FJP,
Even experienced astronauts deal with motion sickness. Yes, you do get used to it on the track as MGO427 says. Based on a few decades of participation in various nausea-inducing activities, here are some suggestions to speed the process.
REST: Prep for track day can result in inadequate sleep the night before. Being tired sets your body up to respond poorly to what you will experience. I’ve taken a cat-nap between runs when I’ve felt more tired than normal, but often that isn’t possible.
NUTRITION: Eating breakfast is usually the last thing on my mind when I wake up on track day, but I know the day will go better if I do. Don’t skip lunch, either. Staying hydrated is extremely important. This is insidious because you can become dehydrated at the track even on a cool day and not realize it. Sports drinks with electrolytes are better than water. Skip alcohol for 24 hours before. Carbonated drinks can dehydrate you. However, as Team Jeff said, Coke works great for nausea – I was there for the incident he described and it’s true. Also good is Ginger Ale or anything with ginger in it – it’s an old natural remedy.
MEDICATION: After being bulletproof until just a few years ago, sometimes I need Advil to take the edge off of back pain, but I won’t take it on track day. Maybe it doesn’t matter, but I just want to eliminate that from the mix.
HEAT: Too much heat is bad for your car, and it’s really bad for your body. It’s critical to get all the ventilation you can, preferably (at least for me) with lots of it directed to your face and head. Remember that your helmet is restricting cooling to the one part of your body that’s controlling the rest of it. Heat has a cumulative debilitating effect. You’ll be able to better deal with the heat for 30 minutes at a time inside the car if you can stay as cool and comfortable as possible for the many hours at the track you’re outside the car.
ACTIVITY: It is not surprising that things got worse when you rode with your instructor. If you are busy, you are less likely to have a problem. It’s not the pilot who gets airsick, it’s the passengers. Roketman’s advice to look out far ahead is excellent and effective. Don’t move your head unnecessarily or the semicircular canals in your ears will go nuts, and then it’s all over but the cleanup.
STRESS: You were in an unfamiliar situation and were expected to learn and perform a new task, with the whole world watching (or at least it seemed that way). You were exposing your six-figure car to a couple of dozen other drivers who you probably didn’t even know, let alone trust. These kinds of things induce stress and anxiety, which makes motion sickness more likely. The opening statement of my first track instructor was, “Nothing you do today is going to make your car more valuable.” Fortunately, I ran a few track days in a couple of other cars before I bought my GT (which I tracked three days after it arrived) so I knew what to expect. I would have had much more stress if my first track day had been in the GT. I’d take DPGT up on his track offer.
VISUALIZATION: I try to play a mental video in my mind of what I’m going to be doing. If it’s something I’ve never done, the mental video may not be accurate but somehow it still seems to get my brain wired up for what sensory inputs to expect – even non-visual sensations like g-forces, temperature, and control feedback. I try to start thinking in these terms a few days before. When I actually do it, then the sensations aren’t exactly new. My brain knows that this scenario is “normal” and doesn’t react adversely. It sounds a little corny, but it works for me.
PREVENTIVE DEVICES: Some people have good success with the elastic wrist bands. My wife frequently experienced motion sickness; the bands did nothing for her and every over-the-counter motion sickness medicine actually made her worse. She then tried the electronic nerve stimulation band, and it worked as advertised. She used it successfully a few times, and now she rarely needs it. I don’t know why – maybe it speeds up the “getting used to it” process. Here’s the one we used:
http://www.sportys.com/acb/showdetl.cfm?DID=19&Product_ID=11450
You did the right thing to sit out the rest of the day when you recognized the problem. Some long-forgotten sage said to me early in my flying career, “It’s better to be down here wishing you were up there, than to be up there wishing you were down here!” The same thing goes for the track. I hope you give it another go – you’ll be glad you did!
