The Rugby Test - What is it, how do I take it, etc.?

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Mike Channin
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The Rugby Test - What is it, how do I take it, etc.?

Post by Mike Channin »

The 'Rugby Test' was originally discussed on the C2 UK forum sometime in the last year, and is apparently one of the yardstick fitness tests used by rugby coaches to assess the fitness of players in the English Premiership.

The test is a (sort of) pyramid of intervals as follows:

1000m - 3 minute rest
750m - 2:30 rest
500m - 2:00 rest
250m - 2:00 rest
750m

You add all the times of your pieces to get a total score.

Apparently, a premiership rugby player is expected to get 11 minutes dead or better.

This was used as the CTC challenge back in March - have a look on the CTC for some truly scary scores.

Common wisdom is that your overall average pace should be approximately 2k pace -2 (i.e. 2 seconds faster than your 2k PB pace per 500m)

This is a challenging and interesting workout. Difficult to pace, especially with that last 750m lurking at the end.

To add some interest, I'm going to go and create an ELM challenge in the main FS area for this one.

A good workout for sharpening in the run up to the race season...
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5'11", 50 - older, slower, greyer, fatter (and needs to update the sig times too)
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Mike Channin
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Post by Mike Channin »

And for an example, here is my attempt at this from tonight. Only the third time I'd ever done this, and previous time of 11:06 pretty weak, so confident in breaking it, but as you can see, this is quite tricky to pace...

1000m - 3:17.0 (got tempted into a SPB, went well, but was I going to suffer for it later?)
750m - 2:28.9 (Going well, but really starting to suffer by end)
500m - 1:50.6 (Blew up 200m in, and again 150m from end)
250m - 0:49.1 (Got through on auto-pilot - suffering at end - lost .5s on last stroke)
750m - 2:34.8 (Blew at half way, took a few easy strokes and got moving again. Missed the 11min total by under half a second. Bu99er!)

Total time: 11:00.4 - Av Split 1:41.3

Obviously should be able to improve this with better pacing.

But what can YOU do???
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5'11", 50 - older, slower, greyer, fatter (and needs to update the sig times too)
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