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Analysis of the thermal comfort in cycling athletes

Abstract:

This research presents a detailed analysis of thermal comfort in road cycling athletes. The data have been collected during experimental road test in prevision of the UCI Road World Championship 2013 (Florence-Tuscany, Italy), considering the different technical situations and the different environmental conditions expected as the most probable for the race's period. The analysis presented in this work is based on the in-situ measurements of both environmental and physiological parameters (i.e.: air temperature, relative humidity, true wind velocity, apparent wind velocity, skin temperature, clothing temperature, heat transfer resistance of the clothing, internal heat production) made over different athletes in different race conditions. The recorded data have been used as input for the model "RayMan" [1],[2] for the assessment of the thermal comfort using thermal indices such as Pbkp_redicted Mean Vote (PMV) and Physiological Equivalent Temperature (PET). It should be noted that the apparent wind velocity, which is a fundamental parameter in this kind of analysis but often disregarded, is evaluated in relationship with the movement and the effort made by the cyclist. The results obtained by the comparison of the PET and PMV indices with the measured skin temperature confirm the importance of considering the variation of environmental parameters in both training and strategy assessment and provide a working method which is believed to be innovative for the applied sport research. © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd.