Tips for Riding in Warm Weather

The summer offers some of the year’s best riding, but it’s not without its risks, too. The hotter the weather, the harder riding is on your body. That doesn’t necessarily mean you have to stay home, but you’ll definitely want to take some precautions and learn a few tips for staying safe while riding in the heat. From keeping the sun off your skin, to knowing how to stay on top of your hydration, this short guide will show you some of the most important elements of safe hot weather riding. Here at Barne’s Bros. Motorcycle & Offroad, we love motorcycle riding and setting our customers up to have a safe and enjoyable riding experience. Stop by our dealership and service center in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, serving Washington and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

How to Dress

One of the most important elements of riding safety is keeping the outside heat off your body. If it’s merely warm outside, you can usually get away with choosing lighter clothing to keep the breezy feeling. Try a cotton long sleeve shirt and jeans to keep the sun’s rays away from your skin without adding too much insulation. When it’s truly hot out, though, you’ll want to take a different approach.

When it’s hotter than body temperature outside, you should add more insulated layers. This is a counterintuitive approach, but it’s important to remember two things. First, your body has natural ways of cooling itself which will continue to work if you’re wearing insulated clothing. Second, if the outside temperature is greater than body temperature, you won’t cool down from the air passing over your skin. The best way to keep cool when it’s in the 100+ degree range is to have an insulated riding jacket, insulated pants, gloves, and boots, and to use a wet neckerchief to help cool yourself down. You can dump water down through the opening in your helmet, which will soak into your neckerchief. As it evaporates, your body temperature will drop.

Hydration

Hydration might be even more important than your clothing when it comes to keeping your body cool. Your body will sweat out water at a shocking pace when riding in the heat, so you need to be drinking water constantly. The best way to do this is to keep a water bottle or hydration system filled at all times and take swigs every few minutes. Take a stop every half an hour or so to refill your water and to cool off. If you want to get more accurate with the amount of water you’ll need while riding, you can measure how much water you expend while riding in the heat. To do this, weigh yourself before and after a short ride. The ride should be about half an hour to an hour just enough time to let your body get up to temperature, but not so long that you put yourself at risk of heat exhaustion. The difference in weight should be due to the water loss, so you’ll know that you need to replace water at that rate in order to stay hydrated.

While it’s not totally necessary to have sports drinks, they can help with replacing electrolytes lost due to sweat. The chances of losing enough electrolytes to actually harm your body are relatively low, but if you’re worried about it, try mixing one sport drink in per ~gallon of water you consume.

Knowing When to Ride

In war, discretion is the better part of valor, and the same goes for riding in hot weather. That is to say, what you do to be safe while riding in the heat is actually less helpful than simply choosing to ride at other times of the day. While this isn’t always the case for commuters or those on long trips with tight itineraries, it’s almost always possible to postpone a ride until after the hottest hours of the day have passed or until a cooler day comes. There’s no point in battling the heat if you don’t have to!

While Pennsylvania isn’t exactly the Sahara desert, it’s still important to stay informed about warm weather riding, especially in the summer. If you need riding gear, parts, or services for your bike, stop by Barnes Bros. Motorcycles & Offroad. Located in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, we proudly serve Pittsburgh and Washington, Pennsylvania.