Originally Posted by Roody
It's 90F degrees here today...pretty hot for us, especially in June.
Does anybody have any good tips for dealing with cycling in the hot weather?
Those of us who are carfree or carlight often have to get out there and ride even in the hottest part of the day, so any suggestions will be welcome, I'm sure.
Also, remember that a lot of newbies lurk on this forum, so even simple tips will be useful to somebody out there.
First and foremost water, you need at least 1L(just over 1 US Qt) per hour, bike bottles tend to run from ½L - ¾L, so if you don't have one of those water backpacks like a Camelbak(CB), know where you can replenish. What I often do, is carry a bike bottle of Gatorade, on longer rides (along with the CB) this allows me to mostly use water in the CB and still get a little salt and energy along the way. Problem with water, 1L weighs 1kg, this means on a 5 hour ride, your carrying 5kg or 11lbs of water. It may be easier to know where there are stores along the way, and carry cash. If you mountain or trail ride, carry some of those water treatment pills and a filter, so that you can use trailside water supplies. Many modern filters have treatment built in, they are not cheap though.
Now, there is a problem with bottled water, it's packaged in plastic, the plastic contains all kinds of toxic chemicals, some of these can leach into the water, typically if it's in there for a few hours, the amount of chemicals leaching into the water, is very tiny, your 5 year old bike bottle, probably doesn't leach at all anymore. However bottled water can sit in the fresh plastic for months, so the amount of leachate can be very high.