Maximum speed with minimum sweat?

[fossyant]

I sweat just looking at a bike, so bike specific clothing. I used to carry my work suit in my panniers and change, especially if visiting a few sites. You've got little chance of arriving sweat free in this weather.

 

[Drago]

Maximum speed with minimum sweat. Hhhmmm, that'd be 0 MPH.

 

[fossyant]

Maximum speed with minimum sweat. Hhhmmm, that'd be 0 MPH.

In the shade, with an ice cool beer.

 

[Dan B]

Maximum speed with minimum sweat. Hhhmmm, that'd be 0 MPH.

In this heat I'm not sure that's even true.

I managed most of my journey to work at "doesn't feel more energetic than walking" pace, until I got to Hackney Rd which rather demands Vehicular Cycling techniques

 

[johnnyb47]

On Monday I cycled just under 70 miles across Wales and averaged 15.9 mph. I was sweating buckets when I arrived on my trip. Today on the way home I slowed myself right down to an average of 14.6 over the same distance and was still sweating buckets. I found that the slower I went the more sweaty I became. I think the slower you go the less breeze you have blowing over you , so you end up heating up quicker. On the other hand the faster you go the more you burn energy which in turn makes you sweat more. Its swings and roundabouts I suppose.

 

[mjr]

You've got little chance of arriving sweat free in this weather.

And yet, somehow, I manage to get close enough for government work even yesterday. Today, so far, no sweat, but I expect it'll warm up again. Different people sweat different amounts, I guess, but I suspect the minimisation tactics would be similar.

Maximum speed with minimum sweat. Hhhmmm, that'd be 0 MPH.

Nah, it's hotter when you stop, especially if you go into certain public-sector buildings that are completely rubbish at heating/cooling management seemingly due to a combination of poor 1970s building design and facilities management instructions which might work in their flagship 1990s building (curiously housing the FM department) but not elsewhere.

 

[Ajax Bay]

What approach to gears and so on gives the maximum speed for the least sweat?

Most cyclists sweat because they are generating power to progress and will sweat more the warmer/humid it is. They also generate 'body' heat as a by-product of the power generated for progress, to an individual degree. The less clothing the rider wears the more the cooling effect of the apparent wind (so definitely leave that helmet at home @mjr ). The faster a rider cycles the more the cooling effect, but conversely the greater the body heat created by the power needed to counter air drag (the latter increasing to the power of 3 with speed). The air cooling effect increases with a lower exponential than air drag. So the answer is, as @Drago has said, 0 mph. To achieve this any gear may be used. More practically, go as slowly as your busy appointment schedule allows. Wearing heart rate monitor and riding slowly enough to keep it below an individually set figure would set an arbitary but specific limit. You'd also be able to experiment with whether lower cadence and a higher gear keeps your heart rate down better than spinning in a lower gear. Going up a decent hill at a specific speed I know that my heart rate will stay lower if I spin at higher cadence rather than push up at a slower cadence with more force on each pedal stroke. YMMV

 

[Dan B]

If you are on a journey from A to B and both of those places are indoor or shaded or in some other way cooler than the roads/paths connecting them, then the length of time you spend on the journey is going to affect how much you sweat. If you sweat 10ml/hour at 0mph and 20ml/hour at 10 mph, then over a five mile journey you will lose 10ml if riding at 10mph and a potentially infinite amount of sweat[*] at 0mph because even after three days of "travel" you'll still be standing outside the start point. I am reasonably adamant that in a cycling-for-transport scenario 0mph is categorically not the right answer.

[*] ok, eventually also you'll die and/or the Sun will go nova