Originally Posted by
revolator
Summertime is here. When would your cut off be for not riding a century on a hot and humid day?
What was the high end where you completed your century?
It's not the heat it's the humility.
Heat and humidity are difficult to gauge. At the beginning of the season a nasty hot day can make you sick if you push it too hard. If you get sick you may have a hard time keeping a 'normal pace' in heat, for the rest of the summer. If you don't get sick you may be able to handle more heat and humidity later in the season. Handling heat and humidity are dependent on your abilities.
As a rule I usually don't mind heat or humidity but the worse I've done was 105F+ with extremely low humidity. That day broke 100F around 10:30 AM and we were more than 50 miles into the ride. I drank 11L of fluids during the ride, never once had to go to the bathroom, couldn't even force it. I was sick for three days. I no long do centuries with temperatures/heat index in excess of 100F. Instead we cut it back.
This past Saturday I lead a ride on a 'heat advisory' day. I decided to ride down the shore (Sandy Hook, NJ). This was nice as it was in the 70's. When we rode less than 1000 ft inland we were hit with high 90's. Since we were down the shore it was humid. We suffered a little bit of heat sickness as we rode back home. We dropped the pace so we could survive the ride (dropped to 16.5 mph avg for 101 miles). We did hit a pocket of ozone and that hurt my lungs a bit. The warm head wind didn't help us much. I went home afterwards and kept drinking (non-alcohol) for about 2 hours afterwards. That work well and I was able to ride the day after.