Keeping warm

Overview

This advice is aimed towards racing, however the cross over to touring or exploring will likely be high. Though it might be easier to keep warm when not racing, as you are willing to carry more clothing and kit, or stop at a shelter.

Keeping warm should be simple, just wear warm clothing, and in reality it is pretty straight forward. However, getting the right level of warmth is hard, the goldilocks temperature, which requires almost constant adjustment. Too little clothing and you’re cold, too much and your hot and sweating. Really keeping warm is all about thermoregulation (keeping your core warm), as let your core get cold, blood will shut off to your extremities and it will be hard to get it going again. These advice below is aimed at when the weather is less than optimal, or on a multi day ride. Clearly if it is 20 C and sunny, you can be in just shorts and suffer few ill consequences.

Sitting around at 06:00 in FURTHER 2021, waiting for Sector 12 curfew to be lifted, keeping warm in my Endura insulated jacket.

Photo: FURTHER

Thermoregulation

For me, keeping warm starts with keeping my core warm, and working out from there. There is no point having the best gloves, socks or hat, if your chest is exposed. Your organs all sit in the core and if they are exposure, they will think you are cold, regardless of your hands actual temperature, and they will shut off blood. Keep the core warm and the rest will follow.

Layering

One of the best tactics for keeping warm is layering, as your parents said, put on some more layers! Perhaps that was only mine, who never turned the heating on. Anyway, layering has the benefit of allowing fine adjustment to keep your temperature just right. One minute you might be climbing, and need to shed heat, the next descending. It’s obvious you will need different outfits to regulate in different situations. The act of insulation materials is not to warm you up, but to keep body heat trapped. Therefore it’s vital to trap that heat generated before it’s lost. These days, I will opt to take more layers that work over a wider range. While taking one insulated jacket is nice, and even if it has a big zip down the front to dump heat, you might find it too warm for some situations and thus you sweat; not ideal. So taking two insulated tops that when layered work well or separately can be used over a wider temperature range. Perhaps a fleece and a wind breaker. Do check that your layers work under your rain jacket or each other, without insulation becoming compressed.

The layer next to the skin is perhaps the most crucial. It needs to act as a wicking base layer, pushing your sweat and moisture away from the skin, while not saturating. Arguably the best material for this is a lightweight polyester sports top, as most cycling tops are. However, we all know how badly these will stink after a day or two, and so many will opt for a merino/polyester blend top. The merino is incredible at odor resistance, it also is brilliant for moisture control and thermal regulation. I have ridden in merino/polyester blends from -15 C to + 30 C.

Riding into Checkpoint 2, located at 3,000 m at Silk Road Mountain Race in 2019. The temperature was around - 12 C. Wearing a merino/poly blend base layer, fleece jacket and insulated jacket and trousers, I was nice and warm.

Photo: Nadia Moro

Timing is critical

One tactic I have come up with for keeping warm for long descents is to actually stop and layer up before the summit. This tactic is appropriate for when the weather is not good, or it is cold, and would not be necessary for a beautiful sunny day. As insulation traps body heat, if you wait until the summit you loose a lot of heat as you stop to put on your insulation. Therefore, when I was racing in Kyrgyzstan with temperatures of minus 15 C, I began stopping 100 or so meters from the summit, putting my insulation suit on and then riding to the top. This short distance would allow my body to dump heat into the air pocket between me and the insulation and keep me warm for the descent. The message is to think of your generated body heat like the valuable resource it is, do not squander it.

While talking on timing, it is worth stating that a layering system that is easy to implement will be far more effective than a better one that is time consuming or awkward. What I mean, is that we are lazy humans, also we are in a race, we do not want to stop and will argue against it. So if your gloves can be put on while riding, you will likely put them on sooner than if you need to stop. If you hat is actually a hood built into your jacket you will always know where it is. If the stuff sack for you insulated jacket is a little bit too big, it will be easy to put away, perhaps you can in fact do so while riding along. So check and ensure you can implement your layering system easily and promptly.

When you just can’t keep warm

If you are partaking in a longer racer, say perhaps over 4 days, you might find that due to running a negative calorie deficit you cannot keep warm. I have found myself riding in my lighter insulated jacket in sun and double digit temperatures towards the end of races, enough to boil normally. While you might be able to avoid this phenomenon by eating more calories, which would be ideal. Also after several days of racing, you are just not putting out the same power you would normally, and as you are doing less work, you are producing less heat energy thus you have less heat to warm you (two thirds of the energy you create is lost as heat)! The point of raising this situation is when you are preparing and packing for a race, you might think about how your body will be towards the end, or in the worst case situations of temperature exposure, not the best ideal temperatures. Again, when racing in Kyrgyzstan, far too many people brought wholly unsuitable setups to the race, and were cold. Not only does being cold put you at risk of hypothermia, it also just makes life hard on yourself. I would far rather carry some insulation I did not need, but be warm and happy the whole race, than save some grams and be cold.

The extremities

Having got the basics right, it is now important to think of the hands, head and feet. Clearly the head needs a hat, hands gloves and feet warm socks. For the head and feet I am a fan of merino blends, I find they work over a wider temperature range, deal with moisture effectively and are comfy. I generally get away with one hat and supplement it by layering a jacket hood if needed. For the hands, gloves are more subjective and I will take two to three pairs on a race. Two pairs would be for warmth, and one for rain (a Gore-Tex over mitt). I take two as if they get wet, you can swap between them, a wet pair of gloves will do nothing to keep hands warm and cold hands will be at risk of at worst frostbite and at best not being able to shift gears or feed. I learnt this lesson the hard way, several years ago my gloves got wet on a long ride, my hands got cold and eventually I could not shift gears; I did what any sane person would and urinated on them to warm them up. I should note the face also needs a buff, again I use a merino blend, it breaths well enough and does not get saturated with breath. If it weather were bad or very cold, a balaclava might be suitable, however I am yet to race the Iditarod, so do not have much need to pack one for a race.

Racing at FURTHER 2020. Descending off sector 12, a fleece top was enough to keep warm and wearing waterproof trousers, keeping my legs warm and dry. It had been raining up high and the ground was wet.

Photo: FURTHER

Riding at night

Hopefully before going racing you have done some night riding, and you will know that as soon as the sun goes, you loose the beautiful source of warmth. A temperature at night, is far worse than the same during the day, even if it’s cloudy. It would be highly prudent (actually obligatory) to get some experience of riding in single digit temperatures at night, to check your layering system and kit work. But remember, you will be colder at the end of the race, so add some margin to your layering system too.

Windchill

Windchill is the enemy, a perfectly nice layering system to keep you warm in low wind will be blown apart and useless when the wind picks up, or when you are cycling along fast or downhill. Cutting out the wind is an essential action and you should have a garment in your layering system that does this. While a rain jacket might fit the purpose, be careful the ensure it is breathable enough that you can still cycle in it without sweating, as this will only defer the issue to later when you then become wet, and wet fabric against the skin is a recipe for disaster with cold wind. You might consider a light ripstop wind jacket, this on top of your warmer long sleeve will cut wind and extend the working temperature of the other layers, while breathing. Note that wind also affects legs, and your leg muscles are doing the work, keep them warm too.

A spare set of clothing

Now you have everything you need, you likely need more. I will often take a spare set of clothing, sot that if I were to get wet, either my mismanagement of the conditions, stupidity falling in a river or just bad luck, I can swap out my baselayer to a new dry one. These spare layers can also act as a sleeping layer too, so they are not wasted, just be sure to never let the spare layer get wet.

If you get cold

If you got cold you need to warm up. One approach I have found, when a warm pub fire is not available, is to stop cycling, put on some insulated layers and start doing squats or jumping jacks. This will remove the wind chill element of cycling and get the body working, and producing heat.

Summary

This may seem like a lot of information, and subsequently kit you need to carry; which would be determined by doing your race analysis and working out the worst case conditions you will experience.. But if you’ve come to race, you need to be able to move forward in all conditions. And if you get cold or wet, you are going to slow down. Plus you will just not have fun.