Spring has sprung… FINALLY! With it come some inevitable
issues. The weather is
warming. We are all going outside
more, and we’re staying outside for longer intervals.
I’ve been hearing it a lot… “Wow! It got hot all of a sudden!”
Actually, it didn’t. We’ve been through a long and gradual
(some would say very gradual!)
warming trend since January. We’ve
had little bouts of warmer days all along. They just haven’t lasted. And then, with seeming suddenness, our climate “flipped” to
late Spring mode. Only lately have
we been experiencing strings of days with highs in the low to mid 80s. The switch seems sudden, and the
temperatures seem, by comparison, much warmer. After all, the chilly lasted so long.
Now lets be reasonable for a
moment. Days with highs in the low to mid 80s are not hot! Note that the highs don’t occur before 3:00P.M. Yes, 85 can seem warm, especially if
one is performing physical work, and is exposed to the sun while doing it. But the heat, the real heat, is still to come.
And make no mistake, come it most certainly will.
It’s time to start getting
acclimated. Don’t hide form the
heat. Go out and greet it. Ride and work outside at every opportunity. Do outside work as close to the heat of
the day as you can possibly stand it.
Only as the high temps increase, should you allow yourself to be moved
to earlier or later in the day.
The idea is to accept and adapt to the increased heat as gradually as
possible. And…
STAY HYDRATED!!!!
Really. Start right now!
Focus on drinking while you are riding. It’s time to be carrying a minimum of two bottles on every ride. It’s time to get back into the discipline of drinking before the ride. (Most
dehydration incidents begin 24 hours before the emergency.) It’s time to get back in the habit of
chugging the water down regularly
while riding.
And another thing…
WHERE IS ALL THE HEAT COMING
FROM?
The answer to that is, of course,
glaringly obvious. We havbe longer
periods of sunlight now. We
cyclists and outdoors folk need to pay attention to that. We like to be outside, and we like to
do that during the day, and we like to do it when the sun is shining. Nothing wrong with that, but… Good old Sol does a lot more than just light and warm
us. He dumps a lot of Ultraviolet
(UV) on us. We have a problem with
UV. It burns us. Sunburn is
skin damage. That’s an inescapable
fact. That fact gives rise to several serious implications.
The immediate one is a risk of
heat injury. Hey! We use our skin to help us cool. We do that by sweating. The problem here is that skin has to function properly if we are to gain the
benefit of that cooling function.
“I don’t see a problem,”
you say? “My skin is working!” you add. Of course that’s true, but…
Skin stops working when it is injured. Burning is injury.
At the very moment that skin
begins to sunburn, it loses most of its ability to cool you. Oops.
A second implication of sun
related skin burn is longer term and far more serious. Repeated doses of UV induced damage can
result in skin cancer.
So how do we avoid these
problems? There are several
strategies.
One) Stay indoors and do our
outside stuff at night. Most folks
will reject this option
Two) Cover the body completely
with “SPF clothing.” Likely most
of us will find this expensive, uncomfortable, hot, and likely to induce heat
related injuries.
Three) USE SUNSCREEN!!
We’ve heard all the excuses:
- It’s messy and icky. So is skin cancer!
- “I don’t burn.” Yes you do!
- “I won’t be out that long.” Yes you will, and the effect is cumulative.
- “It makes me feel hot.” Not as hot as burned skin will make you feel.
~~ Next week we’ll get into a discussion of some of the
real issues surrounding Sunscreen ~~
A few last good precautionary suggestions:
The burning effects of the sun are
the greatest when the sun is highest in the sky. Try to avoid prolonged exposure between the hours of 11:00
A.M and 3:00 P.M.
Inevitably, when we are riding,
there occur unscheduled stops.
When this happens, Get off the road, and do what you have to do in the shade!
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