It's worse that whatever you can imagine. It's like when you eat something really spicy and it's all over your mouth and lips burning but instead all over your face x1000. Everyone said it was gonna suck bad but not that bad. I watched several people go before me and they seemed to be doing ok considering so I thought it wasn't going to be as bad as I thought. It was way worse. I closed my eyes and mouth, got sprayed, the instructor asked me how many fingers he was holding up. At first I could see perfectly but then my eyes slammed shut and I couldn't hardly get them open again. I fumbled through the course with an instructor leading me and at the very last station I had to simulate aiming a gun at a suspect and making him get on the ground. I got to the station, eyes closed, and made a motion like I was pointing a gun and screamed "get on the ground" in the rough direction I thought the "perp" was. I heard one of the instructors say "I think he's talking to you." so I knew I wasn't pointing in the right direction but suddenly I couldn't breath, like the wind had been knocked out of me. I was able to gasp for air with my head tilted back so I got led over to the water station and washed my face for several minuets, every so often having to stop and gasp for air again. After a while I gave up on the water because letting it dry is the only way for the effects to wear off so I spent another 15 or 20 minuets trying to pry my eyes open and snotting everywhere. The high winds that were blowing helped when they weren't gusting so much that sand and dirt was getting blown around.
And there really isn't much you can do to mitigate that, other than being lucky enough to have a high tolerance to it. It's going to be excruciating for a good 10-15 minutes with the next 20-30 burning like a bastard and depending on how well you washed another 10 minutes to an hour feeling like a really bad sunburn. The only thing you can do is wash really really well as soon as possible, dry your face (don't rub your eyes and use a fresh, dry, paper towel or whatever for each pass) and get something cold a dry on it to mitigate the pain until the effects wear off. And don't shave the day of if you have the luxury of knowing it's coming.
Just don't if you can help it.
