hypoglycemia

Monday 18th Feb: a nice hot sunny day. i love this weather. we started off with the coordination game. even ann and alia had got the hang of it and we were looking good. doc arrived and had us warming up by passing the ball - nice long passes. we were meant to go for roadwork but a couple of players had boots not sneakers. so he had to improvise. when he thought we were warm enough he had us all on the touch line. we had to sprint from one touch line to the other and back, 10 second breather and off we go again. we would be doing it for 7 minutes. at the start it was ok then after about four of them i got dizzy and bells were ringing in my ears. i remained on the touch line and tried to stop the ground from moving round in circles. doc at my side in a flash and his first question "did you have lunch?" i slowly shook my head. "hmmh. hypoglycemia" he mutters. allergy to what? "how can you starve yourself and come for training? how are you feeling apart from dizzy" he asks. "black spots jumping up and down" i replied. he sighed. "your body has exhausted its glucose supplies and that's why you are feeling like that. lack of glucose in your body - that's hypoglycemia." he sent for a fanta and had me drink half of it. yuck i hate fanta. all the while the rest of the girls continued with their sprints. when the 7 minutes were done he had fortunate, yogi, stesh and alia continue running. "you were slower than the rest so expended less energy so in order to use the same amount you've got to run for longer". yogi looked liked she wanted to get violent then took a deep breath and soldiered on. it's tough for her and fortunate - it's only their second session so though we are all still unfit their level is really really low. later he called everyone together. "lesson one" he lectures" do not come for training without eating lunch. take in lots of carbohydrates. lesson 2: all this is for your sake. i do not get a kick out of making you suffer. you can hate me now and call me all sorts of names, i'll understand but we want you fit." doc is sweet. we all like him - except when he's making us run.

we changed to saturday's game of hold where all the attacking team had to be in the 22 before a try could be scored. after 10 minutes of that, we did a passing drill then back to shuttles. we did 5 metre shuttle sprints for 2 minutes with 10 second breaks. we did about 6 sets of them, maybe more. i lost count. on the very last set halfway through i wobbled off feeling dizzy again. doc had me lie down and said that the fanta had given me a temporary boost of glucose which the body had quickly used up. after the sprints were done he re - emphasised his earlier point "eat before you train". he promised us the hills for the next session and asked us not to conveniently leave our sneakers behind. sure. we wound up with pushups, situps, bridges and a stretch. yes, in spite of all the drama we are getting fitter.