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Okay, that seems excessive and probably correct all at once!

The amount of sweat even with the powerful Lasko is pretty amazing…

Add more! I have two of those fans and it seems to do the job quite well for all efforts, including FTP tests. One doesn’t quite seem to be enough to match indoor to outdoor numbers for me and I’m leaning towards getting a third. One pointed a little at lower body to shoulders and second covering the head to mid upper body.

I think it was the Fast Talk podcast that said if you have sweat hitting the floor than you’re not cooling enough using the process of sweat evaporation.

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Start the ride shivering! I like this, I’ve not heard this before and it’s a quick and easy test to see if you have enough air flow. I’ve got lots of room for improvement.

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:rofl:

I do start the ride with one fan going then turn the second on after a warm up before any intervals for the reason you mentioned. If not that, I’ll start with a full zip hoodie on until I’m warmed up. A remote would be helpful but it’s only a few second pause if I hop off to start the fan(s).

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Got to have a fan… I run one in all weathers regardless of the workout otherwise I just cannot deal with the heat.

This usually mean starting the ride in a hoodie and then removing layers as I progress through the warm up.

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  • Get another two :stuck_out_tongue:

  1. Top center above screen (yellow/black fan) and pointed at my head and face while on the hoods. This is also ducted to pull air from the window when I open it, to get cold air directly in the fan.

  2. Front left side on table (gray/black fan) and pointed at my torso. I also have 2x 4" hoses ducted from the window to this fans intake for more cold air.

  3. Rear center on old speaker stand (yellow/black fan) and pointed at my hips and lower back.

All three on simple outlet remote control for power access, but I can also reach the extended fan speed handles when on the bike, to control flow as needed.

I rarely even have a single drop hit the floor, and that’s only when I can’t get cooler air from the window.

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I workout in a 12x12 room. A one hour workout raises the temperature in that room a couple degrees, even with a fan. You’re about to get an education in how much heat gets generated by your body during exercise! Get a fan AND open the window!

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Can’t wait to hear the athlete come back and say we were right about fans, ie active cooling. So much experience here and we’ve all learned the hard way and tried it, just get a fan so we can say we told you so. :slight_smile:

Nice to see I’m not the only one who uses an old speaker stand, mine is used to hold the iPad. Ok, I’ll get another Lasko!

Yeah, I’m on that plan too actually. Thanks for the input. :slight_smile: This will be the year of proper cooling, dammit.

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You can get away with a single fan pointed at your face, not too far away, if your room temperature is under 18/20°C.

At least that’s my personal experience, I have only one small Honeywell fan and I only struggled with overheating during lockdown when I had to ride inside when it was hot (23/25°C in the pain cave).

The only reason I don’t buy more fans is that I actually get cold when it’s under 10°C or so and I have to run the fan at minimum speed or wear a jersey.

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I have 2 fans already and as far as i know they are “big and powerful fans”, but nothing cycling-specific. After an hour of sweetspot in a chilly garage there is a proper puddle on the mat under me. I don’t consider myself to be a problem sweater but this is all i know.

Is it actually possible to have zero-wasted-sweat cooling? How much of a fan do you need? Is the blast from a Lasko (or similar) really that powerful?

I’m not sure what you mean by this but I’ve done both rides in a garage with fans and then when I go home for holidays I will sometimes do trainer rides on an outdoor patio with no fans in the winter (30sF). Though I am much colder at the start of those outdoor rides you just don’t get the same cooling after the warm up that you do with fans. You sort of create a “micro-climate” around you body that is both hotter and more humid than the nominal air temp around you. So unless I would 100% take the fans even if it is 20deg cooler outside.

Also, I’m not sure if you have any engineering background or knowledge of heat transfer but convective cooling (moving fluid (like air)) is way way better than conductive cooling (two things touching). And then you combine that with also moving the humidity due to your sweat away from you skin and now that moving air is even better at cooling you due to the evaporative cooling.

I’m not going to do any math but I’m sure the temperature and humidity differences would have to be pretty large before outside with no fans is better than inside with fans.

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I sweat, not heavy, but just saying I sweat just thinking of eating a hot bowl of soup. The garage has 2 fans and is often 80+F / 27+C but no pool of sweat. One fan pointed at my frontside, and the smaller fan pointed at backside. I have a sweat towel to mop up the sweat from my face, and I wear bibs and a dry fit shirt. My shirt is wet when the workout is done.

Outside in 90F / 32C its hot and dry, the airflow from road cycling is enough to evaporate most of the sweat.

I guess I don’t know what your reasons are for not wanting to use a fan but even a cheapy box fan will make a huge and noticeable difference for very little cost. I bought two used box fans off craigslist for ~$20 and used them for 2 years before getting a more powerful fan.

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Here’s a more expert opinion than mine within the first question on the Fast Talk podcast I mentioned earlier. In case you just want the answer Trevor says “you should be dry after a ride”.

I vaguely remember either podcast but here’s another from Fast Talk they reference in 118 above.

Thanks for sharing @mcneese.chad

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I’m using 4 right now.

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Open window (to get the general temperature of the room as well as humidity and CO2 levels down) and fan to cool the body. Also, I‘d advice against just placing it in front of the bike at the bottom, with cooling effect being greater if not too much of the airstream is hindered by the bike (also you might have a towel on your handlebars).
I have two very strong fans (much cheaper and much more effective than the Kickr Headwind) on the left and right of the bike. On blowing at my chest and face, the other at my legs and hip. Also a taller one blowing at my back. I do very hard interval sessions indoors, even in the summer, and I don‘t want to fail them because of overheating.


The picture is a few months old, I have now sold the headwind and got a second one of these larger, generic fans.

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I’ve got one of those silver ones on the floor in front and a similar stand-up one in front of me on the other side - I still get a pool of sweat.
This is me at threshold: giphy

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  • I am a fairly heavy sweater by my own guessing. Left uncooled, I would leave a large puddle under me in most workouts. No idea how that rates to most people, but I am not a light sweater from all I can see.
  • Depends. Sorry, but had to say it. I know that I have worked hard to dial in my setup to get max air flow, and assist that with cooled air.

  • My training room is about 10’ x 12’, with no ventilation when I close the door, and about 65F at the start of most workouts. I can raise that to 70F in a matter of 15 minutes when I finish a warmup, even when I start turning on fans about 5 mins in. My goal is to keep room temp to that 70*F and I can usually hit that when I have cool air available outside. Humidity does gain more, typically 5-15% increase from start to finish (with the actual value varying with seasonal conditions).

  • Per my setup, I found 3 is what I need. The two in front are the primary refreshing ones, especially when it’s cold outside.
  • But the rear helps massively. I had a friend tell me about rear cooling years ago, and I joked just like everyone does when I share my setup (tailwind for the win :stuck_out_tongue: ). But when you realize just how large that surface area is, and how most front facing fan setups totally neglect air flow over it, you can see how well it works to aid cooling.
    • The best thing to do is set one up that you can turn on while riding. Get into a workout like normal when you are getting pretty cooked, and kick that rear fan on. The feeling is immediate and massive for me. That blower fan hits my hips and lower back, and the deflected flow continues up my back to my neck. It is the fan that hits the largest surface area as a single fan, at least in my setup.
  • Yes, when compared to the wider and less focused flow from typical 18" circular fans or the smaller “Vornado” ones I see typically used. The blower fan puts more air into a smaller “window” of area, so there is no “wasted” air like you get with circular fans.
  • I ran circular fans for years. Small Vornado top center, an 18" circular to the front left, and eventually added an 18" circular to the rear left side. Those were good and adding each of those fans gave improvement.
  • But nothing compares to the flow from a blower fan in the space I have and with the lower sound volume that the blowers also provide (compared to circular ones).

All I can say is that people frequently doubt the effectiveness of the blower style fans… right up until the point they actually use one… and then minds are most often changed.

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Although you benefit from the lower humidity, and temperature, aiding your sweat evaporation I think you still could improve the situation by introducing air flow with a fan or three.