What's the hottest you've ever ridden in?

[Garfield2010]

MTB race in pofadder. It was 76 degrees shade temp.

 

It was so hot that the camelback started boiling. I then put three teabags in the camelback and drank tea the whole day.

 

Fortunately my core temp was below 30 degrees because I wore a power balance band. Amazing.............

[Garfield2010]

I had to do the last 20km's on my rims because my tyres melted

[Frosty]

Yes, shade temp, that's the only way to measure temperature. If you measure sunlight temp, then the heat absorption properties of the thermometer plays a big role and can be well over boiling point (hence solar geyers)

 

I think many of these so called "measured temperatures" are done with hopelessly poor thermometers with hopelessly uncontrolled measurement protocols. Not many places in SA measure more than 40 on a regular basis! I did practically grow up in the magalliesberg, and we rarely had days topping 36. that's not too far from harties / van gaalens.

 

Car thermometers are also pretty useless!

I did geography in school and I know that temperature is supposed to be measured in the shade in a Stevenson screen, 1.7m off the ground.

But I don't know anyone who rides their bike in the shade, 1.7m off the ground in a Stevenson screen, so the temperature you feel on a ride is the real temperature and not a "measured" temperature.

 

Likewise, in the winter there's a term known as wind-chill factor (-1 Deg for every 10km/h), so if it's -5 outside and there's a 20km/h wind, the temperature you feel is -7, not -5

[mikkelz]

Avg Temperature: 36.6 °C

Min Temperature: 28.0 °C

Max Temperature: 45.0 °C

 

Cape Argus Pick n Pay MTB Challenge last year. Mentally hot!

['Dale]

56deg at 13:00 doing the van gaalens nissin race a few weeks back. felt the heat come of the ground.

[Just Keep Pedaling]

Van Gaalens Nissan Race...with no water...

[adogshow]

Jan 2010 45 C klein karoo. first day of a 4 day trip to Cape Town from Anysberg. we came from Maajtiesfontein. We camped along the route so had about 30kg (incl bikes) to deal with. That day we spent about 3 hours hiking our bikes down the back side of what we dubbed B@stard mountain. that was a hot day...found a "dam", it was pretty dry so it was a mud pool - dived in kit and all

[Mojoman]

Van Gaalens Nissan Race...with no water...

Ja, that was a warm day...!

[_freak_]

I had to do the last 20km's on my rims because my tyres melted

 

respect...

[rudi-h]

I did geography in school and I know that temperature is supposed to be measured in the shade in a Stevenson screen, 1.7m off the ground.

But I don't know anyone who rides their bike in the shade, 1.7m off the ground in a Stevenson screen, so the temperature you feel on a ride is the real temperature and not a "measured" temperature.

 

Likewise, in the winter there's a term known as wind-chill factor (-1 Deg for every 10km/h), so if it's -5 outside and there's a 20km/h wind, the temperature you feel is -7, not -5

 

Apologies for getting all technical, but sometimes there's a need for an explanation...

 

There's a number of very good reasons why temp cannot be measured in sunlight, and therefore a very good reason why the 56 measured on someones Polar during van gaalens is way off. In a very simple explanation, a thermometer has a given volume which is much lower than the volume of your body.

 

If you put the thermometer (polar in this case) in the sun, the tiny volume of the polar easily heats up due to radiation. Also if you look at the shape of a polar, it is flat with a big screen, thus it has a very large surface area exposed to sunlight in relation to the volume / mass. The polar is also typically coloured dark, with a grey screen and maybe even with a matt type of paint on the sides.

 

Your body on the other hand, is light coloured (if you're white), you sit upright, thus the exposed area to the sunlight is way smaller in percentage terms, a lot of the radiation energy gets absorbed AND dissipated by your clothes. You also sweat, which cools down your body when the sweat evaporates. A polar doesn't sweat, thus it doesn't get the same cooling effect that you do.

 

The bottom line, is that even you and your polar are both in the sun, you (as a human) are not nearly "heated" to the same extent through sunlight as your polar.

 

Getting more technical, you can heat stuff by either convection (movement of hot air / water) or by radiation (exposure to sunlight). it is not practical and repeatable to measure radiation heat (which is also only a small percentage of the total heat that you experience when cycling anyway), but it is practical and repeatable to measure convection heat (shade air temperature).

 

If one would do some calcs regarding a specific individual, sitting on a specific position on the bike, with a specific colour top, with a specific wind temp and sweat evaporation rate, yes, then it is possible to determine the "actual temp" that that person is experiencing (maybe a degree of 3 higher than the shade temp).

 

Hope this wasn't too boring and makes sense. I'm not even gonna comment on the 76 degrees!

[River Rat]

48 deg c Devil's Cauldron on Day one Duzi 98% humidity about 8 years ago. It melted the hot weld on my paddle and distorted the angle of my paddle blade and then we ran down Geoff's Road.

 

Man, we was tuff!

['Dale]

*Surprisingly*, I opted not to make a dash of it yesterday afternoon...

 

I did however venture out this morning, though overslept and left a whole 45 mins later than planned...

Regretted that a tad, as by 07h30, it was proper hot already... Decided not to be a hero dumbass, and cut my ride short...

 

Will leave earlier tomorrow morning!

I had the same shortcutting strategy this morning, RodTi.

You're in Paarl.

I'm in D Ville.

Almost similar climate...

[Christopher Brunsdon]

MTB race in pofadder. It was 76 degrees shade temp.

 

Try and spend 10days of your December holiday in that town, its 72 degrees just walking to the fridge

[covie]

Try and spend 10days of your December holiday in that town, its 72 degrees just walking to the fridge

 

Pofadder regularly hits the 50c mark but yeah not 72c thats a bit off And i can beleive the other post of cycling in 50c+ Even though what Rudi-H says makes a whole lot of sense, we have to assume that becuase he is using a fairly expensive peace of equipment and not a bottom of the range meter, the engineers would have taken all these factors into account and would have built in tolerances into the device. Also there is ambiant heat to take into account if you cycle for instance in the city just the glare from the windows can increas a max temp by 5c. Same with being on a sandy/rocky environment, the sand and rocks bake in the sun and give off ambient heat increasing the maximum temp.

 

So odds are it was an actual temp of 47c with a a couple degrees added for ambient heat, and lets say theres room for error on the device +-2-3c.

Edited January 6, 2011 by covie

[rudi-h]

Pofadder regularly hits the 50c mark but yeah not 72c thats a bit off And i can beleive the other post of cycling in 50c+ Even though what Rudi-H says makes a whole lot of sense, we have to assume that becuase he is using a fairly expensive peace of equipment and not a bottom of the range meter, the engineers would have taken all these factors into account and would have built in tolerances into the device. Also there is ambiant heat to take into account if you cycle for instance in the city just the glare from the windows can increas a max temp by 5c. Same with being on a sandy/rocky environment, the sand and rocks bake in the sun and give off ambient heat increasing the maximum temp.

 

So odds are it was an actual temp of 47c with a a couple degrees added for ambient heat, and lets say theres room for error on the device +-2-3c.

 

last comment I promise!!!

 

Wrong again. Just because engineers that build supercars are good and because supercars are expensive, does not mean that they can go around 90 deg turns @ full speed and stop within 10m from driving 400km/hr. Sometimes physics is just against you, and there's no way of getting around it. Same with a 5cc (volume) polar computer exposed to shitloads of sunlight for many hours! So no, Polar Engineers (company based in Finland, they have like 3 sunny days per summer - you need to show them a postcard to explain what sunshine looks like) do not build in a "tolerance" for the effects of severe radiation.

 

The ambient heat thing that you're talking about is also not nearly as bad as you think...

 

Bottom line again: Look at the temperature shown after the news (of luister soggens na RSG) to get the shade temp... Very seldom is this temp over 40 anywhere in SA if you listen to RSG carefully. I would say that you can add another maybe 3-5 degrees at MOST for radiation and other ambient effects if the sun is really cracking it!

 

Car thermometers have similar problems of being stuck somewhere underneath the bonnet in a poorly ventilated area, thus the car standing in the sun will show a similar "inacurracy", just on a smaller scale.

 

To put things in perspective. If a stove-top is @ 60 deg Celcius, then you will only be able to hold your finger against it for 3 seconds before your burn so bad that you have to pull your hand away. Imagine what air temp of 60deg would do to you then. It's #$%@$#% hot!!! Honestly, not many of us experienced temps higher than 40 - 45 degrees, whatever your thermometers might have said

Edited January 6, 2011 by rudi-h

[CharlV]

Hello all!

Which had me thinking about the Epic riders, and those other stage races... They get hot - don't they?

 

So why not share some war-stories on what the hottest verifiable temperature was that you've ridden in, and how you felt on during the ordeal

 

Me: I think I had an out-of-body experience, and had a casual chat with Hell's marketing department. I think I told them that based on my previous career - which apparently guarantees me a spot down there anyway - I'm not so scared anymore, since Paarl is hotter

 

Rodti

Ive told this before ,but this years 94.7 was just plain stupid for me ,also had a near death experience ,I believe the highway was like 40 something degrees ,and I saw my Oom Dirk just after the third bult on the N14 , problem was he's been dead for a couple of years now !!!!!!1 :unsure::unsure: