Clothing for Winter Cycling | Hacker News Reader

Clothing for Winter Cycling

cjhoyle.com

25 pointsluu11 comments

The debate before leaving on a winter morning is always "Bundle up now and stop 10 minutes into the ride to peel a layer off before getting sweaty", or "Freeze your ass off for the first several minutes until you're generating enough body heat to ride comfortably"

I prefer the latter by a big margin. But I also drive quite fast and generally sweat easily. The issue with being sweaty while it is cold outside is that you could potentially freeze even more once you are not moving anymore unless you are wearing really good clothes.

I'd only go for the first if I wanna go slow or the distance is below 4km.

Living in a hilly area makes this even more annoying. The wind chill from coasting downhill for 5 minutes at the start of a ride can be awful when your clothing is otherwise suitable.

I live in the Boston area and commute by bike every day. Well, now every day that I actually go to the office. This is pretty good advice, though I prefer to have a separate rain/wind shell (usually Gore-Tex) and insulation layer. This just makes it a lat easier to adapt the layering to the weather.

There's a lot of options now in bike-friendly clothes that are suitable for office wear (except maybe in the most formal).

Why is it that "freezing weather" starts on this chart at -20°C - literally 20 degrees C below freezing?

Think of a fridge or freezer, the walk-in kind. You can work in a fridge without the winter coat. 0 C is not that cold especially if you're doing any kind of moderate physical activity.

https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/are-you-stori...

Very surprised to see a single range cover -10C to 7C. I'm very comfortable at the top end, and can ride in shorts and a long sleeve top. At the bottom end I'm miserable and wearing his -30C gear.

Pretty Clueless. Only important issue is to prevent the wind chill. I have two novel ideas: Skirt and Sleeves.

Skirt is meter long canvas tube with 20cm slit and elastic band on top. When fully extended it protects your chest, stomach and balls. You can roll it smaller when needed. Kept under your parka. When standing (and ice-fishing) I yank it lower for extra ass protection.

Sleeves are meter long extra sleeves with layer of insulation.

Of course I have similar sleeves for the legs too. They have elastic band under boot, so you wallow in snow and ankles are kept warm.

The issue here is adjustment, your can easily remove all this shit, when the spring suddenly comes.

And best winter helmet is the Finnish Army Style. You remove innards from your helmet and strap it on top of your fur hat.

In 1988 I had also rubber galoshes (used with toe-straps). But sadly nobody makes good galoshes anymores. https://youtu.be/8D-S8nYCwjA?t=281

On this level of cyclomania, ankles need to be quite mobile, so regular rubber boots do not work.

OTH. Fatties in spandex do not even need clips, because they exactly always ride with floppy ankles. One in 1000 can actually ride that fancy carbon fiber, which is mildly annoying.

As someone who grew up in the Alps (and cycled there during the winter). I learned skiing before I could walk and can probably comment on this:

Typical winter wear (the stuff you wear for walking or staying outside) is generally pretty useless as being sports wear for cold weather:

The issues are such:

* you generally want something that keeps you warm (but not too warm), which speaks for layers or jackets where you can open parts

* you want something that has the ability to transport wet into one direction (from the inside out). So wet from the outside stays outside and wet from the inside gets transported out, which speaks for goretex and similar materials

Rubbery materials might sound like a good idea, because they are pretty watertight, but they are also airtight. This means sweat will be running down your body inside the rubber layer. Given the nature of the rubber the sweat will stay inside. This means you still end up being wet. Unless you barely moved at all or it is raining in drenches, you are very likely more wet now than you would've been if you just wore regular cotton clothes.

Layers that can be adapted/added/removed and shirts that can be changed are a good idea. For heavy rain there are capes, rainpants and overshoes (dyneema would be the material of choice for those today)

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