Heat Waves and Highways—A Letter From Marisa

Cross-country motorcycle tours are always a transformative experience. Long days in the saddle, lots of distance to cover, gone for weeks at a time…

It can test you in ways you could never imagine, and it can teach you a lot about yourself (and the people you’re riding with).

For example, I now know that Florian needs to eat at least five meals a day, whereas Caleb and I are fine with one, maybe two—as long as we are adequately hydrated and up on our electrolytes. Like any good parent, he blamed it on his young kids. After two days on the road, we learned to always keep a snack handy.

There’s nothing worse than a hangry boss staring you down when you’re trying to work.

All jokes aside, nutrition and hydration are incredibly important when you’re on the road, especially when temperatures climb into the triple digits. It’s one thing to ride in such heat and another thing entirely to document your progress.

When I’m on tour, I often stop to take photos. This includes finding a safe place to park the bike, trekking down the side of the road in full riding gear, climbing around in ditches and up mountain slopes, and finally asking the riders to make a few passes for the camera.

This kind of work turns a five-hour, 250-mile ride into a nine-hour day—longer if we add in a lunch stop or extra hydration breaks.

I heat train for occasions such as this, because the last thing I need is to pass out in a ditch while in the middle of a trip. Three times per week I hit up my local Hotworx gym for sauna workouts where the temperature climbs to 130 degrees with upwards of 40% humidity. Cycling, yoga, and barre all seem like fairly easy workouts until you do them in these temperatures.

My heart rate easily hits 170 bpm, and I know right where my heat tolerance limitations are. Being in tune with my body in this way is critical to the work I do.

If I start to feel “off” while on a ride, I know exactly what the culprit is and how to remedy the situation. This self-awareness has saved me on more than one occasion.

If you follow RoadRUNNER on social media or YouTube (as you should) then you know we recently accomplished a big bucket list ride. We took nearly three weeks to ride the entire length of Route 66 from Chicago, IL, to Santa Monica, CA.

Of course, we embarked on this journey in the middle of summer, and we knew that it would be a hot one. What we didn’t expect was the heat wave that washed across the nation during our tour. Heat records were shattered in many cities, including Chicago on the same day we arrived.

Rolling through the Mohave Valley, we hit our own personal records, riding in 113-degree heat. Only a few miles to our north the mercury rose to a stifling 125 degrees. It was so hot, our brake and clutch levers burned through our gloves. Our cameras stopped working, and it was cooler to ride with our face shields down than up.

It’s an experience I won’t soon forget.