Putting in work.

WOO HOO! I've had a minor breakthrough in my rugby training; THANK GOD. Jeez, I needed a little sign of progress. The other day when I threw up after my run, it was from running around a park that's up the street from my school twice. Usually, for rugby practice we try and run it once before we start which is about 1.7 miles I guess. I think this park is a pretty good run because there are some flat stretches that allow you to work on speed and then some awesome inclines thrown in with it. So I threw up after running it twice, or 3.4 miles (lame), at a decently quick pace. Today I ran the park three times, so 5.1 miles. It's still not a distance to brag about, but what I'm more concerned with is that I was able to run it three times in a row and still be able to run the last lap at almost the same fast pace I would run one lap with. It was tough at some points, especially right before the biggest incline on the last lap. I remember in my head yelling at myself, "AHH! I NEED TO STOP! IT'S TOO HARD! IT HURTS! BLAAAAH I CAN'T RUN ANYMORE! I NEEEED TO SLOW DOWN!" but I kept on running and ran really hard up until the very end! So the day that I threw up actually did come in handy; now running the park twice has been added to my list of runs that can be considered a piece of cake (or at least not a tough challenge). And then taking that next step of adding another lap will only give me potential to improve even more. I feel like the world of rugby fitness is in my hands now; I've never had to worry about working hard, but I have had to worry about whether or not I'm acually making progress. So now that progression is showing, there's nothing I need to worry about. All I need to do is work hard and push myself even harder, which is always a given :)
This is extremely important I think for rugby because rugby requires this uniquely insane amount of fitness: you need to be able to absolutely sprint for long periods of time. I don't care what position someone plays, I think that the bottom line to being a good rugby player is having an infinite sprinting endurance. So cross country runners and track sprinters both have things they need to work on for rugby, neither of them are in the clear. I wish that other people on the rugby team could see this and how important it is. Sometimes people on the team wonder why they aren't improving, or why they're still struggling/not starting/not getting the playing time they want, and I know exactly where I can credit at least half of it to. People question these things especially when they work hard/do workouts on their own, but these people need to reconsider what exactly they do when they work out. So many people think that "going for a run/jog" on off days of rugby practices is enough, but I beg to differ depending on what exactly a run consists of for them. Most of the time, people are using the same-exact-run which consists of the saaaaame distance and the saaaaaame pace. Great, you can run around the park once in less than a half hour. Now what? The answer should be to move onto another pace or distance, but sometimes it never happens. I know people who just run two miles and call it quits...all-the-time. That limits so much potential! It's like sitting yourself behind a wall. For rugby, you need to PUSH yourself to your absolute last limit. It's always an immense challenge, and in order to keep up with it you've gotta step up to the plate with the right amount of fitness to back you up.