this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2025
16 points (100.0% liked)

Bicycling

2358 readers
74 users here now

A community for those who enjoy bicycling for any reason— utility, recreation, sport, or whatever!

Post your questions, experiences, knowledge, pictures, news, links, and (civil) rants.

Rules (to be added on an as-needed basis)

  1. Comments and posts should be respectful and productive.
  2. No ads or commercial spam, including linking to your own monetized content.
  3. Linked content should be as unburdened by ads and trackers as possible.

Welcome!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I can currently stay pretty comfortable down to 0°F with bar pogies and a thick + thin glove on each hand. However, it's been about -15°F in the mornings where I live and my fingers feel like they're about to fall off by the time I get to work. I already don't have great circulation to my hands and, predictably, it gets even worse when my body is ready to sacrifice my appendages to keep my core temperature up (even though I'm sweating by the time I get there sometimes).

Looking for recommendations for gloves/mittens based on personal experience if possible, all the review sites I've found either:

  1. Say something generic like "full winter range". Not too helpful when that's pretty regionally specific and cycling review sites are often in the UK and are more concerned about water than extreme cold (as far as I'm aware) or
  2. Are aggregating Amazon reviews and not doing any useful research on their own, just trying to collect affiliate link money

Any advice appreciated, thanks!

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] JayleneSlide 6 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I used to live in northern Vermont and bicycle was my only transportation. I live in a more temperate region now, but my partner has Reynaud Syndrome, so the challenges persist. Just not for my hands.

For sub-zero F temps, pogies are the way, although it sounds like they aren't quite working well enough for you. For long rides, I put a chemical handwarmer in each pogie, and that let me run a lighter glove. While wasteful, there are ways to mitigate the consumption of disposables.

For my bike without pogies, I used Pearl Izumi AmFib lobster claws. Those served me well to -28F, which was the lowest temp I saw when I lived there.

The following isn't a gear solution per se, but more of a prophylaxis: hunting reaction training. Our peripheral blood vessels rotate through a set of responses when exposed to cold. That rotation is called "hunting." It's "simple" to retrain our hunting reaction to maintain blood flow to hands and feet when cold. And holy hell, it's unpleasant. The short of it: keep your hands and feet hot while letting the rest of your body get cold. Like serious discomfort levels of cold. Do that for an hour everyday. For me, I noticed improvements in about ten days, and then only need maintenance training every few weeks and again in late Fall. My partner's Reynaud flares dropped to maybe once per winter after ~20 days of training.

The source you want for hunting reaction training is Army Cold Weather Warfare (Research Center?). I'm on mobile and can't find the original paper right meow.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

This led to some fascinating reading on Wikipedia, I never realized our bodies cycled through contraction/dilation like that. I'm going to pay attention to see if I notice it next time I'm outside for a while.