![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Long Hot Summer Bike Ride
Jul. 22nd, 2016 10:50 pmIncluding a detour to pick up a prescription, I made a fifty mile ride to Kenosha today. The first forty were not so bad. I drank a lot of water, had a couple of Clif bars, and bought two nice cold bottles of sports drink at a drug store north of the Botanic Gardens. The heat was getting to me on the last ten though. I ended up stopping for rest a few times to let my body cool down.
I learned that i could really tell when conditions changed in such a way that I was unable to dump as much heat as my body was generating. I'd be fine for a while. Then I'd get out from under the shade of the trees, or get hit with a really warm gust of wind, heating my chest and core via my lungs, and I could feel my body temperature climbing. A mile or so from home, I decided to text and see if my mother could pick me up, but she was working and didn't get the message. So I rested under a tree again, this time for twenty minutes or so, until the early symptoms of heat exhaustion subsided, then pedaled over to Culver's for a hot fudge sundae. That helped.
Life is a process of experience modifying behavior. If I were to make this ride again in these conditions (and I would), I'd take even more potables and keep a generally slower pace. I wasn't pushing myself as it was, but apparently it was a little too much. But I'm also 20 pounds heavier than last Fall, and was carrying about 20 more pounds of stuff in my saddle bags, so that was part of it too.
Anyway, I'm here now, and looking forward to a good night's sleep.
I learned that i could really tell when conditions changed in such a way that I was unable to dump as much heat as my body was generating. I'd be fine for a while. Then I'd get out from under the shade of the trees, or get hit with a really warm gust of wind, heating my chest and core via my lungs, and I could feel my body temperature climbing. A mile or so from home, I decided to text and see if my mother could pick me up, but she was working and didn't get the message. So I rested under a tree again, this time for twenty minutes or so, until the early symptoms of heat exhaustion subsided, then pedaled over to Culver's for a hot fudge sundae. That helped.
Life is a process of experience modifying behavior. If I were to make this ride again in these conditions (and I would), I'd take even more potables and keep a generally slower pace. I wasn't pushing myself as it was, but apparently it was a little too much. But I'm also 20 pounds heavier than last Fall, and was carrying about 20 more pounds of stuff in my saddle bags, so that was part of it too.
Anyway, I'm here now, and looking forward to a good night's sleep.
