Mullet Man Triathlon - TriathlonSprint

Ugh. I swam with my head up to try to avoid motion sickness. Most of my wave missed the first buoy, but we were being thrown around so much that nobody seemed to care. On the way back in, we got pushed pretty far down the beach and ended up running further during T1.

I thought I was in the clear for motion sickness when I got out of the water. I ran out, saw some friends cheering and taking photos, said hi to them, and got about 25 more feet before a wave of nausea just hit me. I started dry heaving as I watched people pass me on the way to transition. At that point I was still determined to ride, so I headed up to my bike and hoped it would pass.

The wind was pretty strong, so the trip out was around 25 mph. The trip back was pretty brutal. At one point I dry heaved again, but it passed quickly so I thought I was feeling better. I thought the bridges went better than usual, but the rest was pretty standard.

No more than a quarter mile into the run, the nausea returned. I stepped over the short chain fence thingy on the side of the road so I would be out of the way as I did my thing. Someone asked if I was ok and I tried to give them a thumbs up, but I was miserable. It wasn't just the nausea, but also the feeling that I was going to be lucky if I just finished this race. It's disappointing to know that you just can't put the effort that you want to. I trotted slowly for a while until I felt well enough to speed it up, but I never got up to my full racing speed. The last mile, I ran into a girl I went to college with and we ran together for a bit before she took off ahead of me. About a half mile from the end, another girl in my age group passed me, but I was determined to keep up. I felt well enough to pick it up a little. I ran with her, but my breathing was getting difficult. I used my inhaler before the race, but it's not magic. I could see the finish line and tried so hard to push through it, but I had to slow down to get some air. That was pretty disappointing.

I finished the race and headed straight to the port-o-potties. When I came out, the dizziness was back. I sat down and propped myself up against a coke machine, but I was sitting in gravel and couldn't lay down. I wandered over to the grass and layed down to get the dizziness to go away. My friends eventually found me and gave me gatorade and more meclizine, put my bike and stuff in my car, and sat with me for a while. It was nice to have people there to help me, but frustrating because I felt like I ruined their post-race fun. The medicine knocked me out so I wasn't much use for the rest of the afternoon, either. It's a shame, because this post-race party is pretty good.


Motion sickness.


Even though my race report was depressing, it really is a good race. It's laid back and unique, and I'd still do it again next year. I'm just in a funk right now...I need to put on my big girl panties and suck it up. :-)