bluefoxicy

So, after biking to the MVA only to find it closed, I'm back to working on my gear.

At the time of biking--centering around noon, by the way--I was wearing a Zensah small/medium black compression shirt; Pearl Izumi gloves; Oakley O Frame MTB goggles (road debris in my eyes...); Giro Encinal helmet; Shimano shoes; and some black shorts.

29 miles and 3 or 4 hours later, I get home and the outside of my arms between the gloves and the end of the compression shirt's sleeves are deep red. Back of my neck is red. Legs, from about the middle ...near the base of the knee, up to the legs of my shorts, front side, red. Everything else is fine.

Arms--right arm especially--were the worst. Legs came on hours later. The back of the neck had the worst burn (it peeled and flaked a LOT) but no pain there and fastest heal.

So now I'm re-examining my upcoming gear upgrades. I've already decided on a Zensha long-sleeve compression shirt, same as mine but with sleeves up to the wrists. This will protect my arms; a short-sleeve Pearl Izumi Attack Screaming Yellow jersey goes over that (again, in small).

Shorts seem vastly superior to pants in the summer unless maybe I could get long compression gear. They have to go a little past the knee, though, which is a problem. I like compression fit for shirts because that helps cool my core the most--I get very sweaty and loose-fit gets sticky and humid inside, while compression vents much better--but shorts are not an issue with this. Loose fit full length pants, however, are horrible and become sticky and muggy.

This puts me in the odd position of needing shorts that are past knee length, or compression pants. Shorts that long are hard to come by, or something, maybe I'm just bad at it and need to locate a clothing store. Tights ... would be annoying to get in and out of, but eh, not that big of a deal.

Also of note, I have bands of sunburn elsewhere on my legs but it never hurts; the more I'm injured, the more dramatically resistant I become. In this case I've been red and burned on the spots I baked for weeks, really; Saturday was just major over-exposure for several hours at peak solar output for something already burned enough that my coworkers flinched when they saw it. In reality, I'm taking quite a bit of exposure in spots that I've got no care for protecting because it doesn't bother me.

All this means maybe I should go for some sort of full-length leggings.

Finally, this is all well-and-good for summer but I haven't developed a winter strategy; something tells me I'm going to have to go through some pain to figure that one out. Bundling up is going to prevent me from removing heat effectively; I'm thinking on a $300 soft shell jacket, extremely light and thin but very insulating, to keep me warm. I know that's a bit much; and it'll probably still not breath well (uh, duh?) and I'll get muggy and hot in there, and then unzip it and cry from the -10C cold. We'll see. I prefer to contend with the heat.

RonH

Sorry you got burned. Start riding earlier in the season and you'll get tanned gradually. Also try riding earlier in the day when the sun is lower in the sky. Sunscreen helps too.
IMHO black shirts/jerseys are HOT!! I wear only light colored short sleeved jerseys to stay as cool as possible. For me long sleeves are for cooler temps.
For more about riding in hot, cool, and cold read this.

dcrowell

I got burned on my tour this year... in March!

Although I use sunscreen often and I don't burn easily, I'm moving toward covering more skin with clothing - mostly because I hate sunscreen.

bluefoxicy

These shirts are nice because they're like riding naked. Wind blows right through, sweat evaporates right off. Hell, when I wash mine, I throw it in a spin dryer (spins at 3600RPM) and it comes out wearable; some of my softer cotton comes out pretty heavily soaked still.

I prefer covering to lotion. The goo has many, many disadvantages, including higher risk of cancer and extremely diminished comfort. The best sun protection active ingredient is zinc oxide, which forms a powdery layer on the skin, hence tons of binders and such to keep a sticky goo layer glued to your skin. Then of course it has to be water proof and wear proof (flexing will crack and unseat drying binder compounds, and it flakes off; water solubility allows it to dilute and drip off), which may or may not encourage it to clog pores and interfere with sweating itself (unlikely)...

The net effect is that you need to use something else, so many sun blocks are a mixture of things. Zinc oxide and other surface particles make up a small percentage of active ingredients; the other types get drawn into the skin itself, where they prevent sunburn by preventing DNA damage by ionizing radiation. The energy has to go somewhere, though; it goes into catalyzing reactions, which produces reactive particles that damage DNA and bond to the liberated compounds rather than leaving them free floating, thus the UV damage triggers don't go off and your body doesn't deactivate and destroy the affected cells, and so chances of skin cancer go up.

You want to keep the sun off? Put something between you and it. Clothing works.

And yes, I'm aware the black ones are hotter. The white ones protect just as well, but eh. I can wash all this stuff together, rather than separate.

bluefoxicy

I like how their answer to rain when hot out is "get wet!"