First off - congrats to the absolutely correct decision to go around.
As to what happened: as has been said, possibly too fast (a 172 does fly at amazingly slow speeds), possibly the 'gust from nowhere', a thermal.
But consider for a moment your initial reaction:
You applied left rudder. Now what does that do? It aligns the wing closer to the wind, IOW the wing now produces more lift. Result: left wing and wheel lift the a/c tries to weathervane into the wind and the situation gets worse.
What you need to do is to use BOTH aileron and rudder. Aileron to 'slip' into the wind, rudder to align the nose.
HTH