Sea Bathers Eruptions

OK, you know how I was talking about training for the Xterra, Blue Lake swim portion of a triathlon? Well, I signed up for lessons with Future Dreams. I tried all last week to get a wetsuit rental lined up. I couldn't get that to happen, but the coach said to just show up. I was going to wimp out and not go, but Adam wouldn't let me. Great, it will be like the polar bear club, but I will have to do laps in the cold water.

I show up and I was surprisingly in shape. Basically it was a crew of 11 girls and 1 guy, I was in competition with the guy for first each time. (Pst..that picture is from futuredreams website).

Unfortunately I felt kind of itchy out in the water. I thought it was just the sea water in contact with my chlorinated swimsuit. Later that day I felt really tired and puky. Turns out I got sea bather's rash or sea lice. You get this when the larvae of jelly fish get caught in your swimsuit and get rubbed around like a scrub bush shooting you full of poison. It was great. I figured out why I was so dizzy driving away from the beach. Because I was SICK! So now I have a wicked rash covering my torso.

I've been told that this is a one-off kind of thing, I've been swimming in the ocean here and other people do it all the time without getting this rash. I'm going to give it one more try. If not I'm joining a soccer team.