Toughing it out in the cold?

Physiology
1

It makes you go slower!

See research at end.

Turns out that skin and core temperature cooling has a big effect on cycling performance, as much as a 30% decrease. It can be either just skin cooling (not enough extremities clothing), or core cooling issues - not enough core clothing. Core cooling decreases performance more that skin cooling.

On the other hand, being too warm can also affect performance. Goldilocks syndrome. May be best to feel a little cold in the initial part and then as the body heats up the clothes will feel more comfortable.

Randomized Controlled Trial
J Appl Physiol (1985)
2024 Jan 1;136(1):58-69.

doi: 10.1152/japplphysiol.00663.2023. Epub 2023 Nov 9.

Endurance capacity impairment in cold air ranging from skin cooling to mild hypothermia

Abstract:

We tested the effects of cold air (0°C) exposure on endurance capacity to different levels of cold strain ranging from skin cooling to core cooling of Δ-1.0°C. Ten males completed a randomized, crossover, control study consisting of a cycling time to exhaustion (TTE) at 70% of their peak power output following: 1) 30-min of exposure to 22°C thermoneutral air (TN), 2) 30-min exposure to 0°C air leading to a cold shell (CS), 3) 0°C air exposure causing mild hypothermia of -0.5°C from baseline rectal temperature (HYPO-0.5°C), and 4) 0°C air exposure causing mild hypothermia of -1.0°C from baseline rectal temperature (HYPO-1.0°C). The latter three conditions tested TTE in 0°C air. Core temperature and seven-site mean skin temperature at the start of the TTE were: TN (37.0 ± 0.2°C, 31.2 ± 0.8°C), CS (37.1 ± 0.3°C, 25.5 ± 1.4°C), HYPO-0.5°C (36.6 ± 0.4°C, 22.3 ± 2.2°C), HYPO-1.0°C (36.4 ± 0.5°C, 21.4 ± 2.7°C). There was a significant condition effect (P ≤ 0.001) for TTE, which from TN (23.75 ± 13.75 min) to CS (16.22 ± 10.30 min, Δ-30.9 ± 21.5%, P = 0.055), HYPO-0.5°C (8.50 ± 5.23 min, Δ-61.4 ± 19.7%, P ≤ 0.001), and HYPO-1.0°C (6.50 ± 5.60 min, Δ-71.6 ± 16.4%, P ≤ 0.001). Furthermore, participants had a greater endurance capacity in CS compared with HYPO-0.5°C (P = 0.046), and HYPO-1.0°C (P = 0.007), with no differences between HYPO-0.5°C and HYPO-1.0°C (P = 1.00). Endurance capacity impairment at 70% peak power output occurs early in cold exposure with skin cooling, with significantly larger impairments with mild hypothermia up to Δ-1.0°C.NEW & NOTEWORTHY We developed a novel protocol that cooled skin temperature, or skin plus core temperature (Δ-0.5°C or Δ-1.0 °C), to determine a dose-response of cold exposure on endurance capacity at 70% peak power output. Skin cooling significantly impaired exercise tolerance time by ∼31%, whereas core cooling led to a further reduction of 30%-40% with no difference between Δ-0.5°C and Δ-1.0°C. Overall, simply cooling the skin impaired endurance capacity, but this impairment is further magnified by core cooling.

Keywords: cold strain; core cooling; endurance capacity; heat debt; mild hypothermia.

2

Hold on, wait a minute… are you suggesting that if you’re comfortable at the beginning of the ride, you’ll be overdressed later? How come no one has thought of that before? :slight_smile:

3

Funny thing is, if it is very cold and you are doing a very slow endurance or recovery ride, no, you won’t be overdressed later. Then there are pros like Contador who was famous for dressing much more warmly on cold weather rides than his team mates, or instinctively he wore enough kit not to affect his training performance.
The meat of the post was the high level of performance loss according to this research. Did you read it? Let us know what you think, and it’s good to see you post a comment after 8 months, welcome back!

4

The point, which you missed gloriously, is that for decades people have known to dress in a way as to be slightly uncomfortable at the start of a winter ride or you’ll likely be overdressed later in the ride. We shouldn’t need a study to tell us that, as our mentors have been telling us that. That said, it’s comical that because of my humorous comeback to your post, you’re now trying to refute my comments by providing examples that refute your own comments (see the sentence italicized above). You said it yourself, be a little underdressed at the start.

5

It’s really good to have you back on the forum; different viewpoints are welcomed, that’s how we learn. Very glad you are back after 8 months to make a comment, with or without sarcasm, Mudge:)

How to dress is, pun intended, side dressing. It’s a subtle point. Yes, dress more heavily if on a long slow cold ride, less so for a harder cold ride, but under dressing, according to the research, which I am sure you read throughly, will set you back as much 30% performance-wise,

That is the main point. It’s a big deal if true. Another way of putting it: the advantages of efficient heat dissipation in cold weather could be more than offset by the disadvantages of too much unretained heat, of feeling comfortably cool during harder efforts. Apparently by a lot.

Since others take the time to read posts, could you comment instead on the gist of the article, the import of dressing appropriately and what the research found?

What has been your experience, or other research you’ve read on it? I am sure readers want a frank and insightful post from us on this and any other issues.

6

Lighten up, Francis. My comment, humorous or sarcastic, however you want to take it, was making light of the idea that we need a study to quantify what almost all of us already know. Just like you pointed out in your initial post, it’s as simple as wanting to be a little uncomfortable at the beginning of a winter ride.

Since I’m not a new rider, I can’t speak to what sort of guidance new riders get from older, more experienced club mates these days, but can say when I started it was well known that if you were comfortable at the beginning of a winter ride, you were probably overdressed. Plus, you’d learn firsthand, quite quickly, how badly your performance would suffer if you got too cold.

Other examples that come to mind would be studies trying to quantify one’s anaerobic battery (W’), when everyone knows that you only have so many matches and once you’ve burned your matches, you’re done. You could try to nail it down through detailed analysis of power files, or you could just pay attention to how you feel and how you perform after repeated efforts in hard training or in races, and race accordingly. My opinion, if you need an equation to tell you how many efforts you can do in a race, you’ve lost the plot.

These, and other, pearls of wisdom used to be passed down from the older riders to the newer riders on, gasp, group rides outdoors. There was more wisdom than many people currently acknowledge and it tickles me that people tout these studies as groundbreaking. It was easily a decade and a half before Seiler coined the term ‘polarized training’ that I was given the advice to ride the easy days easy and the hard days hard, and roughly the same time before Overton coined the term ‘sweetspot’, that mentors taught me to ride at a pace just shy of ‘all out’ for varying durations, so that you could do it over and over. And of course, we were all doing Z2 before it was a thing.

7

The point is missed again. Instead of lightening up, it’s really about more clarity, acknowledging it’s less of what you thought you knew and more of what really works, based on today’s amazing performances compared to the trusty old ways you hang on to, along with much slower speeds you enjoyed.

And yes, numbers do matter, as well as scientific nutrition and a host of other new things that have moved beyond the attitude of “hey, what feels right, we kinda of knew all this before”. I suppose Pogacar and others using new-fangled cool down jackets is an example of losing the plot to you.

Science, not just common sense, and sometimes against common sense, makes a faster difference.

if you read LeMond’s autobiography, he was fighting against going as hard in training and for as many days as the traditional paradigm . He went way too easy or took full rest days much too often for the likes of his director or mainstream training techniques. And he was not the only one who chafed under arcane paradigms. but times, and race speeds, have changed.

So the perceived wisdom of old-fashioned riders, as you note yourself to be, while it has some merit, well, times change, as you may know, time to put down the slide rulers and a lot of cherished ideas of what needs to be passed on to others, when your older training techniques, which got you to maybe 5+ watts a kilo as a grand tour winner back then, have fortunately given way to the new and better.

LeMond figures he was doing under 6 watts/kilo at his peak. Ebay your slide ruler set, girl:)

8

Do you truly believe that level of detail matters, truly matters, to the typical amateur racer? The people whom that detail matters to aren’t coming to this forum to get their training ideas.

So, yeah, for most people, ride lots, sometimes hard, is what it’s about.

9

“It’s what’s it’s about for most people.”

Don’t assume you can reasonably make blanket statement about others.

That level of detail does matter to a lot of them. Enough of them look for any edge, including many amateurs using illegal performance enhancers over the decades, which fully answers that question.

If in a winter race, an amateur rider learns that to stay very warm until the last possible moment before the start, that it can help them get as much as 30% more performance, which is what this research showed, then of course most amateur racers would want to stay covered longer.

You haven’t posted for 8 months, so you may not be up with the topics in the forum. You want to see how just fully in a number of them are? Go over some of Steve Neal’s entries in there. Or give him a ring and tell him that amateur racers, as you say, just ride lots and sometimes hard.

-and have you heard Trevor’s podcasts? If you have, that would give you the answer as well without having to ask.

Over the years, Trevor’s popular podcats are filled with helpful micro information tidbits, and quotes from scientific articles every single week. He, his team and his guests, go deep into the woods with news and research on how to, as the title of his podcasts says, make you go faster.

Let’s give the earnest amateur racers and weekend warriors (I am one of them) the credit they deserve in looking to do what can make them even a little faster, enough to win races, or simply brag about a good placement to the missus and kids.

Don’t assume that you know how they think, should think, or what they want to know, or how willing they are to absorb information to help themselves.

I don’t.

10

Do you always overreact to any perceived slight, no matter how small? You’re taking what started as a simple, albeit sarcastic, comment about how sometimes studies show us what we’ve all known for years, and blown it into something that apparently matters to you very much.

11

I’ve simply replied to your continued comments; you keep replying, so something is of interest to you beyond your sarcasm. I don’t see in any of your posts information that could help me or others learn more about cycling and physiology, which is the category under which the research was posted.

Honestly, this site has been devoid of sarcastic comments until your comments after 8 months of radio silence. Why lead with sarcasm, an expression of anger, when you can be like the rest of the contributors here, whether we agree or not on a point, and courteously bring up ideas/experiences/useful information?

Take the high road, leave your issues at home, and contribute courteously to a digital community of cyclists sharing information.

I am sure we have some things in common; we both love cycling, have been doing it for decades, have likely our share of road incidents and crashes, and cheer on those that excelling or trying to at whatever level.

Let’s build on that, brother.

12

I’m not sure that it says staying warm before testing gives you a 30% longer TTE. As far as I can tell from the paper, those who spent previous 30 mins at 22C, were not tested for TTE at 0C. Had all TTE tests been at 0C that conclusion might be drawn.

13

Good point, it’s an assumption that would have been buttressed by what you pointed out. The warm group did better; switching them and doing it again would have been more thorough

14
  • and here is more research showing the effect may go both ways:

Stephen Cheung and his colleagues at Brock University in Canada showed that getting superficially cold, with no drop in core temperature, reduced time to exhaustion in a cycling test by about 30 percent. That involved sitting in a 32-degree room with a light breeze for half an hour before the subjects even started cycling. Staying in the room for longer, so that their core temperature actually dropped by a degree, reduced endurance by another 30 to 40 percent.

So that lines up with the first research. At the same time, this article, of which the passage above comes from, is pointing to training (not racing/exhaustion performance) with the skin cool but good core temp may increase mitochondrial function, and help burn more fat versus glucose, that the general dynamic is to strive for not overheating but not getting the core too cold. More to come.