You'll have to suffer.
I bought 16 Eneloop batteries with the sole purpose of keeping the flashes hot for the length of a double header. I now have over 30 low discharge AAs of various vintages, and I've marked them so I can keep them properly paired. With 5 AA Eneloop batteries, the SB-800 can crank out around 500-600 half power shots.
When I was working weddings with regularity, I had a stack of normal NiMH batteries that I would charge and use, and the discharge profile wasn't too insufferable. However, those batteries gave up the ghost last fall and wouldn't even power the Cactus remotes for any length of time. Thus, combined with the pain that a broken leg brings to mobility, I left artificial light work sit on the back burner.
But things are better now.
This year I vowed to up the quality of the photos of derby I'm taking. This means being more choosy about the photos and putting my hands on each one before I produce it, though that functionally means that everything is getting cropped a bit. I hope you like 1:1 aspect ratio, because I do. It looks great on every device and it captures the eye. I'm also playing with black and white because I can.
Even after 4 years, getting to composition nailed is still a struggle. It turns out that if you nail 25% of a skater; just their head and shoulders, the photos can be as compelling as a full body slam, though the meanings between the photos are often different. Getting a solid focus lock to obtain a crisp face.
I'm still flogging my D200, now well past 100,000 shutter actuations. The quality in available light in the arena is poor enough that folks who try to use the photos in prints turn up their nose in favor of cameras made this decade. They look ok on small screens and in general on the web. At ISO 400 with a flash, the age isn't much of a limiting factor.
The shutter sync speed is, however. If I want to push down the dark yellow background, I'm going to either need to invest in more flash power.
