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Sunday, March 18, 2012

so I passed out skiing sugarloaf today

At the top of the climb at mile 3 in the pic above. Seriously! I reached the top, which is the intersection just past mile 3 on the map, and Mike (Pratico) and I stopped and I asked if we were going to go up trail 50 or down trail 29. I then commented that I was feeling dizzy (the same feeling you get when you stand too quickly) and the next thing I know I hear "Jeff, Jeff, are you ok?" and I woke up, still standing but with my head resting on my poles. I had actually been dreaming! For a few seconds after waking I was pretty confused where I was. I felt as if I had awakened from a pretty good sleep but Mike thought the whole thing lasted less than a minute and he was only really worried and calling me for about 10s. I can't remember putting my head down on my poles so I assume after I got the dizzy feeling I put my head down and just simultaneously passed out. Totally weird.

We resumed skiing and our next time up the same climb we took it easier and even continued up trail 50 to the top. This climb made the first climb look puny. It was a great day, other than passing out and all.

[see postscript below]

My achilles felt awesome after the ski, as if the ski were some kind of therapy. Weird. This was especially surprising because I had aggravated my achilles snowboarding Saddleback the day before. Cacky and did our first downhill day in 3 years - it was gorgeous spring skiing. The snow was excellent. I was in a thin summerweight smartwool top with Bradbury white out T and no gloves (never even took them out of my pockets). My boot rubbed my achilles from the start but didn't really aggravate it. On what became my 2nd to last run, I tried a deep front-side carve (not generally my style of riding, I'm more like a small wave ripper than old school carver) and this stretched my achilles a bit. On my next run, which became my last, every single front side turn torched my achilles. Again surprisingly I seemed no worse once I got my boots off and walked around.

Postscript - I had pretty much figured out the physiology of passing out after stopping after climbing the hill but I did some google scholaring to fill in a few blanks and quickly discovered that it is imperative that I go see the doctor to take a battery of tests to rule out a long laundry list of (mostly heart) issues. It is very, very likely to be entirely benign. 

9 comments:

  1. Jeff! Wow, glad you are ok!! You seem to have some magical healing powers from climbing hills. Didn't Mt. Washington fix your calf one year? Awesome ski pix, but looking forward to running with you on this trails soon, I hope :D

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  2. very weird, indeed. do you have sleep problems? I can dream in seconds if I've been really sleep deprived, but I don't think that's normal.

    I hope your achilles continues to respond to ski therapy!

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  3. Dude! That's super scary and yet absolutely hilarious at the same time. Glad you're OK and got in an awesome ski!

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  4. Hope you are doing OK! That is definitely a bit odd. Despite that, sounds like you had a pretty great weekend up at Sugarloaf!

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  5. For what it is worth. . . Jeff is not the first person who passed out attempting to climb at my pace. He used to skiing with Demer.

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  6. I can tell this is going to be a frequent christmas camp story..."so gabe...did you hear about the time coach walker passed out trying to hang with me at sugarloaf"!

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  7. Seems more oxygen deprived than heart related. You should get checked out though...hope everything is OK

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  8. Happened to me once in college during hill repeats. One moment, I was running with two guys, and the next, they were gone. I never flopped over, but I certainly lost reality for a few seconds. Some type of acute oxygen debt?

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