Rugby Sevens Tournament Prep

Friday morning as I headed off to work I was looking forward to playing beach touch rugby Saturday morning. I packed up my sand socks from beach volleyball, a change of clothes and for some odd reason grabbed my rugby cleats as well. I guess having them in my truck makes me happy. I'm very glad I did grab them. Once I arrived in San Jose, a quick check of my facebook page showed one of my teammates inviting everyone to come out and support the women's team on Saturday in Palo Alto. Last I had heard from the practice the week before was that the tournament was in Santa Barbara, meaning I would have had to take two full days off from work on short notice. I contacted one of my teammates and found out that the tournament was indeed on the Stanford campus again. Then began the scramble.

In the afternoon, in between calls, my crew was nice enough to make a quick run to a local sporting goods shop to pick up a mouth guard, socks, compression shorts and a sports bra. That took care of the basics gear wise, diet wise I chose to do a modified warrior diet. In the past, when I've done the warrior diet at work, it became very difficult when the evening meal was delayed due to calls. So instead, on Friday I pretty much carbo-loaded the whole day to prepare for Saturday. My meals were as follows:

Breakfast - Bowl of oatmeal with cranberries, honey, and a little bit of butter and salt

Lunch - 3 vegetarian chili dogs and a big bowl of fruit salad with yogurt

Dinner - Salad, big plate of spaghetti with marinara sauce and veggie patties

Desert - Small bowl of peach crisp cobbler with vanilla ice cream.


At dinner I was still full from lunch, but knew that I was going to be playing a full day on Saturday so I packed in as much as I reasonably could. The desert wasn't truly part of the diet, but my chief made it from peaches that my Captain brought in from his trees, and well to refuse would've just been downright rude.

I skipped my planned workout and only did CC to give my muscles a chance to be rested and fresh the next day. Also,I drank 3 quarts of water and that night I took vitamin D and magnesium in an effort to make whatever sleep I would get that night to be as restful as possible, and vitamin C to help my body use iron more efficiently and allow my red blood cells to carry more oxygen to my muscles.

I tried a little experiment as well. The Feb/Mar issue of "Fighting Fit" magazine just happened to be in my bag, so I gave it another quick read through. One of their articles mentioned a study where boxers were given a spoonful of baking soda dissolved in water prior to exercise. They found that the boxers landed more punches per round during sparring than when given a placebo. The theory behind this is that the body uses sodium bicarbonate to neutralize acidity including lactic acid build up. When lactic acid accumulates in our muscles, it causes us to feel fatigued. Therefore, preloading the body with bicarb should allow us to exercise longer before feeling fatigued. I had first thought of this years ago during the fire academy. Before our morning runs I'd take 2-4 Tums tablets in an effort to increase my body's alkalinity. I can't honestly tell if it helped or not. Same thing with Friday. I drank 1 tbsp of baking soda dissolved in a glass of water that evening. I'll have to set up a series of controlled tests to see if this has any effect on my conditioning and rugby performance.