OneAndOneIs2

The weather has turned bitingly cold here. People at work come in complaining about having to scrape the ice off their windscreens before driving in. I look at them in disdain as I remove my frost-covered biking gloves...

Yesterday, it was cold. There's one stretch of road on my way in where the sun is permanently behind the trees, so it's really cold, and I'm going at 60mph so the windchill is pretty major. At this point, my hands were so cold they hurt. Wasn't nice.

Today, it was even colder. And yet my hands were nowhere near as cold.

What had changed?

Not, as you might expect, the gloves - I was wearing the same ones as yesterday. Rather, it was the fleece I was wearing under my jacket.

Hands have very little integral warmth - there are no muscles in your fingers, they don't move much, all their warmth comes from blood circulating through them. And your body's response to getting cold is to shut down blood supply to the extremities. So hands and feet are where we get cold quickest.

But that's only if your body gets cold: If you keep your core warm, your body has no reason to cut the circulation to the hands and feet, so they stay warmer.

I tested this theory once (Sad, isn't it?) when it had snowed - once I went out with thick gloves on and not much in the way of warm clothing. Then I went out togged up in so many layers I felt worried that I Might fall down and roll away, but no gloves. First way around my gloved hands froze, second my bare hands were roastingly warm even when I made snowballs.

I have now tested it anew on my bike, and it still holds true - insulating your core gives better results than insulating your hands.

The downside is that I was *still* not warm on the cold stretch, only this time I could feel that it was my legs that were the problem. I think I might have to cave and put the thermal lining back into the trousers. That'll make wearing jeans underneath interesting.. might have to start keeping clothing at the office because I have no space to store things on the bike..