Food Poisoning and the British Novice Championships

It's been almost a month since my last blog update and there has been a fair bit happening in the last month not to mention the death of Maggie Thatcher, man has that caused some controversy! Personally, I didn't agree with a lot of the stuff that she did or some of the things she said, I was only a lad when she was Prime Minister but to see people out on the streets celebrating someone's death, in my opinion is disgusting and shameful. I read an article in the guardian it made some valid points but I thought the UK had a little more decorum than that. Then you have the Boston Marathon Bombings...I haven't got much to say about it except that it is disgusting and really makes you see how sick some people in the wold are. To kill an 8 year old boy who was just there to support his dad is heart breaking, not to mention all the people who were there supporting loved one's or friends who were raising money to help others. It is horrible and lets hope those responsible are caught soon.

Back to happier topics...If you recall at the end of my last blog I was about to take annual leave and head off for a bit of annual leave for my 1st Wedding Anniversary . All was going well, we took a trip up to Aberdeen on the Wednesday to drop off the little guy to get some peace and quiet. That was fine but we decided to get lunch from an undisclosed restaurant in the Bon Accord Centre in Aberdeen - big mistake! I had a steak sandwich, Emma had some pasta and nabbed a little bit of my sandwich - its an important point.

It was a good day until about 11:00pm when I was the only one up, lounging on the sofa and I started feeling a bit crap. I took a trip to the toilet to throw up and that was me in there pretty much until 4:00am. For those of you who don't like sick, you probably won't enjoy the next paragraph, but as I experienced it, I will describe it for you in all its glory! I couldn't stop being sick. It was a horrible experience. It wasn't even sick as you would imagine, it was thick, minging, disgustingness, looked like my stomach was cleansing itself. I couldn't believe how much there was and the worse thing was... you know how when your sick after a night out, its pretty quick and watery? well this was nothing like that. It was slow and had next to no water in it. I was like a dog regurgitating its dinner and it was rough. BOAK!

Anyway, to make matters worse I tried to go to bed at about 1:00am but couldn't and had to dart to the toilet again waking Emma up who then began to feel about as good as I was. She had to run to the toilet as well and her bout of sickness began. It was a great start to the weekend. It gets even better though. Cameron, who didn't have any of the food we had, started crying, this was about 3:00am. We went through and guess what... he must have felt left out because he had spewed as well, all over himself and it was in his hair. That meant we had to run a bath for him. So you have Cameron in the bath crying, my hugging the toilet barfing and Emma running down stairs to the other toilet. It was comical.  



Craigatin Guest House  - beautiful

 The next day was a total write off. I spent most the day drinking sugary tea and sleeping but managed to get a bit of food in the evening. We felt ok on Saturday for our anniversary weekend and went to a lovely little B&B in Pitlochry. It was really nice but we both still felt crap, went out for a meal and whilst we ate it, I don't think we enjoyed it as much as we would normally of have and there was no way we could tackle the bottle of champers we had brought with us. It was a nice weekend, we took a drive out round Loch Tummel and to Aberfeldy before heading back to the lodge to feel sorry for ourselves. My only complaint was that the bed was a bit hard for me, in fact Fred Flintstone probably would have struggled to get to sleep on it, might as well have been a slab of rock, so much so the second night I slept on the duvet and actually slept alright. A pretty wasted weekend but it was nice to get a way for a while and spend a bit of time just the two of us. Still got the bubbly as well.

That little episode meant that I dropped about 2.5kg couldn't train for over a week and felt pretty rubbish, The good thing was that I was feeling better the following weekend to head out to our friends birthday party. Whilst I know having a drink isn't great when your training, but I needed to let my hair down and ended up having a a fairly potent concoction of booze, some crazy combo that Nicole came up with topped off with a whisky that wiped me out. It was a mardi gras party, I'm claiming best costume award over Callum, he looked like a skinny version of the Hamburglar. My flexibility has obviously improved, played the cereal box game, where you pick it up with your teeth, probably haven't done as well since I was 5.

Danny trying to cut weight

Again fortunately for me Easter came round and it was a trip towards Blackpool to see Emma's grandparents and Aunt and Uncle. This meant that my weight would be back on track, I ate like a horse, I knew I had the British Novices the following week which meant that I needed to get my weight back up to 116 - 117 at the very least. I did pretty well.
So onto the Novices... Danny and I were representing [EN]GAGE Wrestling club (now Edinburgh Wrestling Club) We travelled down with Martin, who was there for moral support and he likes the atmosphere at these events. We had to wrap Danny up because we thought he might not make weight at 74kg. He wore maybe 6 layers, had bin bags and by the time we got down to Billington he had shed 900g but the funny/annoying thing for Danny was that the Novices is matched weight not done in the categories. that meant he didn't need to lose any weight. Never mind...



Sporting my first Gold Medal and championship

 We arrived the night before and had a good feed at the guest house after weighing in. I weighed in at 155.8kg. which was fine. Unfortunately there weren't very many heavyweights at the tournament and I only got one fight for gold. The guy I was against was a local lad and had been wrestling on and off for just over a year. He was pretty well build probably weighing in between 110kg - 115kg. The goal I had set myself prior to the tournament was just getting a win, I wanted to stick to my strategy and have my hand lifted by the umpire at the end of the bouts. As it turned out either way I would be getting a medal.

The fight itself was pretty good, I found some aggression that I had been lacking and managed to stick to my strategy and got some decent points. The video is coming later: It was a tough contest but I felt in control for the vast majority of it and came away with the win. It was a Little disheartening to have only to one fight but for me the most important thing was to come away with a win and despite there only being one other competitor at my weight - one of the coaches I was chatting to said "it doesn't matter, its on your wrestling CV" I'm still the British Novice Champion at my weight. Not bad for 9 months training! It was a massive confidence booster and I'm feeling alot better about going back against the more experienced guys.

Next stop the Bolton Open Championships... 18th May.

 I got back to training and was feeling confident, I've had a couple of mates come down and got some good wrestling in, Cal anderson got himself along on Friday and he is a tricky customer, i'm covered in bruises and still have a bit of a sore shoulder from a drop he got on me... we had three bouts and there wasn't any surprises this time, he was looking for the transferables to rugby and think we gave him some stuff to take back to the mighty Edinburgh Eagles! 

Thanks for taking time to read, I'll get that video up as soon as Martin King overcomes his technological impotence and gets it online. 

Cheers

@shocksjr