Keeping hydrated

On Monday night we scrimmaged as normal, it was  a little bit warm at our training venue but not terribly hot. During the warm up before the scrim, my head started to hurt. Not just a little bit but almost blinding pain and my friend gave me some co-codomol and I took 2.

The pain didn’t stop, I felt sick, my head was throbbing (all over my head not just one part) and every time I spoke it hurt, but I continued to skate and jam (just less than others on my team and I was not my best on track). On the way home from training I really thought I was going to be sick but when I got home I managed to shower, get my lunch ready for the next day and get myself to bed (normally I sit down with a warm drink, some food and watch TV a bit but I just couldn’t as the TV was too bright and noisy). I don’t think I’ve ever had a headache like it with the pain allover  my head.

My team mates blamed it on dehydration and thinking about my weekend and what I got up-to I think it was cumulative from several days and here’s my fluid intake:

• Friday (Day off work = Lazy morning and 40 minutes at the gym) – 1 cup of tea with milk, large fruit juice, green tea (1/2 a shared pot), alcohol, 1 glass of carbonated water
• Saturday (Day out at the zoo walking around in the sunny weather) – 1 cup of tea with milk, a cola slushy drink (I didn’t drink it all), alcohol
• Sunday (Lazy morning, gardening in the afternoon in warm weather) – 1 cup of tea, 2 pints of carbonated water with elderflower cordial, 2 cups of caffeine free tea with milk
• Monday (Work  and Roller Derby Training) – 4 cups of tea with milk

Looking at the above I really think that I should have drunk more water and there’s no wonder I felt terrible last night. This is certainly something that I need to work on doing as I really don’t want to feel that terrible again!

Deadlifting weights

So I’ve started deadlifting weights. I’m just at the start of trying to get strong with this particular exercise but managed to lift 35kg (which is more than 1/2 my body weight) which I’m really pleased about! I don’t have enough upper body strength and I have been hindered by having a bad elbow, shoulder and spine (which I’ve been getting physio for), but deadlifting should help me quite a bit I hope!

 

This video on how to deadlift weights was the one recommended to me by one of our coaches, as it demonstrates really good technique and I studied it before beginning to lift anything.

Over the coming weeks and months I am going to continue with deadlifting (in the scary bit of the gym where all the ‘big’ men hang out), and hope to see progress to the point where I can lift my own body weight (currently 52kg).

Getting excited about food

I find it hard sometimes to get excited about food and when I loose interest, I end up not packing good lunches, having to go shopping after work and then missing workouts at the gym.

The other day my boyfriend suggested that he would like to stop eating meat altogether and it sparked off searching for new recipes online and interesting things to eat which include protein and meat substitutes and it has gotten me excited about food again!

The thing which I am going to find the most difficult I think is that my boyfriend won’t just eat vegetables and beans as a meat substitute and has insisted that he needs to be tricked into thinking he’s eating meat with Quorn or something like that. But alot of Quorn products contain wheat and gluten (which I can’t risk having) as well as barley malt extract (which I think I can tolerate a very small amount of).

My search has lead me into looking at Soya mince (rather than Quorn mince as I can’t have it), and I think this is something I am going to experiment with next week. 

Soya mince

Spicy chickpea snacks

’m always on the hunt for tasty snacks to take to work with me and I came across a BBC recipe for spicy chickpeas and this is how I made them:

Ingredients:

• 1 can of chickpeas (400g)
• 1 teaspoon of sunflower oil
• 1 teaspoon of chili flakes

Method:

• Turn the oven onto 190 and while it’s heating up prepare the chickpeas by draining, washing and coating them in oil and chili flakes (I put the washed chickpeas in a bowl and added the oil and flakes and mix it to make sure they were evenly coated).
• Spread the chickpeas out on a piece of baking parchment on a baking tray and pop in the oven.
• Once cool, sprinkle with a little bit of salt.
• Bake for 40 minutes (although the BBC say 25 minutes I accidentally left them in the oven for longer!).

Portions:

According to the BBC site, there are 80 calories, 4.5g of protein and 10g of carbs  in a 100g portion, and during the week I am planning on splitting this down to a 20g portion as a light snack while I’m at work.

Once cooked I split the chickpeas down into snack posts and 1 tin of chickpeas yielded 3 x 20g and 1 x 15g pots (which prob works out just over 100g of non dried chickpeas per pot).

I made the A-team!

I’ve been a ‘cross over’ skater since an injury last year – which has been wonderful as I’ve been given the opportunity to play for both the A-team and B-team. It’s given me lots of track time as over the last year I’ve been skating at every A and B team match which has really helped with my confidence on track and even allowed me to Jam at open bouts.

But as we move into the new season, a new A-team roster and B-team roster has been announced by the A-team captain……

And I am now officially a permanent member of the A-team!

It is sad to leave the B-team behind but I will captain one last match this month.

This is where the hard work really, really begins!