Truffle's observation thread, which included observations of crying female athletes, brought back this memory for me.

It was a few summers ago, when I was hanging out in Lake Placid before the Iron Man Triathlon. One of the warm up events, I guess you could call it, is a series of canoe races along Mirror Lake, both individual kayaks and crew boats. It's not a summer camp event, people come from all over to compete and they go at it hard.

After one individual heat, I watched a solo competitor, female from Canada, break down in her kayak. She finished second out of eight lanes, I think. Myself and a few dozen other spectators were clustered on a floating dock to watch the races when she drifted by.

It struck many of us as interesting. She was shuddering from exhaustion, wide-eyed, her mouth hanging open in a blank rictus, and plainly sobbing. But it was as if her sobbing was simply the only way that she could breathe at that point. Her shoulders heaved and her belly hitched in and out, but there was no sound from her, nor tears coming down her face, though she had an expression of crying.

I and a couple other people on the dock tried to talk to her, asking if she was okay, did she need a hand, etc, but she gasped out a weak "i'm fine..." without looking at us or changing her expression. She slowly navigated to the southeast shore where the other competitors were beaching, crying silent, tearless, convulsive sobs the whole way.

Last edited by NeedHerSobs (July 6, 2016 10:43 pm)