Bike Helmets
 

I am going to do the hotter than hell century ride this August. I am looking into getting a new helmet with better ventilation. Any suggestions?

That ride is brutal. I've never done it but some of my riding friends go every year. One of them told me that he started crying in joy once he saw the finish line lol.

As far as helmets, most of the new ones are well vented. When I'm in the market I usually pick one from the bargain bin that's the right color. I just ordered a new one from nashbar for $50, originally priced $90.

Most any current helmet will have more ventilation than the Bell Image MTB-centric lid I used to do this ride the 1st time in 1992

-- There are lots of stops for water, oranges and bananas along the way, --- but if you stop at every one of them the ride will take 6 or 7 hours

Nowadays, the oly real advantage a high -endy lid has over a cheapy is ventilation . Look at some of the popular tour de france helmets from 4 or 5 years ago --- enough time has passed that they have trickled down in price -- or just spend $200 or so for a new Giro or POC

What are you wearing now, and how much are you willing to spend to replace it?

I have to be honest that the best investment I made was in Halo head band. My helmet used to be awful and sweat dripped into my eyes and off the edge of the helmet. No more since I got the Halo. If you are doing a long ride, you might want two. They hold a lot of sweat, but on one or two occasions I've soaked mine in clean water and hand wrung it as dry as possible by hand.

If you haven't bought one for a while, or are changing brands, go to a bike shop.
Most of the 'Road' helmets are pretty well ventiltated. Set your price point, pick a color you like, find the size that fits.

I fall in between sizes, so trying it on is a must. My Bell and Giro's are M, had to exchange the KASK for an L.

Got one of these Cannondale Cypher helmets. I've really liked it.. lightweight and well vented.

Cannondale Cypher Road Helmet

I live in Tucson, so good ventilation became a big priority to me. I ended with a Louis Garneau Quartz II, and I like them enough that I bought a second after I broke the first last December.

It ventilates well enough that I've done away with my Halo headband, and I sweat like a sprinkler system.

Look for them on sale (Amazon, Nashbar) and you can get them for around half price.

edit....I just checked, and Competitive Cyclist has them on sale too, with a full array of colors.

+1 Halo Headband

I can sweat through Halo headbands in less than an hour.

saw a rider in a race do this so now I do it for myself & anyone in my family when necessary. kinda fun but seriously helps quite a bit

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com...ebbf41ba99.jpg

What you get in the $100 (+) helmets is engineered airflow and more holes, without losing the impact absorption .

I'm in Texas. Any road type helmet -- the skeletal types with lots of vents -- will do. Preferably a light color. I use a white Bell Solar. Cost a whole $20 from Nashbar.

I wear a bandana underneath. And I have long hair which probably helps with evaporation -- I rarely get sweat pouring into my eyes, which was a problem years ago when I was in the Navy and had shorter hair.

Occasionally on really hot days I'll squirt some water on my noggin and jersey. I usually slobber water onto my legs anyway just from drinking. Helps. Carry extra water so you have some for impromptu cooling. The Hotter'N Hell Hundred is supported so you won't run out of water.

I used to ride without a helmet because the old types with fewer and smaller vents were too hot, even in Southern California. But the vented helmets are so lightweight and comfortable I can't think of a reason not to wear one. Also it gives me another place to mount lights and my video camera, although the camera does add some noticeable weight. The lights weigh almost nothing.

Though it's not at all hard to find those $100+ helmets at half price or less if willing to get last season's colors. I've also never necessarily been sold on the "more holes" = better ventilation thought process. You can have 50 small holes, 30 medium size holes, or 20 large holes. In theory the same or more ventilation can be built into any of these scenarios.

Halo and Headsweats make caps as well as bands. The caps soak up more sweat and have more surface area for evaporation.

I can sweat through other headbands, but the Halo has a rubber strip that runs across the front. That channels the sweat to the sides of my head away from my eyes. That makes all the difference.

I wear a Giro Foray helmet, the non-MIPS version. It's so light and well ventilated I have to touch it to make sure it is on.

I have a Giro whatever it is and a Halo with the rubber strip, and GUTRs and headsweats and I still have sweat issues. So I work on it. Pack several in my bag for changing.

Maybe mine works because my head is larger than normal. The rubber strip is tight enough that sweat can't get through.

Good advice. Thank you!!

Excuse me posting off-topic (I hate it when people do that to me) but it seems to me the real subject of this thread is surviving the heat of a century ride that's infamous for killing people from the heat. And this seems like an apt opportunity to bring up something I think all hot-weather cyclists could benefit from.

The image of FLandis pouring water over his head is the ideal solution but for most of us it isn't quite practical. IIRC, he went through a hundred-ish water bottles on that day and poured 60-ish of them over his head.

As a substitute, you could soak a cotton bandana in water and tie it around your neck, but that only works for a short time before the bandana dries out, and I doubt you'd want to stop every 10 miles to "re-charge" it.

But you get almost the same effect (albeit less pronounced) wearing one of these, and they last a long, long time without "re-charging":

http://www.bikeforums.net/attachment...1&d=1496780896

Notice how the bandana this guy is wearing looks sort of 'tube-shaped'? That's because it is a tube, a tube sewn from cotton cloth and filled with a synthetic material that absorbs a HUGE amount of water.

How much water? When it's completely dry, the "hydrophilic" material inside it shrinks to about the size of a marble. When it's fully "charged," it swells to fill the cotton tube, which is about 1.2 inches in diameter and 14 inches long. Considering how it tapers at either end, that's probably around 15 cubic inches of water. That's how much it swells from water content.

When you put it on your neck, it works just like the wet bandana, it just doesn't evaporate as quickly or cool as much (then again, it doesn't run dry for days). As water evaporates off the side away from your body, it cools the material inside the bandana. Which draws heat from the skin on your neck, which cools the carotid arteries, which means the blood reaching your brain is cooler.

It's not a yuge difference, but the brain is very sensitive to even small temperature changes, so every little bit helps. And it's ideally suited to cycling because wind increases the rate of evaporative cooling, so the faster you ride, the better it works. I've been wearing these for probably 15 years whenever the temperature is mid-80°s F or hotter (I even wear them for yard work and the like), and I am convinced it helps stave off heat injuries. It also lets me maintain a higher level of exertion for a longer period when the heat index is >100°F. Because there's a limit to how fast your stomach and intestines can absorb water, but in extreme heat, is it quite possible to sweat it off faster than your guts can absorb it.

These are the two that I'm using now:

http://imgur.com/a/jOx2khttp://www.bikeforums.net/attachment...1&d=1496780896

The red one is freshly-charged. It's so full of water, the cotton material is absolutely taught. The camouflaged one is completely dry. It looks a bit 'inflated' but that's because the cotton material develops a little 'body' when it's allowed to air-dry, so it doesn't lie flat any more. But trust me, it's almost completely empty.

I weighed them on my kitchen scale. The dry one weighs 29 grams. The wet one weighs 272. That's 243 grams of water weight, a touch more than half a pint. All absorbed in a slow-release synthetic that expands about 200-fold to hold it all.

I bought these online from a place called Blu Bandoo, which is also where I got the first image. They're ~$9 but they're very well made. I've been using the red one for eight or 10 seasons and I thought it would have died years ago but it's still performing as well as it did when it was new. If that's too spendy, Wally World sells a similar item for quite a bit less, but I've never used one of theirs, so I can't speak to its quality.

If you read the reviews at Wally World, you'll find some people panning them because they stop working after a while (or so they claim). Let me explain to you what they're missing, and why they're wrong. When you walk into an air conditioned house on a hot day, initially the air feels very cool. But then you acclimatize and the air just feels 'normal.' It's the same with these. Whenever you put two materials of different temperatures together, heat energy migrates from the hotter one to the cooler one. Since the temperatures of the bandana and the skin of your neck literally are converging, it's natural that the initial cool feeling should fade.

So just because it stops feeling cool against your skin DOES NOT mean it isn't cooling. The fact of the matter is, it can't stop cooling (if there's any water left) unless you somehow rewrite the laws of physics. It's the same principle as a swamp cooler. So long as there's water running, and so long as the fan turns, you will get cooler air. If you want the bandana to feel cool again, untie it and roll it over so the side away from your skin becomes the inside. I guarantee it will feel cool again ...at least briefly.

All that said, humidity is its Achilles' heel. For the simple fact that there's less evaporation when the air is humid. Especially if you're riding at 20 mph, they still work some (unless it's so humid that it's raining or foggy), but they're much more effective when the humidity is low. Great for Tucson, not so great for New Orleans.

In case you're wondering, they don't much drip, even when they're freshly-charged. The material inside clings to the water so dearly that it pretty much has to be forced (by heat) to give it up.

Anyway, I'm not tied to a brand because I don't consider this a comfort item, I consider it safety equipment. I'm sure they sell similar items at places like REI and other outdoor equipment retailers, too. I'd just like to see more cyclists wearing these because I think they somewhat mitigate the risk of a heat injury. And I can think of few places better suited to its use than the Hotter'n Hell ride.

So please excuse me, CatchMeRidin, for not coming anywhere close to addressing the question you asked, but I think one of these will do more to keep your head cool than any helmet you might buy. And if you go the Wally World route, it'll only cost a couple of bucks to test my theory.

EDIT:
Okay, this is my first time posting images on this forum, so how do I post an image and not be left with a duplicate at the bottom?

What do y'all think about Bontrager Circuit Road Bike Helmet?

I think try one on first, because any $50 helmet is going to perform about the same as any other $50 helmet. The Bontrager Circuit looks like a hundred others, has about the same amount of vents, and weighs about the same. If it's comfortable on your head, and you don't mind the look, it will protect your head as well as anything else.

Wasn't that the famous testosterone rage winning and then disqualified TdF stage?


-Tim-

sorry, don't know. was just looking for a pic showing this technique. there aren't too many easily found