Is there any human activity more exposed to UV than cycle touring? I can’t think of any. What job or recreation entails exposure to full sunlight for most of the day?
UV is serious stuff and my partner and I treat it as such when touring. I like to explain it this way using my partner as an example: if she placed one hand on her bottom, you wouldn’t believe the hand and the bottom belonged to the same person. The skin on her bottom (rarely exposed to the sun) is not unlike a teenager’s; yet the back of her hands and the rest of her skin show significant degradation. My partner is someone who, in her younger days, rarely tried to protected her skin against UV while outside. Only when she started cycling much later in life did she begin to cover up.
On our bikes we protect ourselves from UV with light clothing from head to toe. We don’t trust sunscreen; and apart from the expense on a long trip, we consider it an unnecessary bother to carry it. We wear a thin primary-school-type cap (compulsory in primary schools in Australia) under our helmets, long shirts, long pants, and gloves – all made of thin material. Bascially, we consider a physical barrier, clothing, to be the only real protection.
This is probably a heresy for any fashion-conscious cyclist, but we don’t care how we look. Light, cool, baggy clothing is what we wear. Leaning over the handle bars for a few months the sun’s UV is so intense I even get a light tan on my back through my shirt. Without gloves, and suncream for other exposed skin, cyclists who go touring for months on end, will, I am sure, regret that choice in their later years when they start to develop skin cancers.
After years of listening to skin cancer education from the Australian Government, I react with disbelief when I see a long distance cyclist, eight to ten hours in the sun each day, with no UV protection. One fellow in T-shirt, shorts and thongs was without a helmet. He’d been on the road for two years and his skin was parched and brown like old cow leather.
Maybe I’ve developed a UV phobia, for whenever I feel the heat of direct sunlight on any part of my skin I have a strong urge to reach for a hat or move into shade.
Cover up! That’s my suggestion.