period without rain (over a month so far here!) is unusual. It may not be extreme, but it is abnormal.
There is a lot to be said for using the term Global weirding, rather than global warming...
I mentioned to #1 son that it was "humid" earlier. He did a summer in the Bahamas on a conservation survey thing and reminded me that, no, it's not. Proper humid is where it's like your bathroom after a hot shower. Sure, it's hot - 31C is definitely hot - but it's not humid (RAF Lakenheath this evening: 30C, 43% humidity).
Here in the Swamp^W^WAmsterdam, the humidity at 2200 is about 60%, and the temp has dropped to low 20's. When I left work at 1800, it was 28°C and bonkers humid.
The only thing extreme about it is the inconsistency. (Except in Kent, which as every child who grew up in northwest London watching Newsroom Southeast knows is full of earthquakes and tornadoes and massive flooding and so on.)
Ah yes, Variance vs max vs min etc...
In my time in Kent I've experience an earth quake, and been involved in the Emergency response for the flooding, Missed the tornades tho (more accurately water spouts, IIRC, those reported in Kent touched down on water, vs those in Brum which landed on, um, land).
J
