These days, it seems, whenever I ride my bike, there’s someone amazed that I rode my bike “in these conditions. “
In the winter, it’s cold, and in the summer, it’s heat.
It’s too hot to ride a bike, they say.
And I understand that on heat alert days especially, it might seem ill advised to ride a bike.
To be clear, our heat alerts are at temperatures like 35 but less than 40. I think I’d behave differently in Palm Springs, for example, where it was 51 this month.
On heat alert days, I don’t do long rides, and I don’t ride fast. I make sure I take water with me, even if it’s a short distance. I confess Itry to time lights to avoid stopping. That’s when I get sweaty.
I do ride fast enough to catch a breeze, and that’s my favorite thing about summer riding. It makes riding better than walking.
I cool down at work before I change into work clothes and on hot days, that might take some time.
I might bike in very early if I lived somewhere with warmer summer temperatures.
But I’m certainly not going to drive because of the extreme heat. I feel like that’s perverse. It’s too hot because of climate change and so I’m going to do something that makes things worse? No.
It’s true though that is starting to affect my riding plans. From last summer see Cycling in the heat, can we keep doing it?
Of course, it’s not just cycling.
See How climate change is affecting when, where and even whether people run on the CBC website.
“From weekend runners to Olympians, extreme weather is changing when, where and even whether people run, as heat, wildfire smoke and smog make certain types of outdoor exercise dangerous.”
How about you? Do you bike in the heat? Does the heat affect your running plans?
Depends on the heat. We were riding in Idaho, Montana and central Washington over the last few weeks,and ended up making all sorts of modifications. We could ride from early in the day to maybe early afternoon, but even early afternoon could be rough. I did one descent from Washington Pass into Mazama. By the time I got close to the end, the pavement reminded me of opening a pre-heated oven. But that was more like 40 degrees. We moved over to Seattle & Victoria & it’s been fine.