Michael wrote:what do you think brought on the nausea, was hypothermia kicking in?
So this has happened to me 3 other times over the last 10 years or so:
- Snowshoeing up a mountain
- Hiking up from Wreck Beach after a winter surf session
- On a windy / wavy SUP session where I misjudged times and had to really boot it to try and make an appointment
The two on land weren't bad and just required sitting down for 15-20 minutes. The time it happened to me on the SUP was very similar to this latest incident. I think the combo of the syncope induced nasea mixed with the wave motion (it was still very windy and wavy during my swim in yesterday) makes it so I can't recover very well because of perpetual nasea from the waves once I start to feel sick. For the SUP case I was able to just lay on my board and thankfully the wind was in a decent direction as it took about 45 minutes for me to recover and be able to paddle again.
I'm not sure if it's low blood sugar or low electrolytes but I'm going to start carrying those gels that runners carry and make sure I eat 1-2 of them on my sessions if they go over 2 hours.
I also have very low blood pressure all the time, and I suffered a full Vasovagal syncope (not exercise related in any way) about 5 years ago. That was not fun. I got a full 24h ECG after that and all showed normal.
I will start carrying a whistle as well but I'm pretty sure the whistle wouldn't have been much help until the wind died down (which wasn't until around 7:30 PM). Once it was calm it would be very helpful though, especially so in the dark.
While my floatation vest is black, it has 3M reflective piping and strips on the shoulders and back. A red beanie would have been easier to spot but due to my condition I was just kind of laying face down on my board and there was constant 2 foot chop so it still would have been very hard to see.
By far the best thing I could have done for visibility would have been to come off my board and then hold it by the tail underwater such that the top 50% of the board was sticking straight up. Again though, I wasn't really in a state to manage that for long, my board was like a little life raft pillow for my head.
My wife wants to buy me an apple watch, but the only one that has any business being out there is the new Ultra model and it's $1000 and freakin' giant.
Maybe I should just take up wingfoiling instead of kite foiling