Rugby is one tough sport...

Saturday, October 8, 2011

“John…could you have cut the invisible fence line where you’re digging?” Mimi asked as I brought a wheelbarrow load of dirt from her woods to fill in the holes I’d made over the summer when digging up three trees. Well now…that would be colossally stupid since there are these little white flags, even through the woods, to let Edgar know how far he could run before getting zapped…and to alert potential hole diggers that they should stay clear. I noticed the flags and distinctly remember thinking that I should dig just beyond them so that Edgar wouldn’t stumble in the hole I’d leave. Distinctly. Of course it never occurred to my pea-brain that by so doing, I’d dig right into the cable buried two inches below the surface. “You know…it could have been me. I’ll check to see if anyone else is digging anywhere in your woods right not…because maybe it was them and not me,” I said. Okay…I said some of it.

I did do some good things while there and managed to break a decent sweat for a few hours. I left there after cutting the wire and headed for Jason’s rugby match. His club was playing the Cleveland Rovers, the team that received a nice write-up in the PD last week, which had infuriated Jason. “They used to be the best, but we’ve beaten them like a drum for the past several years,” he’d declared after reading the article. In fact, the streak was at seven and soon became eight…East side dominance continues over West side Rugbyiers. Jason had been limping or a week with a painful groin injury and I advised him not to play as it would only get worse. “Like you’d never do anything when you’re hurt…right, dad?” Okay…do as I say applies here…but he wasn’t listening. He played about 20 minutes, but when he needed to accelerate quickly to make a tackle, the injury prevailed and he was out of the game.

And what a tough game it is. I don’t understand most of what’s happening, but I know hard hits without pads when I see them. This is a total contact sport with the contestants wearing cotton rugby jerseys for protection…which is to say nothing at all. I saw no debilitating contact injuries the entire time I was there and can only attribute this to superior conditioning or blatant drunkenness. Actually, they do socialize quite heavily…but it’s after the game. In fact, Jason arrived at our house at 3 a.m. in the morning and proceeded to the bathroom where he spent the next 30 minutes with his arms wrapped around the porcelain god. I was annoyed to think that he’d been out drinking and had left his dogs home alone. When he got up at 9 a.m., the told me how they’d gotten a party bus and that he’d secured a ‘dog sitter’ just in case he celebrated too long after winning the big game. Okay…I’m not crazy about any drinking to excess, but I give him credit for being responsible if he does.

Survival Workout duration: 60 minutes.
Training Heart Rate: 100 to 150 bpm.
Calories burned during workout: 600.