Originally Posted by
livedarklions
I knocked off a hilly 80 miles in 90+ degree heat twice this year, and I think my particular lung issues make cold weather cycling a bad idea. I'm betting you don't have the data to back up the first sentence of your post.
Sorry about the lung issues, which I don't have. Well, I used to have exercise induced asthma, but lots of long, hard rides made it go away. I'm a great believer in exercise-based rehab. I've done long hard pass climbs, during either centuries+ or 150 mile rides, some of them in 105° heat. Hydration and occasional rests in the shade made those rides possible. It's not possible (for me anyway) to drink enough to replace lost water during constant hard exercise in extreme heat. I have to stop and drink once in a while, maybe once every 15-50 miles depending. I can tell when I need to stop because my HR just keeps going up.
So the Google does exist. Anyone can look things up quite quickly. The first website which came up for me was:
https://newsroom.heart.org/news/a-wi...snow-shoveling
which contained this excellent link:
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/epub...00000000000749
and this statement (quoting a quote):
"Among the many findings of our research, we saw that the cardiac demands of heavy snow shoveling, including marked increases in the heart rate and systolic blood pressure, could equal and exceed the upper levels achieved during maximal treadmill testing in sedentary men. In one study, we found that after only two minutes of snow shoveling, study participants’ heart rates exceeded the upper limit – 85% of maximal heart rate – commonly prescribed for aerobic exercise testing. The least fit subjects demonstrated the highest heart rates during shoveling.”
This was the 2nd link on my google page:
https://www.heart.org/en/health-topi...scular-disease
My WAG is that more people suffer cardiac stress while snow shoveling because of overheating than by hypothermia. Overheating IME puts more stress on the heart than does being cold, hence I prefer to ride in the cold being just a little chilly. Riding indoors, I use box fans to keep my HR down.
A couple little anecdotes come to mind: Yesterday I was at the gym. Part of that day's workout is doing dumbbell deadlifts, 4 sets of 10, all same weight, 1.5' rests between sets. I was only using 50# dumbbells because I'm avoiding extra heart stress right now. Anyway, I looked at my HR after each set. And after each succeeding set, it was about 10 beats higher. If I were to have kept doing that, my HR would have become quite high. There's also the old story: A second lieutenant is supervising solders digging a trench. After a while, frustrated by their slowness, he jumps in, grabs a shovel, and tosses 3 quick shovel loads. "Do it like that!" he says. Right. Don't shovel snow like that.