Hondo Gravel

I hate the humidity

bobwysiwyg

That too!

Hondo Gravel

We are having a cold snap only 99 today. I think I lost 3 gallons of water through sweat mowing and weed eating.

bikebikebike

This is the 50+ board ,right? The discussion on hydration here makes about as much sense as trusting the stop light enough to blindly cross the street.
Not paying attention to appropriate hydration especially in this age group with its morbidities conditions and medications is disturbing.
People have GPS, speedometers, power meters, and cadence meters and don't bother to look at the scale.
After your second quart you need to start using your brain.
Sadly one of the signs of disorders of hydration and thermoregulation is impaired thinking.
If you're thinking is impaired before you start, this is not considered a good thing.
Trusting your thirst is better than being entirely stupid, that still does not hit the threshold of actually being halfway intelligent
And the only doctor you're going to need , was the one on the HMS Beagle.
Heatstroke is real and the risk gets worse with age and other impairments.
Ill considered hydration strategies that lack balance are a big risk.
If you were pushing hard enough it's hot enough or it's far enough that you're going beyond 2 quarts and/or a quart an hour, you need a well thought out plan and some real science.
it's rough enough trying to avoid brain injuries from the outside. your kidneys are only so smart.

Carbonfiberboy 

I see that this is your first post on this thread. From your post, I assume you have read the entire thread. I experience your post as being critical of the entire thread, i.e. that there's no redeeming value in it. I happen to have a negative view of negative criticism. It's not useful for anyone. So let us have your positive criticism. What should we all be doing that no one has advocated in this thread? And do you mean you really think that riders can consume over a quart an hour for hour after hour? And what's your mention of a scale about (my emboldening)? It's long been known that an athlete who maintains their weight in the heat for an hour or more is over-hydrated, possibly dangerously so.

For the gentle reader who has made it this far down the thread, a little science might be good to look at, here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1872071/
US Army hot weather advice is to drink no more than 1 liter/hour: https://ke.army.mil/bordeninstitute/...drationPDF.pdf

bikebikebike

, Oh I read it.
with shock
not trolling, but the range of ideas has the above quoted stuff awash in so much dangerously ill considered stuff that it is shocking.
Riders of all ages and especially older riders as well as runners regularly get injured and even die from hyperthermia and over as well as under hydration.with hyponatremia.
Pushing past limits is seen as hubris, a dare. Temp, distance, race speed.
My point is one should dose water with the same seriousness as a medication, when one is beyond the range where homeopathic dosing based on folklore is present.
Balancing your citations is advice promoting a bin of "bag of pretzels" and "When I'm thirsty"
Unless longest seizure or time until body found are event metrics, weight change and intake , even fatigue and behavioral change,
might be things to look at, especially since few of the Army hot weather recs reference the 50yo+ soldiers.
Like the military systems, good process with monitoring is needed as distractions and risks increase.
Few soldiers have heart disease, diabetes, neuropathies or are on medications. yet.
I'm just hoping wisdom can accumulate faster than opinions.

DrIsotope

All quotes taken directly from the US Army report.

In the hopes that the 140-pounders in here will stop assuming we're all featherweights,
I'm ~97kg. I sweat more. I need more water.

In Freedom Units, that's three gallons. A day. On the ride where I spent almost 5 hours north of 110º, I drank roughly 2 gallons during that time-frame. I was at greater risk of dehydration/hyperthermia than hyponatremia, by a significant margin.

Hondo Gravel

What about us 195-200 pound galoots you get use to the heat you adapt just be wise about or end up in a lake cooling off.


6

Dick Chainey

Here in Bastrop Tx a favorite of mine is Park Road 1. It runs some 15 miles from Bastrop State Park to Buescher State Park, which basically butt up against each other. It's a paved road, and much of it is through shaded pine forest. Not a lot of traffic, usually. It works best in the morning or at dusk, when you have long shadows. The disadvantage is the $5 entrance fee, but I may get the yearly pass (there's a senior discount if I'm not mistaken). Parks are limiting number of people so check at the website to see if passes are available - usually no problem except on weekends.

I typically make use of a camel-back for hydration and a sports drink on my bottle holder for electrolytes. As long as I stay away from riding noon - 5 pm, I feel very little perceived heat stress. Another advantage is I can pull over and walk a few feet into the trees, if I need to shed some excess hydration.

Iride01 

bikebikebike I'm sorry, but your post just sounds like listening to the news reports. All hype and stuff to get one emotionally worked up, but no substance or suggestion about what to do.

A little bit more sentence structure, punctuation, capitalization at the beginning of a sentence and breaking long winded parts in to paragraphs of similar thought would help some of us that are in the next decade of age. <grin> <run on sentence..... get it?>

The threads been here a while and each telling what they do to cope with heat. You haven't said one iota your last couple posts here what you do to deal with heat.

fietsbob

Say it 3 x 'Location' ..

Carbonfiberboy 

It would be good to mention here that all quantities of nutrition and hydration are based on elapsed time, not saddle time. That's a very important distinction.

Some folks on here don't understand the basics behind the recommendations by scientists, which not incidentally, the Army agrees with. An army doesn't fight well with incapacitated soldiers. Some don't seem to believe it, but the Army recs are about right for soldiers being reliably able to do what they do, that's all soldiers. They're not all endurance athletes, though not bad either. The Army (and I) are saying that there are limits on human performance. There is no protocol for doing continuous hard aerobic exercise at over 100°F for many hours. Don't do that. I don't have one, the US Army doesn't have one. You'd have noticed if you'd read the link. It's real simple. You can die. You have no idea whether your risk from hydration was worse than your risk of hyponatremia unless you gave someone a blood sample to analyse. You should have read that ncbi link more closely.

My advice is pretty clear and based on 20 years of experience riding in hot weather. Not as hot at 110, only some hot multi-hour pass climbs, long rides in Eastern Washington in July and that sort of thing, but plenty enough so that I figured out what to do and what not to do. Actually, I didn't "figure it out". I read the Hammer, Ultracycycling, and other scientific advice and learned how to implement it.

I'll make it simple for everyone.

Do not: drink more than 1 liter per hour, 1.2 liters is the limit, that's 40 fluid ounces.

Do not: ride more than 3 hours without peeing. If you have to, stop somewhere with water and shade and drink until you pee. I realize that some find this ridiculous, but this is how you stay safe. Disregard at your own peril. There is no other reliable, in-the-field method of determining hydration state. The skinfold test only shows dehydration. Color of said pee doesn't matter.

Do not: stop drinking because your water got warm.

Do: take enough electrolytes of your choice that you are thirsty enough to want to drink that much water. Never force water. If you aren't thirsty but you should be, more electrolytes, stat. You'd know if you were drinking too much, because you'd have to pee more often than every 3 hours. If you like pretzels, fine. I like Endurolytes because I know what's in them.

Do: watch your heart rate. If it climbs more than ~20 beats over what it should be for that effort, you need shade and rest. Plan for that in advance. Know where your shade and water will be. Always have a ride plan in hot weather. Look at your distance and therefore time between water stops and have enough water on board, plus a little.

Do: wear skin-tight technical clothing and only one layer.

Do: watch your forearms. If they go dry, you need to find shade and water stat, realistically within 1/2 hour. If that's too far to ride, you need to hitch. If you wear sunsleeves like I do now, watch your sweating from other areas. You must be sweating the entire time. If you've followed the above advice, that won't be a problem.

There's a good discussion of heat adaptation strategies here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full...0.2019.1666624
Short form: For adaptation, one needs to ride some in the heat almost every day.

My wife and I did the one-day 200+ mile STP, on our tandem at a team age of 139 and we never were a strong team. The weather was the hottest ever recorded for this ride. We took 15.5 hours to do it. In the first 100 miles, riders were passing us. In the second 100, we were the ones doing the passing, simply because we followed the above advice. At the finish, we were the first to board the first bus to Seattle. It took ~1.5 hours for the bus to fill, not at all my experience on cooler days. Our time was really slow, but not as slow as most folks because we kept our average speed about the same all the way. And, well, I admit that we only stopped 4 times, so we did go a little over 3 hours between pee stops. Over the long run, you're faster if you take care of yourself, have enough food and water, and are able to stay on the bike.

DrIsotope

Where I'm located, the average daytime temperature from July through October is over 90ºF. We get a few dozen days a year over 100º, and a handful of days guaranteed to be over 110º. Not unusual to have a few days in the 90's in November. We acclimate.

While I wholly appreciate erring toward the side of caution, drinking a sufficient amount to urinate every three hours, but keeping intake under 1.2L/hr, that's not a thing-- for me, where I live and ride. In +100º temperatures and single digit humidity, I'd be sweating as much as I'm drinking. Not unusual for me to take in 30oz/hr on a typical ride. I've probably emptied 2x 25oz bottles in 100 minutes ten times this month.

I'll finish this month with somewhere just over 1,000 miles. Sometimes it's plenty hot. I must be managing it alright, because I keep riding day after day.

Iride01 

I pretty much agree, generally with Carbonfiberboy . As for the if this is pure water with no added electrolytes either in the water or from tablets or food, then yes that is a point to start worrying. As for water consumption when augmented with electrolytes ...... I think that much less dangerous, but still maybe some risk.

I've ridden in 100°F plus temps and I don't think I came close to that much water in one hour. On my ride yesterday, I did consume 56 oz. in 1:53 hr:min on a 30 mile ride. It was only a tad over 95°F and being late afternoon the dew point and humidity tolerable.

Still not sure on the contention of urinating every three hours. I'd swear I've done five hour or more and never felt the need. But maybe I'm mistaken. It's been a while since I've ridden three of more hours so maybe I used the restroom or road side somewhere and don't remember. But as far as ever being dehydrated and having dark urine? I haven't had dark urine in years. Even when I wake up after six to eight hours of sleep I don't have dark urine. And I don't think I sleepwalk and pee in my sleep. <grin>

Carbonfiberboy 

No of course most of us have ridden that long without peeing. I'm just saying that in hot weather, it's not a good idea and can lead quickly to disaster because one has no idea of how bad off one might be until those forearms go dry. In normal weather, no problem.

Iride01 

Normal weather here is hot from mid May to early October. I actually tend to like that many stay home and I have the trail to more or less to myself. Surprisingly though we haven't had many days over 95°F this year.... so far. Heat index has been way up there, but to me that doesn't mean much when cycling at a decent speed. Heat index is felt more when doing things at a slow pace or no pace at all.

Heat exhaustion will sneak up on you and you have to know the signs. I went dry once in the heat while cycling solo and had chills going up me. I knew I was in trouble and found some shade quick. I haven't come near that experience since that time over ten years ago. And I make certain I won't get caught riding with insufficient supply of what I use for hydration.

RadDog

A face mask while riding outside all by your lonesome in 110 degree heat...I thought all the dumb politicians were here in the west...

Iride01 

I've found the pleated cloth masks work reasonably well. Some are better than others when getting sweaty or huffing and puffing huge volumes of air while riding. Generally the more pleats the better as that seems to keep them from sealing up around your nostrils and mouth only giving a small section of cloth to pull air through.

I'll use them if I'm in a crowded section. They don't slow me down, but they do make taking a drink from my bottles more of a chore. I've tried many but the home made simple two layer pleated masks seem to work the best for me. I tried some of the ones like sports fisherman use that go all around your neck and you pull them up, but they hold in too much heat. They got pulled off in the first two miles.

But if you try one and are done with them, then I'd say you aren't trying. No matter how hot it is.

fastcarbon

So Cal is usually dry even if at 100 so more liquid is all I need; however my son just moved back to Texas (3rd time-he is a Texan) so I will start spending 6 -8 week periods there; he tells me it takes him 2 weeks to get used to 95 deg/ 95% humidity so I will have to ride in it. I have ridden in the Austin area many times and have established groups I ride with. They ride in the summer and many are late 60's early 70's so it is doable.

BFmotion3

Worst thing about the heat and humidity is the BUGS Arrghh!!

locolobo13 

No! They're the best thing about the heat and humidity.

Iride01 

locolobo13 We've got quite a few of these along some of the lower parts of the trail I ride frequently.




They make a lot of noise when they hit my helmet, and I sometimes feel them struggling to get out of the helmet vents. Also, they don't taste so good and they are quite a mouthful to chew up. <grin>

BFmotion3

Best thing if your a lizard maybe..
Yum Yum...

Flip Flop Rider

been riding in the heat. if you're moving it doesn't feel like 100

Hondo Gravel

Drank about 6 quarts of water on my 10.4 mile hike in hot humid weather. Around 4:15 moving time. Ate a couple of salty cracker packages. All I know if you are in the heat drink and drink a lot. Not to the point of hyponatremia. Drink enough but not like you are flushing a toilet you will be OK if you stay within the fitness level you are at.