Originally Posted by
Smaug1
I know, right!? To me, 60s is perfect. I ride in shorts top and bottom. Start a bit cold, warm up and don't sweat much.
50s is great too. I need long sleeve top, but the bugs are gone. Toe covers or booties in the lower 50s.
40s is fine. Long sleeves top and bottom. Booties and thicker gloves.
30s and I'm off the road bike and onto bikes with flat pedals. Thin fleece or something under a windbreaker. Ski helmet and goggles. Ski mittens. Electric socks with hiking boots or just snow boots.
20s and below and I only do short rides and start really losing fitness fast.
I started thinking about what temps dictate what clothing choices for me, and realized that as I've aged my cold tolerance has decreased. A decade ago I would have lowered each of these temps by 10 degrees for most (not all) of these clothing choices:
Above 60°F: Shorts and a t-shirt.
Below 60°F: Long sleeve shirt, headband (over ears) and cycling gloves.
Below 50°F: Back to t-shirt, but throw a sweatshirt on over it.
Below 40°F: Toe covers. Switch to long pants. Remove the sweatshirt and replace it with my cycling jacket. Switch to winter gloves.
Below 30°F: Change out the headband for my balaclava. Boots start making an appearance around this point, depending on if I'm riding a platformed pedal bike (snow or ice on the ground) or a clipless bike.
Below 20°F: Add my ski goggles. Add a sweatshirt under my jacket.
Below 10°F: Add long underwear under my long pants. If I'm still in ventilated cycling shoes I might add a second layer of socks depending on my mood. At this point if I'm wearing clipless shoes my feet are going to be extremely cold no matter how many socks I put on.
Below 0°F: Add long underwear top under my shirt/sweatshirt/jacket sandwich. Add a neck gator to cover my mount/lower cheeks, but only for the first few miles until I get warmed up. Having my mouth covered just speeds up the rate at which my goggles ice over.
Below -10°F: No further changes. At these temps you're going to have certain body parts cold no matter what you do. And adding additional layers in the other spots just increases how much I sweat.
*All of these choices depend on the foretasted temp for the ride home. If it's going to be cold in the morning but nicer weather for the ride home I may dress for the nicer weather and suffer through the morning ride without some of these items just so I don't have to haul them home in my backpack that evening.
** My two winter bikes have bar mitts installed on them. If the weather dictates that I ride one of them (again, snow or ice on the ground) then I will back off a layer or two on my hands. The bar mitts are incredibly warm so I often can ride down to 20 degrees without wearing anything additional on my hands, and down to 0°F with just cycling gloves,
*** Reading this list I'm also reminded why my work-to-cycling clothing change time (and vice-versa) is about 5 minutes in the summer and 15 minutes in the winter.