Sorry for the lack of activity on this blog. I started playing rugby at the end of February and between practices, matches and traveling to matches it took up a lot of my free time.
I had never played rugby before. I basically woke up one day and decided to start playing. I found a great group of guys not too far from home to go play with.
Our season finished a few weeks ago in Chicago with the final against the Chicago Lions. We lost and took second for our area/division. We will start practicing in August for another season in the fall.
My first season went reasonably well for someone my age just starting out in the sport. I am not quite fast enough to be a back and not quite big enough for my lack of rugby specific skills to make me a decent forward. I filled in as a substitute forward for most matches and was able to play a full match as a hooker.
I was really surprised by the social aspect of the game. After every match the home team is expected to organize a social meeting and provide food/beer for the visiting team. There are tournaments where awards for off-field performance are more coveted than the on-field awards.
I have already started training for next season and am excited about making my fitness goals over the next 12 weeks. My goal is to lose 15Lbs of fat which should really help with speed. This comes out to just over 1Lb/week given the 12 week timeframe. I am also weightlifting on a 3 day split (upper body, legs, deadlifts) and jogging ~4 times/week with HIIT sprints as I can fit them in. Between work and 2 kids in baseball it is tough to find this much time but I am managing so far.
I ran 5 miles yesterday (and it was a breeze) and am going to run 7 miles today to give me 12 for the weekend. If I can manage to get another 8 in during the week it would make for a nice 20 mile week.