Undershirt or not?

[Elefantino]

There are some great photos of the finishing climb of the Tour of Switzerland that show that most riders in the peleton wear undershirts ... but Ullrich, interestingly, does not.

For those of you who ride in hot weather, do you wear them? I wore a DeFeet Un-D-Shirt occasionally last year but somehow misplaced it and don't really notice the difference.

Mike

[coylifut]

If it's above 75 or so, I don't wear one.

[Cranky]

I wear one all the time because I feel that it actually keeps me cooler by wicking away the moisture from the skin. I also like the idea of another layer of protection against road rash if I go down.

[Needs Help]

Question: if synthetic materials keep you warm in the winter by wicking moisture away from your skin, how does wicking moisture away from your skin keep you cool in the summer?

It seems to me that cotton should keep you cooler in hot weather because it stays wet longer. Personally, I don't use cotton because it gets too heavy and it sticks to my skin--not because I believe my synthetic jerseys keep me cooler.

[Climb01742]

i always wear one. craft. i do feel it helps cool things, but most of all, on long fast descents, my skin/chest feels drier, so not as chilled as you can feel even in summer. hey, may all be in my head, but that's my story.

[davep]

This time of year its 80 at 7am. A base layer may wick the sweat away, but its still one more layer between my skin and moving air. No undershirt until winter.

[vaxn8r]

I've never tried one so,, no, I don't use them. I have heard many positives
from fellow cyclists.

Need's Help: Cotton? you have to be kidding. Were you? It has to be the absolute worst material for any kind of athletic endeavor. Nothing like a soaking wet 5lb stretched out T-shirt after a 75 mile ride.

[shaq-d]

Question: if synthetic materials keep you warm in the winter by wicking moisture away from your skin, how does wicking moisture away from your skin keep you cool in the summer?

It seems to me that cotton should keep you cooler in hot weather because it stays wet longer. Personally, I don't use cotton because it gets too heavy and it sticks to my skin--not because I believe my synthetic jerseys keep me cooler.

what cools you off in the summer is your sweat evaporating. if it doesn't evaporate, you stay hot. that's why high humidity makes you even hotter than if there was none.

sd

[Needs Help]

...so if I stand in an ice cold pool up to my neck, I will actually get hot because my sweat can't evaporate?

I've also read that evaporation of sweat is what cools your skin, but there must be something else to it. If you remove the sweat more quickly from your skin with wicking fibers, I don't think that necessarily makes you cooler. In other words, I don't think the process of evaporation is the same as wicking.

To me it makes more sense if wicking material actually cools you down less. The wicking material removes the moisture from the skin surface and then the moisture evaporates out of the wicking material, so in turn I would think your body would need to pump out more sweat in an effort to cool your skin since the moisture was removed. If evaporation is the key, then with cotton the moisture is kept in contact with the skin, so it has a chance to evaporate. It seems to me if you don't allow the moisture to evaporate and you wipe it off your skin with a big sponge instead, you are going to get hotter.

For the same reason cotton can be dangerous in cold weather, it can be very helpful in hot weather.

[victoryfactory]

Needs Help;

This didn't register until I got home from my ride today and read this thread.
I ran into a guy on a cannondale at the turn around at Orient point (North
Shore, Long Island) who had on a dripping, soaked cotton T shirt, even
though I had been out much longer than him, I was relatively dry and
comfortable in my cheap-o $20. no-name poly jersey.

Forget cotton

VF, who felt cool & looked as cool as a circus bear pushing a shopping cart
but hey, I felt cool...

[PBWrench]

Never leave home w/o my Castelli mesh undershirt, cold or hot. They wick away sweat and keep you comfy.

[ericmurphy]

I have a couple of Revi shirts (I've had them for five years and they still look pretty presentable) that seem to be made out of some sort of synthetic. I've worn them on rides in the hills in excess of 100 degrees F, and I've never really noticed that they become very wet. Not only do they keep my skin pretty dry, but they stay pretty dry themselves.

I wear just one of these shirts down to about 55 degrees, and below that I wear one of those bright yellow Pearl Izumi windbreakers you see everywhere. That seems to be enough down to maybe 47 degrees, at which point I put on a heavier long-sleeve Pearl Izumi shirt under the windbreaker, and maybe tights over my riding shorts.

But you get used to cool weather here in the Bay Area. I would estimate that 90% of my rides are in temps between 50 and 60 degrees. Occasionally it will be chillier than that in the morning, and in late summer-early fall, it will get into the 80s, 90s, sometimes even above 100.

[Kevin]

VF,

Please tell me that you were staying on the east end for the weekend. If Orient Point was the turnaround for one of your rides starting in Queens, I am going to be very impressed and am going to warn everyone in this forum not to challenge you to a long distance ride.

Kevin

[victoryfactory]

Kevin;

I usually start my ride in Mattituck, (east of Riverhead)
Today was 55 miles. 16mph average ( I ride alone because my friends are too fast)
I drive out from Queens about an hour, I love the country out there.
Sod farms, corn fields, beach, woods, vineyards.
It's like a poor-man's vacation in Belgium. Some fairly quiet riding, if you know
the back roads. Stop at the farms on the way home for fresh veg.

Sometimes I do the south fork from Southhampton to Montauk about 70 miles
on Sunday, but this week is the US open!

VF, who also likes to drive..

BTW, Queens-Orient round trip is about 150+, one of my friends did it once
but he says "never again" riding into a 20mph headwind for 8hrs is nuts.

[Kevin]

VF,

I live in the Huntington area and have done the ride to Orient. It is beautiful country. I just could not imagine the roundtrip distance, or the traffic, from Queens. Mattituck is lovely. I have stayed on Robins Island a few times, its in the middle of the Peconoic Bay, and have travelled through the north fork. I assume you stop at Briemere for pies as you travel back and forth.

Kevin

[JohnS]

All of you are assuming that Needs Help actually RIDES! You know what happens when you assume...

[victoryfactory]

Kevin;

Yup. It's strawberry season right now. next comes corn and tomatoes
I've already had my cosmic allotment of pie for this incarnation, though.

VF

[Kevin]

I think that JohnS just sunk a battleship. Everyone to their bicycles, I mean battle stations. That is assuming that everyone has a battle station, I mean bicycle. I will be viewing the festivities as a spectator from my CSi (in case it gets bloody the CSi is already red and white). Will the combatants, JohnS and NeedsHelp, please identify which of their bikes they will be using in battle. From his prior posts I assume that JohnS will be riding his Concours into battle. Unfortunately, I can't tell from the prior postings of NeedsHelps what bike he rides.

I know, I am assuming again. But a non-bike rider wouldn't frequent this forum, would they?

Kevin

[BumbleBeeDave]

. . . a D-Feet Undeeshirt if it’s under 80 degrees. Hotter than that and it doesn’t seem to make much difference in my comfort, so I go without.

BBDave

[Dekonick]

OK - here goes:

1) when its hot you get cooled because water (sweat) is wicked away from your body and is then evaporated. This process uses whats called the heat of vaporization - so the matter state change from liquid to gas requires heat - and that comes from you.

2) in winter, water on the skin transfers heat 200+ times faster than air - so if its cold outside, the heat from your skin transfers faster to the outside than if you are dry. (if its 50deg and you are nekked you are cold; if you are nekked in 50deg water (say a lake) you would lose your body temp. 200times FASTER.

It still takes heat of vaporization for water to change to gas - even in winter.

Does that help? (probably not - I am not the best chemistry teacher)

(Wet wool keeps you warm by insulating you from the outside air - like a wet suit - you could also keep warm (too warm) wearing a wet suit in winter...LOL) - I digress.... just tell me to shut up.

[BumbleBeeDave]

. . . It’s interesting. This helps explain to me why I don’t like swimming very much because most pools are too cold for me. When I went to the YMCA with my daughter she would always complain that I get in the pool and never stay more than five minutes. Unless I do lap swim I just get cold real fast and that explains why--way faster heat loss in water.

As for JohnS and Needs Help . . . BATTLE OF THE TITANS! . . . I think JohnS is ornery enough to take him in a sprint. He’ll just stick his pump in Help’s spokes--assuming Help HAS spokes . . . :rolleyes:

BBDave

[Needs Help]

OK - here goes:

1) when its hot you get cooled because water (sweat) is wicked away from your body and is then evaporated. This process uses whats called the heat of vaporization - so the matter state change from liquid to gas requires heat - and that comes from you.

I think you inserted a step in the process that doesn't belong there. Wicking is not part of the evaporation process. My understanding is that evaporation involves heat vaporization, and heat vaporization requires energy, which it draws from the remaining water on your skin causing it to cool.

Wicking on the other hand removes the sweat from your skin preventing it from drawing any heat from your skin. If you are interested in maximum cooling of your skin, you don't want to wear wicking fabrics which draw the water off the skin and prevent evaporation from taking place at the skin surface. As a result, any material that keeps your skin drier in hot weather will make you hotter.

[Kevin]

BBDave,

I am totally confused, is it no bike, or is it no spokes? How can we have a clash of the Titans if one of the combatants has either no bike or no spokes? Oh yeah, logic does not matter in this case. It is similar to when someone asked to have me suspended from the forum beacuse I made fun of my own lack of knowledge. Could it be that the complainer was just frustrated by his lack of riding time? I'm sorry, I degress. I forgot I am just a spectator.

Kevin

[big D]

Needs help,

The action youy are speaking about with evaporation works both ways for keeping you cool and warm depending on weather conditions. The wicking layer will allow a persons sweet to be spread over a larger surface area as well as move it from your skin as quickly as possible. It creates a little micro climate so your body can regulate its temp easier. If keeping your body covers in sweet was going to keep a person cool high humidity days would feel much cooler because a person body can't evaporate sweet becasue there is to much mositure in the air. Keeping dry is the most important thing is regulating body temp.

Big D
:D :)

[BumbleBeeDave]

. . . To me the comfort is not just from keeping cool, but from keeping cool AND dry. As I understand these “wicking” materials, their superiority lies in their ability to draw the moister away from the skin where it can actually evaporate more quickly. Since it’s the evaporating process that actually cause the drop in temperature, it doesn’t matter whether that process takes place right on your skin, or 1/8th inch away from it. It’s still a shell of cooling process and you are still inside it. Therefore you will be kept cool. Cool AND dry is the key to my comfort. Cotton’s problem is that it does not transport the moisture to it’s surface--it retains it throughout the material, particularly on the innser surface where you can still feel it.

And Kevin . . . Play nice or I will have to--well, I’ll think of something! :no: :no: :no:

BBDave

[Needs Help]

If keeping your body covers in sweet was going to keep a person cool high humidity days would feel much cooler because a person body can't evaporate sweet becasue there is to much mositure in the air. Keeping dry is the most important thing is regulating body temp.

High humidity makes you hotter because humidity prevents rapid evaporation of your sweat. The evaporation process is what cools your skin, not keeping your skin dry. When the outside temperature is higher than your body temperature, your body has to cool itself off by sweating. Removing the sweat defeats the purpose.

Unless evaporation takes place on the skin surface, maximum cooling is not achieved. Sweat that has been cooled by evaporation but which is not touching your skin cannot conduct heat away from your body. That is why wicking fabrics are the ideal material for exercise in cold weather.

[JohnS]

Under almost all humidity conditions with any kind of exertion, the body produces more sweat than can be quickly evaporated. The ONLY time that cotton is recommended is under extremely dry, desert conditions where evaporation occurs too quickly.

[Tony Edwards]

Huh - my Dad lives in Mattituck, as it happens. It really is nice, pretty riding out there.

[big D]

When wearing a cotton t-shirt, the evaporation process is not going to happen because the the mositure will not happen, unless you stop riding and give your shirt time to dry and let the sweet evaporate. The problem with cotton is that it retains mositure. It doesn't want to let it go once it is wet.
The new fabrics are what they call "water hating" on one side and "water loving" on the other side. The "water loving" side draws the the moisiture off your skin while the "water hating side trys to evaporate out as quickly as possible. Cotton has the "water loving" properties but it wants to retainn the mosture which means it stays on your skin and loads up. The shirt will just keep absorbing water and not try to evaporate. So infact the evaporation process is retarded because the shirts doesn't want to let the water go. The new materials aid in the evaporation process by speeding up the process which inturn keeps you drier and cooler. Mositure on a body acts as an insulation layer (think wetsuit) in hot temp making you hotter.
Mositure management is what is important in keeping cool or warm.

[Tom]

That's what my Adirondack hiking buddies like to say. On a cold day, it gets wet and stays wet, the water (sweat) cools down to the air temperature and because the liquid transfers heat much better than the air does you go hypothermic and die.

That's why you like synthetic materials or wool in the cold.

In the heat, you want material that evaporates the water. It actually doesn't have to be glued to your skin, it just needs to be really close. You actually maintain a little bit of warm air right next to you... not a lot, but when you're dealing with molecules it doesn't have to be much... so if you have evaporation happening in the general vicinity it cools things down. In the absence of any moisture being generated on you, a wind cools you down because it blows that hot air away. I swear I am not making that up... I read it in something Tim Cahill wrote about the wind in Montana driving people to shoot big holes in their front door because they went stark raving mad.

All I know about how cotton works is that when I used to run I would lose eight pounds on a 45 minute run in the middle of the day. If I was wearing a t-shirt I was a heck of a lot cooler right away when I took it off. Sweat evaporates a lot faster off skin than off a cotton shirt.

Two good references: Tim Noake's The Lore of Running and Bernd Heinrich's Racing The Antelope. The latter, written from the perspective of a biologist and ultramarathoner, talks about how humans developed the ability to sweat because we had to run around in the daytime while all the big predators slept. They re-released the book under some other title in paperback but I forget what it is.

[Kevan]

Sweat by itself doesn’t cool you, very hot humid weather proves that point. What cools you is the evaporation of sweat from your skin. Try rubbing alcohol on your skin and see how it works. Alcohol’s low evaporation point exaggerates the experience. Remember that picture of racers sporting lumps on their backs, under their jerseys? Those were sponges soaked in alcohol-laced aftershave to enhance the cooling effort. Fabric fibers that wick are good. Wool beats the synthetic materials in that it warms and helps cool.

Haven’t tried the t-shirt myself since I don’t really dial in my comfort to such a level. But I do have a question for someone else who might know a thing or two about…

Nipples. In particular, sore, seemingly rubbed raw nipples. Okay, I’m manly enough to talk about this… I’ve heard from a couple camps on this subject that the condition is attributed to a hormonal freak out caused by extensive exercise or the other being that the nips are being rubbed against the jersey fabric, basically sanded raw, it seems. What gives? I’ve heard tell people using those circular little band-aids to protect their nibblies, but I just can't bring myself to applying pasties. So do any of you tassle-swingers have any suggestions? The after ride showers are um… painful.

[davep]

I ride in a hot and very humid climate and riding at 15mph+ provides all the air movement needed to evaporate the sweat. But if I stop at all I'm soaked. Saturday, while stopped at a store restocking on water I started sweating a lot. As soon as we started riding it was immediatley cooler. I don't know how wearing a wicking layer is going to help in those conditions, but it would seem to provide some insulation, which is not needed.

[shaq-d]

needs help:

it doesn't matter if sweat is evaporating through the air or wicked away. the action is the same thing, and it cools you.

sd

[BumbleBeeDave]

. . . You naughty boy! My nips are getting hard just thinking about riding! I’ll have to try some of those itty-bitty band-aids--sounds kinky! ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) :eek:

Naughty BBDave

[Dekonick]

Two processes are in action: 1) the evaporation process, and 2) the water already has YOUR body temp when you sweat it out.
(interestingly, the fact that water has a specific gravity of 1, specific heat of 1, and all of the other properties of water - from hydrogen bonds etc... is the reason life can exist! - water is neat sh*t!)

Everyone is right - it helps if its on your skin IF it evaporates; hydrophylic substances do wick water, and hydrophobic substanced repel it (your cells worth the same way, they have a double layer of water hating and water loving molecules - and a bunch of gates that let stuff in and take stuff out. - its actually really cool how a cell works. Worth picking up an old college cell bio book to read!)

So - it works kinda like this: 1) your body heats the water 2) you sweat it out (thus cooling you some) 3) if the air is not super saturated (high humidity) the water (sweat) evaporates, taking energy from whatever its near (usually you) thus cooling you 4) if you are moving, the evaporation process is enhanced by increasing the evap. rate (same as an ice cube melts in hot coffee, but melts much faster if you stir - same concept)

As an example: you can buy sprinklers that mist water - this mist evaporates before it hits the ground (if the air is dry enough and hot enough) and thus lowers the ambient temperature by as much as 20 degrees F. You can find them located in hot cities such as Phoenix... look next time you are around! You can also find them at sporting events (look at the sidelines of a pro football game on a hot day... or like the misting tents at tri events...)

On the other end - if water does not evaporate, it holds heat. (There is a reason they use water to cool nuclear power plants...because it can hold so much energy! One effecient way to cool is to work like a radiator: move the water to the hot area, take the heat up - move it to another area and cool the water with air - repeat. You can either recirculate the coolant (water) like a car - OR you can just keep adding coolant (as it takes up heat thus cooling the hot item) and let the now heated coolant run off or evaporate :rolleyes: (like a power plant or a cyclist... keep drinking that water!)

again - tell me to shut up. It has been well over 10 years since I have had any chemistry or biology classes; this is just what I rember off of the top of my head. I can go look it up if yall really want... actually my curiosity has the better of me... gonna go dig up the old chem. books. I actually loved chem- especially organic. :D