Originally Posted by
macteacher
What's a chemical warmer? I biked in today and half way through my toes started to freeze. I thought I was getting frostbite. I just couldn't believe how much my toes were freezing. I did have two thick wool socks on...it made my feet very tight. I could barely move my toes....but I thought that would be better.
You do realize that if your socks/shoes are that tight you're restricting blood flow to your feet, right?
Once you do that there's not really much of ANYTHING that's going to keep your feet warm. There's not enough blood flow (bringing warmth from the body core) to replace whatever heat you are losing. Combine that with the earlier poster's comment about the fact that the air pockets in the cloth is what keeps you from losing heat as fast and you've squished most of them out and you have a bad combination.
Get boots a size larger than normal so that you maintain adequate blood flow with multiple pairs of socks!
I don't even wear winter boots... just waterproof workboots. As long as I have room to wear two pairs of socks comfortably I'm good down to around -10F.
I find that under almost all conditions I tend to have more trouble with overheating than anything when I ride in the winter.