25 kph produces roughly 7000 cfm. That’s why you build up salt on your t-shirt instead of sweat when cycling outside. I had my Prana yoga pants, DZR leather shoes, a t-shirt, and a short-sleeve Dickies shirt with a Patagonia messenger bag and streaming rig and I hardly had any sweat built up on the Critical Mass ride and the urban, crit-like loops I did after that. I was blown away by how wonderful the wind felt on the descents evaporating all my sweat in one small descent. That just does not happen indoors with Zwift.
Then I read about “cardiac drift” and how your body freaks out when it cannot cool you off producing more and more sweat until you are completely dehydrated. I did not realize it, but this is exactly what has been happening on my Zwift rides with a cheap 20 cfm desk fan and t-shirt. Even without the t-shirt, that fan still cannot keep up with the sweat I am putting out, pruning my hands and soaking every towel I have. But towels are not the answer.
Towels are nice and all, but with a proper fan setup they should not even hardly be needed. Soaking through towels means that I am in cardiac drift mode where my body isn’t getting enough cooling, so it produces way more sweat than needed. In other words, a soaked t-shirt or towel is a sure sign that I don’t have enough air flow. And at 7000 cfm that is hard to recreate.
After doing a lot of research and fine-tuning with my own setup, I’ve hit the sweet spot for me (withough buying that absolutely stupid and overpriced Wahoo fan). The difficulty I face compared to others, is that I have a really nice adjustable standing table under which I put my front tire dividing any air flow from a floor fan. This gives me the best possible table setup, with a full keyboard, access to my sound board, mic controls, mouse, even one or two laptops off to the side so I can monitor a conference call while Zwifting. Most other Zwifters don’t have nearly as cool of a table setup as I do. Hell, I have all my water bottles just sitting on the table to grab, even a sandwich if I wanted. The 60” television furthest from the edge by the bike leaves plenty of room on the table without taking away from the view of the television. All this means I have to have separate air flow for my upper body from bottom. So I put the dual fans on the table where I can adjust them at any time by-hand. And I have one mega-fan on the floor pointing up from in front of the front time that is remotely controlled. The result is absolute (noisy) bliss.
Two HoneyWell (or Amazon Basics) cyclone fans (200 cfm each) aimed directly at my hands/chest in front of me reachable on the table in front of me from my handlebars. I can turn these on/off/up by hand so I don’t freeze until I need it. These are quiet so I turn them down and leave them on post-ride while chilling out in bed or on the computer. They are great all around. https://a.co/d/fsBeME4
One remotely controlled Lasko (3460 cfm) floor/mounted fan directly in front of my front wheel on the floor that I can control remotely blowing from under the table my my legs and thighs. I can turn this on/off/up from the remote resting on my desk. Given the size and volume of this fan being a bit farther away is good. https://a.co/d/0cQigQt
To deal with the noise I have been using headphones. There is so much air flow that the extra heat from wearing headphones is not an issue. In fact, I need to do that anyway to hear the videos or music that I put on and it makes the entire thing more immersive because it blocks out the sound of three small planes taking off. I even wear a baseball cap without overheating to help delay the sweat from falling in my face. I am also happy to report I can easily wear a cotton t-shirt without soaking it through like this allowing me to stream my sessions (again). Before, when going shirtless, I stopped streaming those session for a lot of it. With my dynamic mic, I can set it up to be right in front of my mouth and turn it on or down when I want to talk to people. It’s the perfect Zwift streaming setup. The airflow was the thing I was really missing and I am super happy to have that dialed in.
Related links: