In today's post, a couple of us are going to analyze a specific theme--longevity, using Ruiyong's career as a context.
An interview was conducted a couple years ago with Haile Gebrselassie and his wife. As everybody already knows, Haile is one of the greatest distance runners in the universe(not a hyperbole) and everybody recognizes the sheer precocity(or genius) of the words and ideas that spring from his heart and mouth! So let us get to what was gleaned from the interview. One of a couple journalists on a visiting trip to the capital of Ethiopia asked the both of them if they have any designs for all or any of their 4 children to one day be as great as Haile in the field of distance running? This was what was said, with lots of room for error in transcription and semantical translation:
His wife replied first:
"Both of us are very affirmatively united in the fact that for all four of our children, education come first. We do not say we are very against our children pursuing running as a career, but we would much prefer them to set their sights on getting a good education so that they may get a 'proper' job and be useful to society."
Haile corroborated:
"Yeah, you know being a professional runner is a very tough job and I am very thankful and blessed to be where I am and what I achieved but I was just very lucky that God chose to bless me in this way. His blessing isn't the same for everybody, otherwise any average runner will become like me. I and a few others like Bekele, Tergat, and El Guerrouj are one in a billion and the reality is it is very hard to succeed in distance running. You have to have no other choice, no education, no other means of surviving, and if you are feel very strongly for this you can bring your whole mind and body to focus on succeeding at running, but even this faith is very tough and I recognize that I am just lucky. It could have been anybody not named me(Haile)...."
"Running for health and fun is something I strongly recommend, and I have a strong connection with, because it has benefited both my mental and physical well-being. But running for a career is a different thing, and I would very much prefer if today's youths, if they have a chance and the resources, to stay in education and pursue a good one. That way they have a better chance of success and more stability, they also contribute more to society."
Barring transcriptional errors, one thing is pretty clear from the interview, Haile says: DON'T get into professional running, that should only be your last resort---that is you do not have any income and zero or negligible education, and you are very desperate perhaps in great poverty and you just want and have to make money to survive, and if you come from East Africa where genetic and environmental conditions naturally predispose you to likely have an infinitely better chance of success(read olympic medalling potential and world beater) than perhaps some young teen/youth from Singapore or Malaysia. Singaporean teens and youths: get yourself interested in your books and subjects and learn them well, even if they have little relevance to your career in the future. Because they do one very good thing for you---they train your mind to think critically, analytically and creatively so as to give you a very high probability of success in whichever area of work you want to specialize in the future! A good or educated brain/mind is infinitely easier to cultivate than a good set of biomechanical and biocellular parameters.
Do not get into professional distance running, the road is closed, says Haile Gebrselassie and therefore myself as well. Also by Haile, you can't be as useful to society as a professional distance runner as compared to perhaps some other professional jobs in the world. Your only usefulness as a professional distance runner is probably to inspire and encourage other average runners to be a professional runner by fawning over your relative celebrity-like status, but this is counter to what Haile recommends, and Haile is a man of great distance running experience! I respect him, you respect him, and we do the same with his opinions and ideas.
Bottomline: If you are a Singaporean distance runner in your youth, teens or early to mid twenties and dream or think of wanting to become a professional distance runner, YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU ARE GETTING INTO!
There is an old proverb: BECAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH(DESIRE) FOR! The things you desire are often times based on a very biased set of world-view and beliefs filtered by your own ego and pride, and you continually and stubbornly grant yourself those world-views and beliefs without any external moderation or guidance from more experience human beings on earth such as Haile and some others. Ryan Hall, if I can recall in some interview last year 2015, also uncannily said the same thing:"Becareful what you wish(desire) for" and he was having some regrets about how he conducted his professional running career and getting into situations he wished or desired to have so much but encountering some accompanying roadblock that simply cannot and never will be avoided no matter how hard he tried to dodge because they come in a package, and that it threatened him and his career time and again which all led to his demise and downfall at the end of his retirement. This concept of 'becareful what you wish for' can also be applied to not only distance running or sport, but any part of your life as well.
As somebody with vast knowledge and experience with the sport of distance running, I can also guarantee one thing from statistical evidence. It is infinitely easier to train for and conquer Mount Everest, barring bad weather and avalanches, than it is for you to succeed(read as winning an olympic medal in any distance event) in distance running as a professional runner. This is not slighting all Everest adventurers and conquerors and their achievements, but statistics say so. You have disproportionately more Everest conquerors in every 4 year olympic cycle than you have medallists in the distance events. And to win only Olympic gold is even more rarefied.
But here's the thing: running as a hobby and passionate pastime is totally agreeably and pleasurable. And in our next post soon enough, we look at why the career of professional distance running is not all rosy and glamorous as it appears on the surface. We explain to you why it is better to run a 3hour marathon for the rest of your life and not look for improvements to that at all, than to keep trying to train harder and faster for better and better times, like perhaps to go from 3hours to 2:50, and then from 2:50 to 2:40, and then from 2:40 to 2:30.
We obviously will also explain to you why it is infinitely better for Ruiyong to remain running in the region from 2:26 to 2:40 for the next 20 years well into even his 40s and 50s, than running, by a miracle(and not by proper physical preparation because he has demonstrated none!), a 2:18 in London on an injured plantar foot that is GUARANTEED 100% not to be able to heal in time for London marathon on the 24th April, but have to be forced to retire early in say 2017 or 2018 because he had destroyed his body by causing disproportionate wear and tear by not being physically ready to handle 2:18.
Tuesday 29 March 2016
Sunday 27 March 2016
Devastation and disbelief in Cardiff
Renato Canova once said there are 2 types of breakdown that can potentially occur at the limits of distance running performance. They are:
1)Mechanical breakdown or failure
2)Physiological breakdown or failure
Let me explain number 1. Have you ever been in a hard run or race and felt like your breathing was pretty relaxed and easy but your muscles and/or tendons and/or ligaments are feeling strained and/or weak and/or on the verge of spasm/injury? You are experiencing mechanical breakdown, and this means one thing--your mechanical system(biomechanics) is not ready to handle the load(read speed) of the effort! But your physiological system is ready to handle it!
Let me explain number 2. Have you ever been in a hard run or race and felt like your muscles, tendons and ligaments are very light and bouncy as if you could float in the air and there is absolutely very little inertia in your stride-steps, but your breathing is kinda more labored than your muscles seem to allow, and your heartrate isa little too elevated as well. You are experiencing or close to experiencing a physiological breakdown if you keep up the intensity and don't reduce it. But your mechanical system can handle it!
Let me explain why number 1 and/or number 2 exists! The 2 failures don't necessarily occur always in pairs, and athletes often times experience exclusively either one or the other, and sometimes both at the same time as well. There are easily attributable reasons for that below:
1. Lack of race specific training is one:in this case for Ruiyong's half marathon race he very probably lacked race specific threshold runs of about an hour, something i discussed about earlier and saying that his threshold runs were severely underdosed in terms of pace and intensity.
2. Lack of fundamental aerobic base is another, and mishandling mileages is another guilty party: in this case Ruiyong suddenly jammed up his mileage from 100km a week in Singapore just before he left for Kenya to whip up his mileage to 160km within 1 or 2 weeks in Iten! We cannot believe his total callousness towards his own health, safety and integrity, total callousness towards wisdom and advice. What, in the world, is Ruiyong doing? And, WHO does he think he is or try to be? If that is not enough, training properly for a fantastic half marathon require a minimum of 3 months in assumed good health, but Ruiyong has short circuited his training to only half of 3 months---6 actual weeks of real training in kenya. We are deeply saddened by the state of affairs surrounding Ruiyong, and we need to get the word out to as many people as possible, to retrieve all their support for him back with immediate effect, including our very own sports association and governing body, his sponsors H2O, Oakley, and new sponsor Aasics etc. And those who are close friends with him should talk him into giving up London and Rio for now and prepare for a long rest and recovery. And to know there is NO SHAME in doing so, only exceedingly altered egos for not doing so. He has in all likelihood incurred some serious enough damage on his plantar to be beyond repair, a CAREER ENDER!
3. Then overestimation of physical and/or physiological capabilities on race day is yet another:starting faster than he thought he could handle. In this case Ruiyong's mechanical system broke down terribly under an overestimation of his abilities gotten from training, because he incurred a severe plantar injury that mightn't have happened if he really knew that he was perhaps only capable of an average 5k split of 16:10 or 16:20(68:30 and higher) for the half marathon in his present day form.
All in all, Ruiyong's post race report clearly expressed his biomechanical breakdown after only a meagre 5km at a speed(15:47) that isn't even all that fast given he is supposedly in the 'BEST PRO SHAPE OF HIS LIFE FROM ALL THE BEST WORKOUTS AND RUNS IN ITEN!' But clearly the truth couldn't be any more clearer from the mechanical breakdown---his mechanical body is SIMPLY NOT READY OR 'NOT TALENTED' ENOUGH to handle a 66:30 half marathon which gave the signal warning of pain in his plantar heel area, and definitely physiological breakdown would have been lingering around the corner as well.
But rather than accepting this fact or even half of this fact like a true distance running warrior, he decided to use an excuse card saying his shoes weren't good enough, or supportive enough. And blamed the plantar recurrence on that shoe, than admitting that his plantar was incurred most probably to the lightning quick and suicidal pace that he is in no mechanical and/or physiological shape to handle! There is a saying " it isn't about the shoe, it is about the runner". If one is a great runner, it doesn't matter the type of shoe he wears, heck, he could even be running barefoot and winning the race, like Abebe Bikila, who you wouldn't think is one for finding excuses for failure and poor performance. He should be taking a leaf from his old friend Eliud Kipchoge who ran and won berlin with even less supportive shoes than he did, because his insole was totally misplaced and dangling in the wind causing him not only less foot support but so much more resistance to motion but still ended up running close to 2:04 flat! What is going through Ruiyong's mind right now?! We totally wonder............
If he blames the weather, we give that to him, but he cant be blaming plantar, shoes, hills, hard road surface for his failure to live up to the billing of a potential olympic marathoner, which is obviously worth another half marathon national record, in fact a severe thrashing of Mok's 67:08. He is always in the business of thinking he can or could, always in the business of dreaming way too big to overestimate his capabilities so that it becomes a very real delusion! Why?!!? Everyone knows he is very disappointed with his close to 68 flat time, but to run to excuses for protection stinks completely of dishonor, irresponsibility, cowardice. If he wanted to blame plantar, he shouldn't have ran the race at all, he shouldn't even have been to kenya to prepare for a marathon training cycle and shouldn't have had any plans to try for olympic qualification at all, KNOWING HE ONLY RECENTLY HAD A PLANTAR INJURY AND KNOWING THE DEPRESSING HISTORY OF ATHLETES WHO HAVE HAD PLANTAR AND TAKE PRETTY LONG TO RECOVER! If he wanted to blame the hard road surface, when is a road half marathon not ever on a hard road surface, and aren't all roads the same tarmac of the same chemical constituents such as bitumen and cement? Didn't he know what he signed up for and so it brings us back to the question of why didn't he terminate all his olympic qualification plans for the year in the very first place to save himself all this unwelcomed and disagreeable circumstances? Why?!!?
Why?! Quite a few of us have been speaking about a buzzword--ego. Is his ego bigger than his physical talent and/or ability? We think so, to a very high probability!
*FYI The winner Geoffrey Kamworer ran an almost identical time of 59:10 as 2 years ago in Denmark, despite the so called 'bad' conditions, which was really only 'bad' in the last 3-4km when rain and wind started pouring and howling respectively. What was even more impressive was he fell at the start of the race and listen to this---scrapped both knees with what appears to be deep wounds with soft tissue and some whitish bone exposed! He gave no excuses in his post race interview and mentioned the injury didn't so much as bothered him at all. When asked about the wind and rain he was equally nonchalent about it and never once rue how badly it affected his race. That is sportsmanship, that is warrior-like, but he obviously has way more talent and better guidance and training from Renato Canova than Ruiyong has ever had.
**FYI If there is anybody more prepared for the wind and rain it is those runners who have trained and ran at altitude and Ruiyong is one of them. The winds are stronger and faster higher up in the sky and Ruiyong must have been used to winds at the kamariny track and dirt roads of the valleys and mountains. And the severe wind and rain only manifested late in the race for Ruiyong, around the 17km mark of the race, with only 4 kilometres to go, and with such a supposedly highly trained athlete just coming back down from altitude like Ruiyong, the wind and rain shouldn't slow him down by too much.
We recommend all his close friends to persuade him to change his plans about London and Rio. We recommend all his sponsors to seriously consider even sponsoring such a foolhardy and callous individual who justifies doing Singapore proud by continuing to complete the race with a serious plantar injury and pain. There is absolutely no pride, and we are totally embarrassed that he has messed up ethical and moral values upside down and gotten his priorities all wrong.' Nation before self' is only for individuals who are fit and healthy. Soldiers put the country before their own lives only if they are battle ready and have the weapons and tactics at hand to face the enemy in battle!!! No soldier goes to battle half-fit and half ready or with a half-weapon, or with some severe or even moderate injury or illnesss and feels proud of that when he dies on the battlefield or worst--tries to get his mates and commanders to feel proud of him by getting them to sympathize with how loyal he is to the nation!!! That is (foolish)^1000.(excuse my hyperbole). Ruiyong is similarly trying to get yours and mine, our sympathies, he is trying to use the emotional keycard and take advantage of all of yours and our emotional vulnerabilities as human beings, in the name of nationalism and loyalty, so that you will continue to blindly buy into his delusion and invest your resources such as time, money and energy into following something that returns a virtually non-existent probability of success. Does any investment trader invest any time or money into a low probability trade or a trade that has no chance of success? NOPE!
I hope all of us get the point! Ruiyong is so deluded in his Rio and Tokyo Olympic plans that he has even deluded the morals and ethics he is supposed to have learnt so well given very aristocratic education in higher institutions in Singapore and USA!
We are at our wits end, please spread the message and share this blog on as many accounts and pages as you can. You probably are doing more national pride and honor by sharing this than continuing in your support and belief of Ruiyong's chances of qualifying for Rio, or even breaking the national record of 2:24:22 for that matter, given how he has destroyed his plantar organ during the half marathon race.
1)Mechanical breakdown or failure
2)Physiological breakdown or failure
Let me explain number 1. Have you ever been in a hard run or race and felt like your breathing was pretty relaxed and easy but your muscles and/or tendons and/or ligaments are feeling strained and/or weak and/or on the verge of spasm/injury? You are experiencing mechanical breakdown, and this means one thing--your mechanical system(biomechanics) is not ready to handle the load(read speed) of the effort! But your physiological system is ready to handle it!
Let me explain number 2. Have you ever been in a hard run or race and felt like your muscles, tendons and ligaments are very light and bouncy as if you could float in the air and there is absolutely very little inertia in your stride-steps, but your breathing is kinda more labored than your muscles seem to allow, and your heartrate isa little too elevated as well. You are experiencing or close to experiencing a physiological breakdown if you keep up the intensity and don't reduce it. But your mechanical system can handle it!
Let me explain why number 1 and/or number 2 exists! The 2 failures don't necessarily occur always in pairs, and athletes often times experience exclusively either one or the other, and sometimes both at the same time as well. There are easily attributable reasons for that below:
1. Lack of race specific training is one:in this case for Ruiyong's half marathon race he very probably lacked race specific threshold runs of about an hour, something i discussed about earlier and saying that his threshold runs were severely underdosed in terms of pace and intensity.
2. Lack of fundamental aerobic base is another, and mishandling mileages is another guilty party: in this case Ruiyong suddenly jammed up his mileage from 100km a week in Singapore just before he left for Kenya to whip up his mileage to 160km within 1 or 2 weeks in Iten! We cannot believe his total callousness towards his own health, safety and integrity, total callousness towards wisdom and advice. What, in the world, is Ruiyong doing? And, WHO does he think he is or try to be? If that is not enough, training properly for a fantastic half marathon require a minimum of 3 months in assumed good health, but Ruiyong has short circuited his training to only half of 3 months---6 actual weeks of real training in kenya. We are deeply saddened by the state of affairs surrounding Ruiyong, and we need to get the word out to as many people as possible, to retrieve all their support for him back with immediate effect, including our very own sports association and governing body, his sponsors H2O, Oakley, and new sponsor Aasics etc. And those who are close friends with him should talk him into giving up London and Rio for now and prepare for a long rest and recovery. And to know there is NO SHAME in doing so, only exceedingly altered egos for not doing so. He has in all likelihood incurred some serious enough damage on his plantar to be beyond repair, a CAREER ENDER!
3. Then overestimation of physical and/or physiological capabilities on race day is yet another:starting faster than he thought he could handle. In this case Ruiyong's mechanical system broke down terribly under an overestimation of his abilities gotten from training, because he incurred a severe plantar injury that mightn't have happened if he really knew that he was perhaps only capable of an average 5k split of 16:10 or 16:20(68:30 and higher) for the half marathon in his present day form.
All in all, Ruiyong's post race report clearly expressed his biomechanical breakdown after only a meagre 5km at a speed(15:47) that isn't even all that fast given he is supposedly in the 'BEST PRO SHAPE OF HIS LIFE FROM ALL THE BEST WORKOUTS AND RUNS IN ITEN!' But clearly the truth couldn't be any more clearer from the mechanical breakdown---his mechanical body is SIMPLY NOT READY OR 'NOT TALENTED' ENOUGH to handle a 66:30 half marathon which gave the signal warning of pain in his plantar heel area, and definitely physiological breakdown would have been lingering around the corner as well.
But rather than accepting this fact or even half of this fact like a true distance running warrior, he decided to use an excuse card saying his shoes weren't good enough, or supportive enough. And blamed the plantar recurrence on that shoe, than admitting that his plantar was incurred most probably to the lightning quick and suicidal pace that he is in no mechanical and/or physiological shape to handle! There is a saying " it isn't about the shoe, it is about the runner". If one is a great runner, it doesn't matter the type of shoe he wears, heck, he could even be running barefoot and winning the race, like Abebe Bikila, who you wouldn't think is one for finding excuses for failure and poor performance. He should be taking a leaf from his old friend Eliud Kipchoge who ran and won berlin with even less supportive shoes than he did, because his insole was totally misplaced and dangling in the wind causing him not only less foot support but so much more resistance to motion but still ended up running close to 2:04 flat! What is going through Ruiyong's mind right now?! We totally wonder............
If he blames the weather, we give that to him, but he cant be blaming plantar, shoes, hills, hard road surface for his failure to live up to the billing of a potential olympic marathoner, which is obviously worth another half marathon national record, in fact a severe thrashing of Mok's 67:08. He is always in the business of thinking he can or could, always in the business of dreaming way too big to overestimate his capabilities so that it becomes a very real delusion! Why?!!? Everyone knows he is very disappointed with his close to 68 flat time, but to run to excuses for protection stinks completely of dishonor, irresponsibility, cowardice. If he wanted to blame plantar, he shouldn't have ran the race at all, he shouldn't even have been to kenya to prepare for a marathon training cycle and shouldn't have had any plans to try for olympic qualification at all, KNOWING HE ONLY RECENTLY HAD A PLANTAR INJURY AND KNOWING THE DEPRESSING HISTORY OF ATHLETES WHO HAVE HAD PLANTAR AND TAKE PRETTY LONG TO RECOVER! If he wanted to blame the hard road surface, when is a road half marathon not ever on a hard road surface, and aren't all roads the same tarmac of the same chemical constituents such as bitumen and cement? Didn't he know what he signed up for and so it brings us back to the question of why didn't he terminate all his olympic qualification plans for the year in the very first place to save himself all this unwelcomed and disagreeable circumstances? Why?!!?
Why?! Quite a few of us have been speaking about a buzzword--ego. Is his ego bigger than his physical talent and/or ability? We think so, to a very high probability!
*FYI The winner Geoffrey Kamworer ran an almost identical time of 59:10 as 2 years ago in Denmark, despite the so called 'bad' conditions, which was really only 'bad' in the last 3-4km when rain and wind started pouring and howling respectively. What was even more impressive was he fell at the start of the race and listen to this---scrapped both knees with what appears to be deep wounds with soft tissue and some whitish bone exposed! He gave no excuses in his post race interview and mentioned the injury didn't so much as bothered him at all. When asked about the wind and rain he was equally nonchalent about it and never once rue how badly it affected his race. That is sportsmanship, that is warrior-like, but he obviously has way more talent and better guidance and training from Renato Canova than Ruiyong has ever had.
**FYI If there is anybody more prepared for the wind and rain it is those runners who have trained and ran at altitude and Ruiyong is one of them. The winds are stronger and faster higher up in the sky and Ruiyong must have been used to winds at the kamariny track and dirt roads of the valleys and mountains. And the severe wind and rain only manifested late in the race for Ruiyong, around the 17km mark of the race, with only 4 kilometres to go, and with such a supposedly highly trained athlete just coming back down from altitude like Ruiyong, the wind and rain shouldn't slow him down by too much.
We recommend all his close friends to persuade him to change his plans about London and Rio. We recommend all his sponsors to seriously consider even sponsoring such a foolhardy and callous individual who justifies doing Singapore proud by continuing to complete the race with a serious plantar injury and pain. There is absolutely no pride, and we are totally embarrassed that he has messed up ethical and moral values upside down and gotten his priorities all wrong.' Nation before self' is only for individuals who are fit and healthy. Soldiers put the country before their own lives only if they are battle ready and have the weapons and tactics at hand to face the enemy in battle!!! No soldier goes to battle half-fit and half ready or with a half-weapon, or with some severe or even moderate injury or illnesss and feels proud of that when he dies on the battlefield or worst--tries to get his mates and commanders to feel proud of him by getting them to sympathize with how loyal he is to the nation!!! That is (foolish)^1000.(excuse my hyperbole). Ruiyong is similarly trying to get yours and mine, our sympathies, he is trying to use the emotional keycard and take advantage of all of yours and our emotional vulnerabilities as human beings, in the name of nationalism and loyalty, so that you will continue to blindly buy into his delusion and invest your resources such as time, money and energy into following something that returns a virtually non-existent probability of success. Does any investment trader invest any time or money into a low probability trade or a trade that has no chance of success? NOPE!
I hope all of us get the point! Ruiyong is so deluded in his Rio and Tokyo Olympic plans that he has even deluded the morals and ethics he is supposed to have learnt so well given very aristocratic education in higher institutions in Singapore and USA!
We are at our wits end, please spread the message and share this blog on as many accounts and pages as you can. You probably are doing more national pride and honor by sharing this than continuing in your support and belief of Ruiyong's chances of qualifying for Rio, or even breaking the national record of 2:24:22 for that matter, given how he has destroyed his plantar organ during the half marathon race.
Friday 25 March 2016
World half marathon championships is finally here!
In this post, we provide a pre-race debrief about Ruiyong's chances of getting a medal at these championships and also check out the likely weather conditions for the race.
Temperatures are likely going to be in the vicinity of 10 degrees celsius or lower with terrible rain and wind with the result that one could feel cooler than 10 degrees celsius. In a long road race like the half marathon, weather conditions are heavyweight factors in determining how one would likely perform during a race, and big rain and wind don't normally produce very fast times although there are couple rare instances in the history of distance running where athletes run beyond belief and beyond expectations in such conditions. To save time and space, I will use just one example--Paula Radcliff's 2002 commonwealth games 10000m performance of 30:00, in wind, rain and reasonable cold, while leading from start to finish all by herself. That was an incredible performance to this day, if we considered in addition that if we suppose we could omit the then world record of 29:30 by the just recently self-confessed Chinese doper Wang Junxia, Paula would have produced a 'legitimate' world record of 30:00 under such difficult conditions. (You may assume Paula to be a clean athlete beyond any reasonable doubt despite there being some allegations recently about her 'weird' values in her blood samples from many years back!) A couple other examples, in fact many more, exist of distance athletes who ran incredible times under tough conditions, whether these conditions be too cold, too rainy, too windy, OR, too hot, too humid! And any credible and reasonable distance expert or even beginner would agree to define 'incredible' as something that minimally satisfies the condition of at least matching one's personal best or better yet, breaking it. However being 'better' doesn't always necessarily mean breaking one's pb because there can be other possible outcomes, in view of a myriad other factors like weather conditions, that could foreseeably justify a 'better' nametag.
With that, and after analyzing all of Ruiyong's training in Iten so far, we expect him to still be in solid half marathon shape whether or not there is strong rain or wind. Granted, he is also now a newly minted 'professional' runner, and his existing and surviving are supposed to be intricately related to the sole act of running his best and fastest possible on a RACEDAY, whatever that race may be, just like what a professional runner should do. All his training hitherto in Iten, after intense examination, seems to suggest he is capable, PHYSICALLY, to reproduce the form which saw him ran 67:21 last year in September or faster, something which I haven't explicitly mentioned yet. The only thing I have explicitly suggested in all my previous posts was that Ruiyong's training doesn't at all(read zero) suggest he is PHYSICALLY capable of running in the 2:18 region in London next month. As to whether he is MENTALLY ready to reproduce another 67:21 or faster should not even be a question of debate, because after all, he is a full-time sponsored professional runner, and it is required of him to be able to produce solid performances on demand, just like how you would expect a professional transport service like SMRT to produce 99 percent quality in transport service!(since nothing in the world is 100%) With that said, word has got around to our ears that Ruiyong has seemed to lost his Nike gear sponsorship with Nike Singapore for some reason I would prefer not to mention yet, and is now walking around the team hotel in Cardiff, and for the past few weeks in Iten, in Aasics gear. Everyone knows Aasics is no second rate substitute in terms of gear and apparel for distance runners, and Ryan Hall the holder of America's fastest marathon time to date was an Aasics representative for all his professional career, producing also many other star-studded performances on the roads. The engineers and mechanics at Aasics are not more inferior than those at Nike and addidas, and the same can be said of the quality of their R&D and technological support. There should not be a difference at all, in Ruiyong's ability to give a solid performance whether in Nike or Aasics gear.
With how Ruiyong has been going about social media proclaiming almost throughout the ends of the earth how he is having best workouts, best days, best '_____' and many more bests, we obviously have to take him at his word and similarly expect a 'best' half marathon whatever the conditions, rain, snow, shine or fire! We hope to be stoked for him, and we have evidence to suggest we can be stoked for him because all his training in Iten throughout the past 6 weeks have been uncannily geared towards running a great half marathon than a great marathon. Would we be surprised if he ran 66:30? NOPE, absolutely not, and that's a 100% given that nothing can be 100% in this world! Would he be able to therefore say run 3minutes slower for a half way marathon split next month in say 69:30(assuming he already has ran 66:30 tomorrow), and keep that up for another half marathon in 69:15 so that he breaks 2:19:00 and qualifies for Rio, that is almost a definite NO, a 99.9% NO. It isn't such a simple thing to add 3minutes to your half marathon pb for a half-way split and think that is supposed to work out perfectly. There are many other factors to consider before one can determine how slow of a half-way split one needs to minimally negative split the whole marathon race by 1 second, while assuming best practices for marathon racing must always produce a negative split of at least 1 second, just like how one would also assume that best practices for 800m running must always produce a positive split of nearly 1 second as well, for obvious reasons I would not discuss here.
Do we hope for a new national record tomorrow(current record by Mok Ying Ren in January with 67:08)? As a singaporean, just like all my singaporean friends, we can't wait for a new one, obviously! And we hope Ruiyong is up to the task, especially since we have already provided everybody above with great reason to believe he has, whether consciously or unconsciously, been in a rhythm of training that seems to support half marathon racing! We are not sure if he knows it, or whether he knows it but isn't saying it. Having said that, there is always a small or big chance our analysis could be wrong, given we don't have every single workout or run he did in Iten, and the ones we did analyzed were only those 1,2 or 3 specially documented workouts by Ruiyong on his facebook page, and we assume they could tell a pretty accurate picture of his overall goals and what kind of shape he is rounding into, because he says those were 'best' workouts or runs ever in his life.
As far as I have tried, I have hopefully answered most questions about what to expect from Ruiyong tomorrow in Cardiff, with one question left that is situated right at the top of the post. Is Ruiyong medalling? Absolutely not, this one was obvious.
We wish him all the best :)
Temperatures are likely going to be in the vicinity of 10 degrees celsius or lower with terrible rain and wind with the result that one could feel cooler than 10 degrees celsius. In a long road race like the half marathon, weather conditions are heavyweight factors in determining how one would likely perform during a race, and big rain and wind don't normally produce very fast times although there are couple rare instances in the history of distance running where athletes run beyond belief and beyond expectations in such conditions. To save time and space, I will use just one example--Paula Radcliff's 2002 commonwealth games 10000m performance of 30:00, in wind, rain and reasonable cold, while leading from start to finish all by herself. That was an incredible performance to this day, if we considered in addition that if we suppose we could omit the then world record of 29:30 by the just recently self-confessed Chinese doper Wang Junxia, Paula would have produced a 'legitimate' world record of 30:00 under such difficult conditions. (You may assume Paula to be a clean athlete beyond any reasonable doubt despite there being some allegations recently about her 'weird' values in her blood samples from many years back!) A couple other examples, in fact many more, exist of distance athletes who ran incredible times under tough conditions, whether these conditions be too cold, too rainy, too windy, OR, too hot, too humid! And any credible and reasonable distance expert or even beginner would agree to define 'incredible' as something that minimally satisfies the condition of at least matching one's personal best or better yet, breaking it. However being 'better' doesn't always necessarily mean breaking one's pb because there can be other possible outcomes, in view of a myriad other factors like weather conditions, that could foreseeably justify a 'better' nametag.
With that, and after analyzing all of Ruiyong's training in Iten so far, we expect him to still be in solid half marathon shape whether or not there is strong rain or wind. Granted, he is also now a newly minted 'professional' runner, and his existing and surviving are supposed to be intricately related to the sole act of running his best and fastest possible on a RACEDAY, whatever that race may be, just like what a professional runner should do. All his training hitherto in Iten, after intense examination, seems to suggest he is capable, PHYSICALLY, to reproduce the form which saw him ran 67:21 last year in September or faster, something which I haven't explicitly mentioned yet. The only thing I have explicitly suggested in all my previous posts was that Ruiyong's training doesn't at all(read zero) suggest he is PHYSICALLY capable of running in the 2:18 region in London next month. As to whether he is MENTALLY ready to reproduce another 67:21 or faster should not even be a question of debate, because after all, he is a full-time sponsored professional runner, and it is required of him to be able to produce solid performances on demand, just like how you would expect a professional transport service like SMRT to produce 99 percent quality in transport service!(since nothing in the world is 100%) With that said, word has got around to our ears that Ruiyong has seemed to lost his Nike gear sponsorship with Nike Singapore for some reason I would prefer not to mention yet, and is now walking around the team hotel in Cardiff, and for the past few weeks in Iten, in Aasics gear. Everyone knows Aasics is no second rate substitute in terms of gear and apparel for distance runners, and Ryan Hall the holder of America's fastest marathon time to date was an Aasics representative for all his professional career, producing also many other star-studded performances on the roads. The engineers and mechanics at Aasics are not more inferior than those at Nike and addidas, and the same can be said of the quality of their R&D and technological support. There should not be a difference at all, in Ruiyong's ability to give a solid performance whether in Nike or Aasics gear.
With how Ruiyong has been going about social media proclaiming almost throughout the ends of the earth how he is having best workouts, best days, best '_____' and many more bests, we obviously have to take him at his word and similarly expect a 'best' half marathon whatever the conditions, rain, snow, shine or fire! We hope to be stoked for him, and we have evidence to suggest we can be stoked for him because all his training in Iten throughout the past 6 weeks have been uncannily geared towards running a great half marathon than a great marathon. Would we be surprised if he ran 66:30? NOPE, absolutely not, and that's a 100% given that nothing can be 100% in this world! Would he be able to therefore say run 3minutes slower for a half way marathon split next month in say 69:30(assuming he already has ran 66:30 tomorrow), and keep that up for another half marathon in 69:15 so that he breaks 2:19:00 and qualifies for Rio, that is almost a definite NO, a 99.9% NO. It isn't such a simple thing to add 3minutes to your half marathon pb for a half-way split and think that is supposed to work out perfectly. There are many other factors to consider before one can determine how slow of a half-way split one needs to minimally negative split the whole marathon race by 1 second, while assuming best practices for marathon racing must always produce a negative split of at least 1 second, just like how one would also assume that best practices for 800m running must always produce a positive split of nearly 1 second as well, for obvious reasons I would not discuss here.
Do we hope for a new national record tomorrow(current record by Mok Ying Ren in January with 67:08)? As a singaporean, just like all my singaporean friends, we can't wait for a new one, obviously! And we hope Ruiyong is up to the task, especially since we have already provided everybody above with great reason to believe he has, whether consciously or unconsciously, been in a rhythm of training that seems to support half marathon racing! We are not sure if he knows it, or whether he knows it but isn't saying it. Having said that, there is always a small or big chance our analysis could be wrong, given we don't have every single workout or run he did in Iten, and the ones we did analyzed were only those 1,2 or 3 specially documented workouts by Ruiyong on his facebook page, and we assume they could tell a pretty accurate picture of his overall goals and what kind of shape he is rounding into, because he says those were 'best' workouts or runs ever in his life.
As far as I have tried, I have hopefully answered most questions about what to expect from Ruiyong tomorrow in Cardiff, with one question left that is situated right at the top of the post. Is Ruiyong medalling? Absolutely not, this one was obvious.
We wish him all the best :)
Sunday 13 March 2016
Let us EVALUATE Ruiyong's TEMPO RUN?
In this post we analyse Ruiyong's most recent tempo run in Iten.
As any serious or moderately serious distance runner would probably know, tempo runs, also called lactate threshold runs, extend the body's ability to tolerate a higher lactate accumulation which is done by forcing the body to recruit or convert more exclusively slow and fast fibers respectively into fibers that are a mix-pot of both fast and slow, so that one can run fast for a long time, rather than simply running long and very slow, or very very fast for very very short.
To analyse Ruiyong's tempo run, we use the Jack Daniel's Running Formula(a book) as a guide instead of the Renato Canova marathon model. The reason is because Renato Canova's model is such a highly specialized training model that all sorts of training his athletes do are done in sole support of the main specialty events his athletes race. Ergo, he doesn't differentiate very specifically between tempo runs, steady-state runs, moderate runs, cruise intervals and even long runs, like Jack Daniels do. Canova only has 4 types of runs in his model, mainly, regeneration, fundamental, special and specific, and if what you thought you were doing was called tempo run today, he doesn't really care what you think because he only cares about how that run would be defined in his model! And many of us here might not be cognizant of what all these names mean, so it wouldn't be a good idea to use them, even if I were able to explain all of them. In any case, Jack Daniels also has a world reknowned marathon training model, as well as one for every type of race distance available on the planet. Jack Daniels' philosophy revolves around not one specific specialty event like how Renato operates, but rather he has broad definitions of types of training for runners of wide-ranging abilities with no view of what their specialized event might be, and he classifies them generally as tempo runs, easy runs, moderate runs, progression runs, long runs, cruise intervals that anybody can do etc. Many of us are more familiar with these categories and we shall take a look at the tempo run.
Jack defines the tempo run as some pace you could hold anywhere between 50-60 minutes. Ruiyong's half marathon pb is 67:22, 7:22 outside 60minutes, but for administrative convenience, we shall use 67:22 to be a rough estimate of his lactate threshold(LT) pace, which turns out to be 5:08-9 per mile. That means, tempo runs are preferably run at around these paces, for Ruiyong. Let's do altitude adjustment for Ruiyong and find out that 5:08 at sea level is approximately 5:20 at 7800ft, and Ruiyong should be running his tempos, anywhere between 50-60 minutes at 5:20 per mile, if he is trying to extend his ability to tolerate higher lactate accumulation which I presume allows him to run a faster marathon time, like perhaps 2:24, not to even mention anything about 2:18:45, which is what he thought he could or hoped to run in London!
Then the average pace of Ruiyong's 21.1km tempo was 5:34, 14 seconds slower than the recommended LT pace at 7800ft, according to the Jack Daniel's formula. Can this be arguably acceptable and explained away? Perhaps! We could argue Ruiyong was running for more than 60minutes, 13 more minutes to be exact since he took approximately 73 minutes to run 21.1km at 7800ft, so he obviously wouldn't be able to hold LT pace(5:20 per mile) for more than 60minutes. We can give that to him. But for a difference of 14 seconds per mile (5:34-5:20) for only 13minutes more time of running seems way too luxurious and incredibly underdosed, even at altitude. We then learned he was running a moderate tempo, as detailed on his facebook page, which is a broad category of runs also classified in the Jack Daniel's marathon model and many others from famous marathon coaches around the world. Moderate runs are intended to be faster than easy running but slower than LT pace, and since there is such a wide variety of paces to train in between easy and LT paces, there are so many variations of doing a moderate run, and equally many reasons and motives for wanting to do one. Might it be Ruiyong wants to remain conservative in training to stay injury free or is something else the reason?
For now, we should not second-guess or third-guess the reasons for Ruiyong and his coach deciding to do a moderate tempo. And if he says it's supposed to be a simulation for national record attempt in London, that is easily way more plausible than a simulation run for an attempt at directly qualifying in London in the 2:18 region, because a simulation run for 2:18 would probably be somewhere around 5:13-5:15 per mile at 7800ft for 50-60minutes of continuous running, something of a totally different dimension for Ruiyong altogether!
He has all of our full support and backing if the national record attempt is what he is after in London, and if he ceases all the misleading hyperbole on social and national media about having a 'great' shot at running 2:18.
Feel free to provide some comments please :)
As any serious or moderately serious distance runner would probably know, tempo runs, also called lactate threshold runs, extend the body's ability to tolerate a higher lactate accumulation which is done by forcing the body to recruit or convert more exclusively slow and fast fibers respectively into fibers that are a mix-pot of both fast and slow, so that one can run fast for a long time, rather than simply running long and very slow, or very very fast for very very short.
To analyse Ruiyong's tempo run, we use the Jack Daniel's Running Formula(a book) as a guide instead of the Renato Canova marathon model. The reason is because Renato Canova's model is such a highly specialized training model that all sorts of training his athletes do are done in sole support of the main specialty events his athletes race. Ergo, he doesn't differentiate very specifically between tempo runs, steady-state runs, moderate runs, cruise intervals and even long runs, like Jack Daniels do. Canova only has 4 types of runs in his model, mainly, regeneration, fundamental, special and specific, and if what you thought you were doing was called tempo run today, he doesn't really care what you think because he only cares about how that run would be defined in his model! And many of us here might not be cognizant of what all these names mean, so it wouldn't be a good idea to use them, even if I were able to explain all of them. In any case, Jack Daniels also has a world reknowned marathon training model, as well as one for every type of race distance available on the planet. Jack Daniels' philosophy revolves around not one specific specialty event like how Renato operates, but rather he has broad definitions of types of training for runners of wide-ranging abilities with no view of what their specialized event might be, and he classifies them generally as tempo runs, easy runs, moderate runs, progression runs, long runs, cruise intervals that anybody can do etc. Many of us are more familiar with these categories and we shall take a look at the tempo run.
Jack defines the tempo run as some pace you could hold anywhere between 50-60 minutes. Ruiyong's half marathon pb is 67:22, 7:22 outside 60minutes, but for administrative convenience, we shall use 67:22 to be a rough estimate of his lactate threshold(LT) pace, which turns out to be 5:08-9 per mile. That means, tempo runs are preferably run at around these paces, for Ruiyong. Let's do altitude adjustment for Ruiyong and find out that 5:08 at sea level is approximately 5:20 at 7800ft, and Ruiyong should be running his tempos, anywhere between 50-60 minutes at 5:20 per mile, if he is trying to extend his ability to tolerate higher lactate accumulation which I presume allows him to run a faster marathon time, like perhaps 2:24, not to even mention anything about 2:18:45, which is what he thought he could or hoped to run in London!
Then the average pace of Ruiyong's 21.1km tempo was 5:34, 14 seconds slower than the recommended LT pace at 7800ft, according to the Jack Daniel's formula. Can this be arguably acceptable and explained away? Perhaps! We could argue Ruiyong was running for more than 60minutes, 13 more minutes to be exact since he took approximately 73 minutes to run 21.1km at 7800ft, so he obviously wouldn't be able to hold LT pace(5:20 per mile) for more than 60minutes. We can give that to him. But for a difference of 14 seconds per mile (5:34-5:20) for only 13minutes more time of running seems way too luxurious and incredibly underdosed, even at altitude. We then learned he was running a moderate tempo, as detailed on his facebook page, which is a broad category of runs also classified in the Jack Daniel's marathon model and many others from famous marathon coaches around the world. Moderate runs are intended to be faster than easy running but slower than LT pace, and since there is such a wide variety of paces to train in between easy and LT paces, there are so many variations of doing a moderate run, and equally many reasons and motives for wanting to do one. Might it be Ruiyong wants to remain conservative in training to stay injury free or is something else the reason?
For now, we should not second-guess or third-guess the reasons for Ruiyong and his coach deciding to do a moderate tempo. And if he says it's supposed to be a simulation for national record attempt in London, that is easily way more plausible than a simulation run for an attempt at directly qualifying in London in the 2:18 region, because a simulation run for 2:18 would probably be somewhere around 5:13-5:15 per mile at 7800ft for 50-60minutes of continuous running, something of a totally different dimension for Ruiyong altogether!
He has all of our full support and backing if the national record attempt is what he is after in London, and if he ceases all the misleading hyperbole on social and national media about having a 'great' shot at running 2:18.
Feel free to provide some comments please :)
Monday 7 March 2016
Does Ruiyong have enough volume in the tank to be ready to run 2:18 in London?
Before I start this new post, a couple of us like-minded people thought it would be a good time to address some of our friends' questions on social media about why I chose, against the force of nature and popular vote, to be a 'whistleblower' and 'whistleblow' about Ruiyong's virtually non-existent chances of qualifying for Rio 2016 and to some extent Tokyo 2020.
Why would I be so seemingly thoroughly disloyal and faithless in seeking to 'destroy' a young and hot-blooded aspiration when it makes more sense to many singaporeans or non-singaporeans to give such local aspirations more mileage and credits? Except, and I really mean EXCEPT, it was never my aim to 'destroy', while the majority of hot-blooded athletes have historically not had the type of athletics career they hoped they had, whether that be as a result of injury, depression and/or unaccountable physical, psychological and emotional stalement. They might even run afoul of the rule of law too.
If anyone had been for 30 years an unknowingly diligent fan of distance knowledge and experience(or any sport), he/she would likely naturally be conferred with more than a little knowledge and appreciation of distance statistics such as performance progress trends and models, distance training science and models, and historical trends related to sport pyschology and athlete behavior. His/her faith and allegiance must naturally lie in these rigorously assessed and relatively reliable models and trends, and a select few geniuses like (for distance running) Renato Canova and Arthur Lydiard would then later go on and synthesize, make sense, test, analyse and experiment with the trends and models and produce new schools of thought and new models. But I am no genius, and I can only merely vouch for these highly reliable trends and models created by these geniuses, and so the majority of my faith must also lie in these. Can I reconcile my predominant faith in these trends and models with my relative lack of faith in Ruiyong's Olympic aspirations? Absolutely, they are in perfect agreement with each other. I do not have a lack of faith for the sake of having one, otherwise there is no logical and rational causation to whistleblow! And I should just shut down the blog....
To be very explicit, the model I am calling to whistleblow Ruiyong is very simple and straightforward to understand. In this model, no distance athlete in the history of mankind with a pb of 31:15, 14:58, and 67:22 has run a concurrent marathon time in the region of 2:18. If this is not true, just as I am not infallible, please let it be known to me here, and we shall make sense of it together. Ergo, if Ruiyong does indeed run 2:18 in London without some disproportionate revision to his 10k, 5k and half marathon pbs, he is the first outlier in entire distance history by a shocking margin, and since at no time in his career has he demonstrated a completely rare form of distance talent, like Daniel Komen of Kenya in 1994, then this outlier is simply too good to be true, like out of this world, and naturally one would have to suspect foulplay, if we also recall the ongoing turmoil of drug allegations against the very governing body all of us have been taught to trust and respect---IAAF.
Let's get to the analysis of Ruiyong's workout volumes on the track in the past 2 weeks. As everybody can derive from Ruiyong's facebook fan page, he recently did a 1600x8 and a 1km x12 intervals at close to lactate threshold pace. Excluding warming up and cooling down jogs, the total volume of workout amounts to no more than approximately 13km and 12km respectively. Now applying the Canova marathon model, workout volumes 3 months out from goal marathon race must start at a minimum of 16-18km, always excluding warming up and cooling down jogs, as well as, recovery or rest intervals in between the sets! These volumes are supposed to gradually increase, with intensity or pace remaining the same. 2 months out from the race, track workout volumes according to the Canova model should be in the region of 20-22km, or about the distance of about half marathon. Ruiyong was 2 months out from the London marathon race when he did that particular 1km x 12 with 300m jog recovery at slower than 5min/km.What is Ruiyong possibly doing, running only a mere total volume of 12km of interval work, 2 months out from London, whereas the high probability Canova marathon model would suggest knocking out almost twice that volume and with a rest and recovery interval of about 3:45 per km(for 3;15 average split-set). Questions abound about the quality and quantity of Ruiyong's physical preparations to run a 2:18 marathon in London. It only gets more incredible by the hour and day WHERE he is getting his confidence to run 2:18 from? Is he getting it just by virtue of being stationed in the land of the champions-Iten? Is geographic location supposed to be the formula that cuts through all the hard work, just magically by being in the land itself, or on the mountain itself, whilst doing, according to the Canova marathon model, incredibly underdosed workouts and long runs?!
Only time will tell but Ruiyong would be unquestionably well-served to abandon any Olympic aspirations and focus on simply breaking his personal best time of 2:26:01 in small but safe and conscionable increments. The pride and honor of Singapore shouldn't take precedence over the health, integrity and safety of our athlete, neither should it run into conflict with well-tested trends and models.
Why would I be so seemingly thoroughly disloyal and faithless in seeking to 'destroy' a young and hot-blooded aspiration when it makes more sense to many singaporeans or non-singaporeans to give such local aspirations more mileage and credits? Except, and I really mean EXCEPT, it was never my aim to 'destroy', while the majority of hot-blooded athletes have historically not had the type of athletics career they hoped they had, whether that be as a result of injury, depression and/or unaccountable physical, psychological and emotional stalement. They might even run afoul of the rule of law too.
If anyone had been for 30 years an unknowingly diligent fan of distance knowledge and experience(or any sport), he/she would likely naturally be conferred with more than a little knowledge and appreciation of distance statistics such as performance progress trends and models, distance training science and models, and historical trends related to sport pyschology and athlete behavior. His/her faith and allegiance must naturally lie in these rigorously assessed and relatively reliable models and trends, and a select few geniuses like (for distance running) Renato Canova and Arthur Lydiard would then later go on and synthesize, make sense, test, analyse and experiment with the trends and models and produce new schools of thought and new models. But I am no genius, and I can only merely vouch for these highly reliable trends and models created by these geniuses, and so the majority of my faith must also lie in these. Can I reconcile my predominant faith in these trends and models with my relative lack of faith in Ruiyong's Olympic aspirations? Absolutely, they are in perfect agreement with each other. I do not have a lack of faith for the sake of having one, otherwise there is no logical and rational causation to whistleblow! And I should just shut down the blog....
To be very explicit, the model I am calling to whistleblow Ruiyong is very simple and straightforward to understand. In this model, no distance athlete in the history of mankind with a pb of 31:15, 14:58, and 67:22 has run a concurrent marathon time in the region of 2:18. If this is not true, just as I am not infallible, please let it be known to me here, and we shall make sense of it together. Ergo, if Ruiyong does indeed run 2:18 in London without some disproportionate revision to his 10k, 5k and half marathon pbs, he is the first outlier in entire distance history by a shocking margin, and since at no time in his career has he demonstrated a completely rare form of distance talent, like Daniel Komen of Kenya in 1994, then this outlier is simply too good to be true, like out of this world, and naturally one would have to suspect foulplay, if we also recall the ongoing turmoil of drug allegations against the very governing body all of us have been taught to trust and respect---IAAF.
Let's get to the analysis of Ruiyong's workout volumes on the track in the past 2 weeks. As everybody can derive from Ruiyong's facebook fan page, he recently did a 1600x8 and a 1km x12 intervals at close to lactate threshold pace. Excluding warming up and cooling down jogs, the total volume of workout amounts to no more than approximately 13km and 12km respectively. Now applying the Canova marathon model, workout volumes 3 months out from goal marathon race must start at a minimum of 16-18km, always excluding warming up and cooling down jogs, as well as, recovery or rest intervals in between the sets! These volumes are supposed to gradually increase, with intensity or pace remaining the same. 2 months out from the race, track workout volumes according to the Canova model should be in the region of 20-22km, or about the distance of about half marathon. Ruiyong was 2 months out from the London marathon race when he did that particular 1km x 12 with 300m jog recovery at slower than 5min/km.What is Ruiyong possibly doing, running only a mere total volume of 12km of interval work, 2 months out from London, whereas the high probability Canova marathon model would suggest knocking out almost twice that volume and with a rest and recovery interval of about 3:45 per km(for 3;15 average split-set). Questions abound about the quality and quantity of Ruiyong's physical preparations to run a 2:18 marathon in London. It only gets more incredible by the hour and day WHERE he is getting his confidence to run 2:18 from? Is he getting it just by virtue of being stationed in the land of the champions-Iten? Is geographic location supposed to be the formula that cuts through all the hard work, just magically by being in the land itself, or on the mountain itself, whilst doing, according to the Canova marathon model, incredibly underdosed workouts and long runs?!
Only time will tell but Ruiyong would be unquestionably well-served to abandon any Olympic aspirations and focus on simply breaking his personal best time of 2:26:01 in small but safe and conscionable increments. The pride and honor of Singapore shouldn't take precedence over the health, integrity and safety of our athlete, neither should it run into conflict with well-tested trends and models.
Saturday 5 March 2016
Is Ruiyong really doing his long runs in a 'proper' manner so that he can achieve a 2:18 in London?
In this post, we assess the credibility of Ruiyong's long run workout in possibly arming him with the physical tools to handle a 2:18 marathon. We will again be using the Renato Canova Model to 'judge'.
On the 13th of February, in the midst of Chinese New Year week celebrations in Singapore, over in Kenya, Ruiyong did a 28km long run in 2 hours flat at 7800ft or 2400m of altitude. He probably finished that run feeling upbeat for reasons understandable--his long drawn plantar fasciitis injury that bothered him ever since November didn't seem to act up on him throughout the entire run, or entire kenyan stint thus far. I'm honestly stoked for him if he has turned that corner, but I cannot say the same about that long run he did. To be fair, he had only arrived 12 days into his kenyan adventure, and was probably still in the process of adjusting to the altitude, food, culture, kinda orienteering his senses in a way as well. But let's get to the analysis of that workout right here.
The average pace per km of that workout turns out to be 4:17 per km, upon some rounding. Per mile would be 6:53, upon some rounding as well. Let's now apply the Canova model for some much needed insight into the significance of these numbers. For one, all of you remembered in my previous post dated 3rd March the issue about the importance of TRANSFERABILITY of any Canova workout, and we will again be touching on this issue in the long run workout because all of the model can be distilled down to this core principle. Any Canova fan would know, long runs in the Canova model vary from exactly 28km to as much as 45km, and for very good reason. The marathon is a long race and therefore one has to obviously train for close to just as long! But what about overdistance work of 45km, what is the purpose of that? I shall not touch on that here because Ruiyong didn't do overdistance work and therefore an explanation for that would be out of point with what he has done and what we want to analyse! Canova says that long runs started from a minimum of 28km, which Ruiyong did, must be anywhere from 90-95 percent of goal marathon pace. Supposing we use the less punishing 90 percent of goal marathon pace for our purposes, and knowing that Ruiyong's supposed target of 2:18:45 is about 5:17 per mile, then 90 percent of 5:17 is about 5:49 per mile. But we have to take into account altitude adjustment for 7800ft which adds another approximately 14 seconds to 5:49 so that we get 6:03 per mile. But Ruiyong also claims often the terrain in Iten ranges from being moderately hilly, to rolling, to really hilly, so let us give him a combine benefit of the doubt of about 10-15 seconds per mile, so that the required pace per mile for his long run should be 6:15-6:17, TO MAXIMIZE TRANSFERABILITY!
Can anybody tell the difference between Ruiyong's average mile splits of 6:53 and the required mile splits of 6:15-617? That is an astronomical difference, though I might be guilty of some hyperbole here as a result of my incredulity. What then is Ruiyong doing in Kenya if he isn't trying to maximize transferability in his long runs, the single most important aspect of any marathon training, more important than even doing those 'incredible' mile and km intervals he did last week? One could bat an eyelid and pretend nothing was wrong when he coudn't run those incredible fast recovery intervals of 3:48 per km during his tempo intervals work last week, but surely nobody can sit by and think nothing of something that is so blatantly out of place in the Canova model, like me! Already the training at altitude slows down the turnover of a distance athlete's legs by a lot, by virtue of having to run slower, in this case 6:17 instead of 5:49. The slower paces are already an inherent handicap and therefore negates the goal of training the muscles and fibers in the legs to snap in and out quick. 3 types of fibers exist in the muscles--slow, fast and a combination of slow-fast. It is these fibers in the 3rd group that will possibly lose alot of stimuli by virtue of altitude training done poorly, resulting in what would be an overbearing percentage of slow fibers any elite marathon individual dreads, if he/she is looking for a fast time relative to his personal best, and Ruiyong is totally looking for a time so fast that IT IS OUT OF THIS WORLD WITH REGARDS TO HIS PRESENT CONDITIONS GIVEN HIM BY HIS PERSONAL BESTS OF 14:58, 31:15, AND 67:22.
Let's look at Ruiyong's next long run dated 20th March, a 30km run on what he claimed to be a pretty hilly profile in total time of 127minutes. That is about 4:14 per km with rounding, and then about 6:49 per mile also with rounding. We again find the same problem---6:15-6:17 is the required pace per mile for best practices and maximum transferability. 6:49 is still an astronomical distance away. Could it be he hadn't adjusted completely to the 7800ft of altitude yet? Unlikely given he was already 3 weeks into his training stint, and this would be the 3rd time he has been at altitude. He even had prepatory doses of altitude whilst in Singapore in the altitude chamber of Sports Institute. He couldn't have been more prepared? Could it then be the plantar injury that might have prevented him from making up the huge deficit from 6:49 to 6:15? According to him, he is done and over with his plantar issues, so unless he is bullshitting every one of us, then, I can find no reason why Ruiyong is seemingly not training in the way one would expect a good elite runner would---which is to maximize transferability! Could it be his coach Ian Dobson have no idea about transferability, or worst, not even a clue about the existence of a far more effective (though not necessarily superior) method of training his athlete who is already good enough to be on a Canova program? Because a good while ago back in October 2015 Ruiyong had actually ran a long run workout at 5:50 per mile pace, which is around exactly the 90% goal pace marker of 5:49(for 2:18:45), in which he claimed to be tempted to speed up to 5:30s every once in a while to indulge his flesh, but was later rebuked by Ian himself driving in a car beside him, telling him to stick to 5:50 per mile. Surely a qualified coach like Ian must know what he is doing with Ruiyong, and I wouldn't want to second-guess or third-guess that, especially now that Ruiyong is looking to not only break Singapore's national record, but totally annihilate it into 2:18 so that you can be sure no Singaporean athlete in a half century or more is ever going to break it.
All in all, 3 months out from the London marathon, and Ruiyong with his coach isn't even doing the most basic aspect of all marathon training right, ACCORDING TO THE HIGH PROBABILITY CANOVA MODEL! How could he ever run his recovery/rest intervals at 3:48 per km in a set of 1km x 12 at an average of 3:15 per km, or in a set of 1600x8 at an average of 3:18 per km without the strong aerobic base that can only come by DOING THE LONG RUN WORKOUT THE PROPER WAY(CANOVA WAY!)? Ergo, how could he ever even fathom, together with his coach, to want to run 2:18:45 and change in London marathon in April and in the future marathon races towards Tokyo 2020? To proceed from where his at running 5min/km for his recovery intervals(fitness of 2:26:01 pb) to the fitness of being able to execute a 3:48 per km(fitness for 2:18:45pb) recovery interval doesn't take only 4 years. In all my years of experience whether as a fan, consultant, or advisor of distance training and racing, the amount of time cannot even be quantified or qualified! For the record, I have mentioned in my first post dated 1st of March as well, that THERE IS PROBABLY NO AMOUNT OF TIME(READ INFINITE TIME, WHICH DOESN'T EXIST!) FOR WHICH RUIYONG WILL EVER QUALIFY FOR AN OLYMPIC GAMES MARATHON, BY ALL THE CONDITIONS STATED THEREIN WITHIN THAT POST HERE BELOW.
http://veryslimchance.blogspot.sg/2016/03/this-is-post-in-reply-to-ruiyongs.html
Do we still wish him all the best in his delusion? That is the paradox for one--me extremely captivated fan of distance, I presume............
Feel free to provide some comments please.
In our next post, we examine the volume of Ruiyong's track workout so far...
On the 13th of February, in the midst of Chinese New Year week celebrations in Singapore, over in Kenya, Ruiyong did a 28km long run in 2 hours flat at 7800ft or 2400m of altitude. He probably finished that run feeling upbeat for reasons understandable--his long drawn plantar fasciitis injury that bothered him ever since November didn't seem to act up on him throughout the entire run, or entire kenyan stint thus far. I'm honestly stoked for him if he has turned that corner, but I cannot say the same about that long run he did. To be fair, he had only arrived 12 days into his kenyan adventure, and was probably still in the process of adjusting to the altitude, food, culture, kinda orienteering his senses in a way as well. But let's get to the analysis of that workout right here.
The average pace per km of that workout turns out to be 4:17 per km, upon some rounding. Per mile would be 6:53, upon some rounding as well. Let's now apply the Canova model for some much needed insight into the significance of these numbers. For one, all of you remembered in my previous post dated 3rd March the issue about the importance of TRANSFERABILITY of any Canova workout, and we will again be touching on this issue in the long run workout because all of the model can be distilled down to this core principle. Any Canova fan would know, long runs in the Canova model vary from exactly 28km to as much as 45km, and for very good reason. The marathon is a long race and therefore one has to obviously train for close to just as long! But what about overdistance work of 45km, what is the purpose of that? I shall not touch on that here because Ruiyong didn't do overdistance work and therefore an explanation for that would be out of point with what he has done and what we want to analyse! Canova says that long runs started from a minimum of 28km, which Ruiyong did, must be anywhere from 90-95 percent of goal marathon pace. Supposing we use the less punishing 90 percent of goal marathon pace for our purposes, and knowing that Ruiyong's supposed target of 2:18:45 is about 5:17 per mile, then 90 percent of 5:17 is about 5:49 per mile. But we have to take into account altitude adjustment for 7800ft which adds another approximately 14 seconds to 5:49 so that we get 6:03 per mile. But Ruiyong also claims often the terrain in Iten ranges from being moderately hilly, to rolling, to really hilly, so let us give him a combine benefit of the doubt of about 10-15 seconds per mile, so that the required pace per mile for his long run should be 6:15-6:17, TO MAXIMIZE TRANSFERABILITY!
Can anybody tell the difference between Ruiyong's average mile splits of 6:53 and the required mile splits of 6:15-617? That is an astronomical difference, though I might be guilty of some hyperbole here as a result of my incredulity. What then is Ruiyong doing in Kenya if he isn't trying to maximize transferability in his long runs, the single most important aspect of any marathon training, more important than even doing those 'incredible' mile and km intervals he did last week? One could bat an eyelid and pretend nothing was wrong when he coudn't run those incredible fast recovery intervals of 3:48 per km during his tempo intervals work last week, but surely nobody can sit by and think nothing of something that is so blatantly out of place in the Canova model, like me! Already the training at altitude slows down the turnover of a distance athlete's legs by a lot, by virtue of having to run slower, in this case 6:17 instead of 5:49. The slower paces are already an inherent handicap and therefore negates the goal of training the muscles and fibers in the legs to snap in and out quick. 3 types of fibers exist in the muscles--slow, fast and a combination of slow-fast. It is these fibers in the 3rd group that will possibly lose alot of stimuli by virtue of altitude training done poorly, resulting in what would be an overbearing percentage of slow fibers any elite marathon individual dreads, if he/she is looking for a fast time relative to his personal best, and Ruiyong is totally looking for a time so fast that IT IS OUT OF THIS WORLD WITH REGARDS TO HIS PRESENT CONDITIONS GIVEN HIM BY HIS PERSONAL BESTS OF 14:58, 31:15, AND 67:22.
Let's look at Ruiyong's next long run dated 20th March, a 30km run on what he claimed to be a pretty hilly profile in total time of 127minutes. That is about 4:14 per km with rounding, and then about 6:49 per mile also with rounding. We again find the same problem---6:15-6:17 is the required pace per mile for best practices and maximum transferability. 6:49 is still an astronomical distance away. Could it be he hadn't adjusted completely to the 7800ft of altitude yet? Unlikely given he was already 3 weeks into his training stint, and this would be the 3rd time he has been at altitude. He even had prepatory doses of altitude whilst in Singapore in the altitude chamber of Sports Institute. He couldn't have been more prepared? Could it then be the plantar injury that might have prevented him from making up the huge deficit from 6:49 to 6:15? According to him, he is done and over with his plantar issues, so unless he is bullshitting every one of us, then, I can find no reason why Ruiyong is seemingly not training in the way one would expect a good elite runner would---which is to maximize transferability! Could it be his coach Ian Dobson have no idea about transferability, or worst, not even a clue about the existence of a far more effective (though not necessarily superior) method of training his athlete who is already good enough to be on a Canova program? Because a good while ago back in October 2015 Ruiyong had actually ran a long run workout at 5:50 per mile pace, which is around exactly the 90% goal pace marker of 5:49(for 2:18:45), in which he claimed to be tempted to speed up to 5:30s every once in a while to indulge his flesh, but was later rebuked by Ian himself driving in a car beside him, telling him to stick to 5:50 per mile. Surely a qualified coach like Ian must know what he is doing with Ruiyong, and I wouldn't want to second-guess or third-guess that, especially now that Ruiyong is looking to not only break Singapore's national record, but totally annihilate it into 2:18 so that you can be sure no Singaporean athlete in a half century or more is ever going to break it.
All in all, 3 months out from the London marathon, and Ruiyong with his coach isn't even doing the most basic aspect of all marathon training right, ACCORDING TO THE HIGH PROBABILITY CANOVA MODEL! How could he ever run his recovery/rest intervals at 3:48 per km in a set of 1km x 12 at an average of 3:15 per km, or in a set of 1600x8 at an average of 3:18 per km without the strong aerobic base that can only come by DOING THE LONG RUN WORKOUT THE PROPER WAY(CANOVA WAY!)? Ergo, how could he ever even fathom, together with his coach, to want to run 2:18:45 and change in London marathon in April and in the future marathon races towards Tokyo 2020? To proceed from where his at running 5min/km for his recovery intervals(fitness of 2:26:01 pb) to the fitness of being able to execute a 3:48 per km(fitness for 2:18:45pb) recovery interval doesn't take only 4 years. In all my years of experience whether as a fan, consultant, or advisor of distance training and racing, the amount of time cannot even be quantified or qualified! For the record, I have mentioned in my first post dated 1st of March as well, that THERE IS PROBABLY NO AMOUNT OF TIME(READ INFINITE TIME, WHICH DOESN'T EXIST!) FOR WHICH RUIYONG WILL EVER QUALIFY FOR AN OLYMPIC GAMES MARATHON, BY ALL THE CONDITIONS STATED THEREIN WITHIN THAT POST HERE BELOW.
http://veryslimchance.blogspot.sg/2016/03/this-is-post-in-reply-to-ruiyongs.html
Do we still wish him all the best in his delusion? That is the paradox for one--me extremely captivated fan of distance, I presume............
Feel free to provide some comments please.
In our next post, we examine the volume of Ruiyong's track workout so far...
Thursday 3 March 2016
Does Ruiyong's 'incredible' workouts at high altitude in Iten suggest anything that he is anywhere close to running a 2:18 marathon in London at the end of April?
This second post is dedicated to presenting all of us with some esoteric knowledge regarding marathon training, something I have been very engrossed in the last 30 years as a result of being a fanatic fan of my favorite distance runners. Ruiyong and his trainings appeared on the horizon along the way and I cannot help but obviously follow and then apply what I seem to know from the best marathon training model in the world---the RENATO CANOVA MARATHONING TRAINING MODEL!
Why am I using this model to 'judge' or 'assess' the credibility of Ruiyong's workouts in Kenya with regards to securing him a 2:18 marathon in London? Because this model is able to bring the HIGHEST PROBABILITY OF SUCCESS with regards to a AN ELITE RUNNER'S GOALS. The keyword here is elite, because the model cannot be applied to any regular or amateur runner because their 'base', or aerobic base, is sorely underdeveloped. Not surprisingly, this model has only been getting exactly great results for elite an fully professional athletes whether kenyans, italians, ethiopians or chinese, barring drugs of course! These athletes have trained over the years under a number of different coaches and have obviously developed a strong aerobic base under the very popular LYDIARD TRAINING MODEL. However, the Lydiard model reaches a point of the law of diminishing returns after a couple of years in the elite distance athlete's career, and performances plateau thereafter as a result of this law from Economics. The genius in Canova noticed that, which is what makes him great, and he fined tuned the lydiard model and introduced a lot of seemingly 'oppositional' and 'contradictory' elements to the lydiard model, becoming a model that is today called the renato canova model! This is the man responsible for taking the men's marathon world record to deserted places, and this is the man obviously responsible for the rise of Wilson Kipsang, Dennis Kimetto, Geoffrey Mutai Emmanual Mutai, and Patrick Macau. Haile Gebrselassie, the WR holder before these kenyans came along didn't have access to the genius of Canova, and one might rue what could have resulted had Haile gotten top class modern training from the man. This is in no way saying the lydiard model and all other types of training models by committed coaches is 'lousy' or 'bad', NO. Renato's model, like i said previously, is specifically catered only for very very good(elite) athletes, who are already probably perhaps sub 2:30 in the marathon sub 32min in 10k and sub 15min in 5k for both men and women above the ages of 21(senior ranks). The rest of the models of the world have a specific usefulness in the life of a growing athlete becoming better over the years, because no one athlete just started in distance running jumps straight into the canova model! That is asking for his/her own suicide! Most distance coaches all over the world would like to apply some variation of the lydiard model for beginner runners and call it their own model using their own names, like perhaps 'Mr Quek's model'. So if lydiard model is the basis of all amateur and semi-elite distance coaching, then what about elite distance coaching? That is where the genius of Canova contributes to the void left after the lydiard model.
A word of caution is that the canova model is extremely hard and strenuous training, which is why it is not meant for amateur and sub-elite runners with pbs slower than 2:30 in the marathon, 32min in the 10k and 15min in the 5k.
*disclaimer: If anybody is using this post as a justification to immediately or non immediately make a switch from your current training model to the canova model, I would like to say that I do not condone or recommend that you do so. Canova's athletes are in general extremely professional in the sense that they only eat sleep and train. They absolutely do no other stuff, nothing, zero! EATSLEEPTRAIN! If you are doing some other professional work, like banker, lawyer, doctor, gym instructor, engineer.......and you do not depend on running for a living, you shouldnt apply the canova model to your life and training. Because doing so exerts a VERY VERY UNHEALTHLY amount of physiological, psychological, emotional stress on your body. Since nobody from Singapore is a true blue professional runner living off the earnings of running, i should see nobody at all, zero, apply the canova model! The way I see it---nobody in singapore deserves to apply the canova model for another 2 reasons. Number one, our aerobic systems are way too underdeveloped, and even for relatively developed ones our faster runners have, the amount of toxins in the air in a modern industrialized city is way too burdensome for any aerobic system to reach its full potential like those of the Kenyans and Ethiopians, who all of them train in really pristine, really pure, really really FRESH AIR, with probably a higher oxygen content per unit volume DESPITE THE HIGHER ALTITUDES!!! Number two, ever since 1965, every singaporean has to have compulsory education, and if you asked me, the education standards are so high in singapore now that there is absolutely no reason or way that any rational and sane singaporean would want to be a professional runner and forego the opportunity cost of his time and energy with what earnings he could summon with his educational certs, assuming earnings are sine quo non.
Since Ruiyong is a sub 2:30, sub 32min and sub 15min runner, and is currently supposedly a professional runner, so let's get to the analysis so that during the analysis you will understand snippets of the canova model.
From Ruiyong's facebook page his training a week ago goes 1600m x 8 with these set times 5:17, 5:19, 5:21, 5:19, 5:17, 5:19, 5:18, 5:13. 2min jog recovery in 400m meaning 5min/km jog rest.(will analyse this more later below)
Ruiyong says also on his facebook page that the dirt track in kamariny stadium slowed him down by 1-2 seconds, so let's give him the benefit of the doubt and substract 2 seconds from all his splits. So it would look now like 5:15, 5:17, 5:19, 5:17 5:15, 5:17, 5:16, 5:11.
Ruiyong also says a 5:20 mile at altitude is a 5:08 sea level. But the average of his sets after substracted 2 seconds from all his sets gives us 5:16 and therefore its equivalent had to be lower than 5:08, so perhaps 5:03, since the faster you can workout at altitude the fitter you become and the lesser the difference between sea level and altitude paces. We give that to him as well. For Ruiyong to run a 2:18:45, pace calculators on the world famous mcmillian running website, which Canova himself uses to get training paces for all his athletes, states that Ruiyong's tempo intervals training paces(close to lactate threshold), should be in the region of 4:52 to 5:05, so let's say an average of 4:59! 4:59 is still 4 seconds faster per mile than 5:03 but again we give that to him since he is at least inside 5:05, the right extreme of the interval range 4:52-5:05.
We now look at the recovery paces between sets for Ruiyong, and apply the canova model. As any Canova fan would know, the most famous aspect of the model is the very long, and very FAST rest or recovery intervals between sets. According to the model, for maximum benefit for any tempo interval workouts you do, and to ensure to a very high probability that the tempo interval training paces you run at in training is TRANSFERABLE to the goal marathon pace on race day, a very long(canova calls it short) rest or recovery of 1km run at a very high intensity of only 30 seconds slower per km than the tempo intervals per km is used. Keyword is transferable! In the Lydiard program many marathon athletes think they train really well doing lots of slower-than-marathon-pace distance work to build endurance and even slower recovery paces but seem unable to run the time they thought they could run on race day. The secret is they did not maximize the intensity of their rest and recovery intervals! The secret is not so much in running goal marathon pace in training(though that is just as important), but not running close enough to goal marathon pace in recovery(highly neglected aspect of marathon training)! This is the core principle of the canova model, and doesn't seem to be a particular feature of emphasis in the Lydiard model. Can we say the workout Ruiyong did of 8 x 1600m will anytime soon be transferable to a high degree percentage figure? NOPE. Canova didn't give any clues about the percentage of the workout(stimuli) being transferable, but when he says transferable, you have to reasonably agree that it is somewhere between 80-90 percent, since nothing in the world is 100%. And since Ruiyong's workout is deemed not as transferable, so it is not transferable and that would reasonably mean anywhere from 10-30 percent, since again nothing in the world can be 0%. Has Ruiyong wasted his time and energy running that workout when only 10-30 percent had been transferable? At first glance yes! According to the canova model yes! How should he have ran his recovery to maximize the TRANSFERABILITY to goal marathon pace on race day? Like I said above, he should run his recovery intervals anywhere from 1-2km at a pace only 30 seconds per km slower than the tempo intervals per km. So let us calculate that! Since the average of Ruiyong 8 sets with the deduction for the dirt track taken into account is 5;16, then this is about 3:17.5 or rounded to 3:18 per km. 30 seconds slower than this is 3:48 per km! Bingo! That should be, according to the canova model, the recovery pace for Ruiyong if he and his coach Ian Dobson would like to maximize transferability to the marathon. There is no doubt it will be hard, almost impossible for Ruiyong to do that, to run a 1 or 2km rest intervals at 3:48 per km and repeat that 7 times more, which is why there is no doubt as well that come London marathon in April, he will find it almost virtually impossible to run 2:18:45, because he isn't at that level in training at all, and if he tried to begin the initial stages of the race at such a pace, will soon discover himself slowing down for some 'unknown' reason as the race progresses, which isn't all that unknown now that I have helped everybody to see why. There wasn't enough transferability in his training, something he and his coach has to work on if he wants to see 2:18:45 at the end of his race!
If he did run 2:18:45 in London by a miracle, it definitely wasn't because of physical preparedness or training, but more of pure motivation and desire to do well. Is such a combination dangerous? Yes, because Ruiyong will be running times way before his body is prepared to do so, using his pure will and mind to surmount his physical limitations, because he has outdone himself before the time has come, or before being fully prepared PHYSICALLY FROM TRAINING BY THE CANOVA MODEL! So what if Ruiyong has gotten singapore on the world stage in London by running 2:18:45 and breaking the national record by a bomb? So what if all of us Singaporeans gave him all the financial and motivational support? We would have only destroyed his future because he has run 2:18:45 not on the power of his physical strength and endurance, but on the power of his mental strength and fortitude. And that is very skewed and dangerous. Would he then run faster if he had a couple more years to prepare PHYSICALLY? Obviously, but he wouldn't have the chance to do so anymore because his body is destroyed for using his mind to take his physical body to realms his body wasn't completely ready to shoulder! Because you desperately wanted him to be the first singaporean to qualify for an olympic marathon, you desperately wanted national pride for Singapore so that you would just recklessly burden him with all sorts of ideas that 'he can do this', 'he can take on the world', 'he can win an olympic medal' etc. And he will be the product of every of your vain attempts at world domination---a finished product! Pun intended--'finished' for 'gone' or 'gone case'.
Feel free to give your comments below please.
We will next examine another one of his workouts, the long run in our next post.
Stay tuned
Why am I using this model to 'judge' or 'assess' the credibility of Ruiyong's workouts in Kenya with regards to securing him a 2:18 marathon in London? Because this model is able to bring the HIGHEST PROBABILITY OF SUCCESS with regards to a AN ELITE RUNNER'S GOALS. The keyword here is elite, because the model cannot be applied to any regular or amateur runner because their 'base', or aerobic base, is sorely underdeveloped. Not surprisingly, this model has only been getting exactly great results for elite an fully professional athletes whether kenyans, italians, ethiopians or chinese, barring drugs of course! These athletes have trained over the years under a number of different coaches and have obviously developed a strong aerobic base under the very popular LYDIARD TRAINING MODEL. However, the Lydiard model reaches a point of the law of diminishing returns after a couple of years in the elite distance athlete's career, and performances plateau thereafter as a result of this law from Economics. The genius in Canova noticed that, which is what makes him great, and he fined tuned the lydiard model and introduced a lot of seemingly 'oppositional' and 'contradictory' elements to the lydiard model, becoming a model that is today called the renato canova model! This is the man responsible for taking the men's marathon world record to deserted places, and this is the man obviously responsible for the rise of Wilson Kipsang, Dennis Kimetto, Geoffrey Mutai Emmanual Mutai, and Patrick Macau. Haile Gebrselassie, the WR holder before these kenyans came along didn't have access to the genius of Canova, and one might rue what could have resulted had Haile gotten top class modern training from the man. This is in no way saying the lydiard model and all other types of training models by committed coaches is 'lousy' or 'bad', NO. Renato's model, like i said previously, is specifically catered only for very very good(elite) athletes, who are already probably perhaps sub 2:30 in the marathon sub 32min in 10k and sub 15min in 5k for both men and women above the ages of 21(senior ranks). The rest of the models of the world have a specific usefulness in the life of a growing athlete becoming better over the years, because no one athlete just started in distance running jumps straight into the canova model! That is asking for his/her own suicide! Most distance coaches all over the world would like to apply some variation of the lydiard model for beginner runners and call it their own model using their own names, like perhaps 'Mr Quek's model'. So if lydiard model is the basis of all amateur and semi-elite distance coaching, then what about elite distance coaching? That is where the genius of Canova contributes to the void left after the lydiard model.
A word of caution is that the canova model is extremely hard and strenuous training, which is why it is not meant for amateur and sub-elite runners with pbs slower than 2:30 in the marathon, 32min in the 10k and 15min in the 5k.
*disclaimer: If anybody is using this post as a justification to immediately or non immediately make a switch from your current training model to the canova model, I would like to say that I do not condone or recommend that you do so. Canova's athletes are in general extremely professional in the sense that they only eat sleep and train. They absolutely do no other stuff, nothing, zero! EATSLEEPTRAIN! If you are doing some other professional work, like banker, lawyer, doctor, gym instructor, engineer.......and you do not depend on running for a living, you shouldnt apply the canova model to your life and training. Because doing so exerts a VERY VERY UNHEALTHLY amount of physiological, psychological, emotional stress on your body. Since nobody from Singapore is a true blue professional runner living off the earnings of running, i should see nobody at all, zero, apply the canova model! The way I see it---nobody in singapore deserves to apply the canova model for another 2 reasons. Number one, our aerobic systems are way too underdeveloped, and even for relatively developed ones our faster runners have, the amount of toxins in the air in a modern industrialized city is way too burdensome for any aerobic system to reach its full potential like those of the Kenyans and Ethiopians, who all of them train in really pristine, really pure, really really FRESH AIR, with probably a higher oxygen content per unit volume DESPITE THE HIGHER ALTITUDES!!! Number two, ever since 1965, every singaporean has to have compulsory education, and if you asked me, the education standards are so high in singapore now that there is absolutely no reason or way that any rational and sane singaporean would want to be a professional runner and forego the opportunity cost of his time and energy with what earnings he could summon with his educational certs, assuming earnings are sine quo non.
Since Ruiyong is a sub 2:30, sub 32min and sub 15min runner, and is currently supposedly a professional runner, so let's get to the analysis so that during the analysis you will understand snippets of the canova model.
From Ruiyong's facebook page his training a week ago goes 1600m x 8 with these set times 5:17, 5:19, 5:21, 5:19, 5:17, 5:19, 5:18, 5:13. 2min jog recovery in 400m meaning 5min/km jog rest.(will analyse this more later below)
Ruiyong says also on his facebook page that the dirt track in kamariny stadium slowed him down by 1-2 seconds, so let's give him the benefit of the doubt and substract 2 seconds from all his splits. So it would look now like 5:15, 5:17, 5:19, 5:17 5:15, 5:17, 5:16, 5:11.
Ruiyong also says a 5:20 mile at altitude is a 5:08 sea level. But the average of his sets after substracted 2 seconds from all his sets gives us 5:16 and therefore its equivalent had to be lower than 5:08, so perhaps 5:03, since the faster you can workout at altitude the fitter you become and the lesser the difference between sea level and altitude paces. We give that to him as well. For Ruiyong to run a 2:18:45, pace calculators on the world famous mcmillian running website, which Canova himself uses to get training paces for all his athletes, states that Ruiyong's tempo intervals training paces(close to lactate threshold), should be in the region of 4:52 to 5:05, so let's say an average of 4:59! 4:59 is still 4 seconds faster per mile than 5:03 but again we give that to him since he is at least inside 5:05, the right extreme of the interval range 4:52-5:05.
We now look at the recovery paces between sets for Ruiyong, and apply the canova model. As any Canova fan would know, the most famous aspect of the model is the very long, and very FAST rest or recovery intervals between sets. According to the model, for maximum benefit for any tempo interval workouts you do, and to ensure to a very high probability that the tempo interval training paces you run at in training is TRANSFERABLE to the goal marathon pace on race day, a very long(canova calls it short) rest or recovery of 1km run at a very high intensity of only 30 seconds slower per km than the tempo intervals per km is used. Keyword is transferable! In the Lydiard program many marathon athletes think they train really well doing lots of slower-than-marathon-pace distance work to build endurance and even slower recovery paces but seem unable to run the time they thought they could run on race day. The secret is they did not maximize the intensity of their rest and recovery intervals! The secret is not so much in running goal marathon pace in training(though that is just as important), but not running close enough to goal marathon pace in recovery(highly neglected aspect of marathon training)! This is the core principle of the canova model, and doesn't seem to be a particular feature of emphasis in the Lydiard model. Can we say the workout Ruiyong did of 8 x 1600m will anytime soon be transferable to a high degree percentage figure? NOPE. Canova didn't give any clues about the percentage of the workout(stimuli) being transferable, but when he says transferable, you have to reasonably agree that it is somewhere between 80-90 percent, since nothing in the world is 100%. And since Ruiyong's workout is deemed not as transferable, so it is not transferable and that would reasonably mean anywhere from 10-30 percent, since again nothing in the world can be 0%. Has Ruiyong wasted his time and energy running that workout when only 10-30 percent had been transferable? At first glance yes! According to the canova model yes! How should he have ran his recovery to maximize the TRANSFERABILITY to goal marathon pace on race day? Like I said above, he should run his recovery intervals anywhere from 1-2km at a pace only 30 seconds per km slower than the tempo intervals per km. So let us calculate that! Since the average of Ruiyong 8 sets with the deduction for the dirt track taken into account is 5;16, then this is about 3:17.5 or rounded to 3:18 per km. 30 seconds slower than this is 3:48 per km! Bingo! That should be, according to the canova model, the recovery pace for Ruiyong if he and his coach Ian Dobson would like to maximize transferability to the marathon. There is no doubt it will be hard, almost impossible for Ruiyong to do that, to run a 1 or 2km rest intervals at 3:48 per km and repeat that 7 times more, which is why there is no doubt as well that come London marathon in April, he will find it almost virtually impossible to run 2:18:45, because he isn't at that level in training at all, and if he tried to begin the initial stages of the race at such a pace, will soon discover himself slowing down for some 'unknown' reason as the race progresses, which isn't all that unknown now that I have helped everybody to see why. There wasn't enough transferability in his training, something he and his coach has to work on if he wants to see 2:18:45 at the end of his race!
If he did run 2:18:45 in London by a miracle, it definitely wasn't because of physical preparedness or training, but more of pure motivation and desire to do well. Is such a combination dangerous? Yes, because Ruiyong will be running times way before his body is prepared to do so, using his pure will and mind to surmount his physical limitations, because he has outdone himself before the time has come, or before being fully prepared PHYSICALLY FROM TRAINING BY THE CANOVA MODEL! So what if Ruiyong has gotten singapore on the world stage in London by running 2:18:45 and breaking the national record by a bomb? So what if all of us Singaporeans gave him all the financial and motivational support? We would have only destroyed his future because he has run 2:18:45 not on the power of his physical strength and endurance, but on the power of his mental strength and fortitude. And that is very skewed and dangerous. Would he then run faster if he had a couple more years to prepare PHYSICALLY? Obviously, but he wouldn't have the chance to do so anymore because his body is destroyed for using his mind to take his physical body to realms his body wasn't completely ready to shoulder! Because you desperately wanted him to be the first singaporean to qualify for an olympic marathon, you desperately wanted national pride for Singapore so that you would just recklessly burden him with all sorts of ideas that 'he can do this', 'he can take on the world', 'he can win an olympic medal' etc. And he will be the product of every of your vain attempts at world domination---a finished product! Pun intended--'finished' for 'gone' or 'gone case'.
Feel free to give your comments below please.
We will next examine another one of his workouts, the long run in our next post.
Stay tuned
Tuesday 1 March 2016
https://www.facebook.com/sporeathletics/
This is a post in reply to Ruiyong's facebook reply to Lexxus Tan and not meant to side with anybody whether Ruiyong or Lexxus. Website is listed above (and article is the one on "Soh targets London Marathon for passport to Rio Games". Excerpts of conversation has been reproduced at the bottom of the page.) This is a post meant to present the facts of Ruiyong's potential with regards to qualifying for Rio, and comparing it to well-accepted and rigorously assessed and therefore thoroughly and absolutely reliable trends in the world of distance running--the marathon. (ie, I am doing this as objectively as possible, without having any bias on either side of the fence! I have no sinister or non sinister reason whatsoever to 'put down' Ruiyong's ability and achievements, because I am able to simply and objectively vouch for the facts and trends.)
A word about my credentials is I have none. I am not a fanatic distance runner, and I dun run as often as I would like but still do run moderately, but I am a fanatic fan of Kenenisa Bekele and Zersenay Tadesse and have followed their progress as athletes from way back in 2000 when Paul Tergat and Haile Gebrselassie was still around competing hard. In the SEA region, I have followed the careers of Boonthung Srisung and Eduardo Buenovista also since early 2000s and recently followed Agus Prayogo on instagram, and i love to compare all their running careers, training and performance to each other. In the Asian region, I am a fanatic fan of Toshinari takaoka, also from way back in the 2000s, long before Yuki Kawauchi(an athlete I totally abhor due to his very warped idea of training and racing and therefore a poor example for any young athlete to follow). These are my 'credentials', so correct me if I'm wrong about a historical fact I write below in reply to Ruiyong's facebook reply to Lexxus. If it is a matter of difference of opinion you have with me, it will be pretty clear to the both of us later and we should agree to disagree.
Ruiyong had an issue with Lexxus when he said "I wonder what will be the outcome if Agus Prayogo ran the Sea Games last year."
One can sense that Lexxus obviously and accidentally missed typing the word 'marathon' after the word 'games'. A runner of Lexxus stature(one of singapore's best ultra marathon runners ever together with fabian williams from fwcc) would obviously know what or who the man Agus Prayogo is, as would 95 percent of anybody in the distance running community who takes running more than a little seriously and follows trends and athletes as well as running news. Ergo, Lexxus obviously would know Agus ran the 5k and 10k last year at the sea games and he was questioning instead whether the outcome of the sea games marathon would be different HAD AGUS RAN IT!
My take on this is: Nothing is for sure, nothing is guaranteed, but and here's the thing Agus had personal best times in the 10k so fast he would have made our sea games marathon gold medallist look not only mediocre, but extremely mediocre, an afterthought. 29:25 10k in 2010. While having never ran a truly proper half marathon race with maximum effort in the best and coolest climate possible, Agus only has a mediocre half marathon pb of 67:20, which is exactly Ruiyong's half marathon pb. One would imagine how a man so fast at 10k and 5k as well(14:02) can only manage a such a slow half marathon? The secret was Agus never really attempted an all-out half marathon in cool weather, and had he done so earlier on, the protracted result and a very good estimate would be in the region of high 64 to low 65. You can say with 99.9 percent certainty with little room for error that Agus will fall within this region of time range or faster! So with such immensely superb times at 5k 10k and half marathon, if Agus had trained well and moved up to the marathon for real in June last year, he would have taken the scalp of Ruiyong, without a shadow of doubt. Agus also has age factor going for him, being only about 30 years of age last year. Whereas Eduardo Buenavista the fastest SEA marathon runner in history with 2:18:44 was already 37 last year, and ran that time 12 years ago! Which means that time is as good as defunct in current era. Eduardo wasn't the same runner he was 12 years ago, when he was 25, which is currently Ruiyong's age this year 2016. Ruiyong didn't beat a runner that was firing on all cylinders, and there was no glory, as anybody keen enough to observe the finer details, in beating one who is a shadow of his former self. Eduardo though still ran a pretty respectable time in SEA last year with 2:24:12, but that is an astronomical distance away from 2:18:44, justifying the appearance of him being a shadow of his former self. Recent 10k and half marathon performances by him have also been extremely slow, with him clocking, according to adriansprints and a number of other results sources a 10k track time of only 31-32 flat last year and the year before, and half marathon of only 1:09-1:10. We might not know the goal of these races of his, but if we try to use it to assess current form and ability, he is obviously not firing on the level of his former self 10-15 years ago. That leaves only Agus, the only active distance runner who is firing on all cylinders and had he trained and ran the marathon last year, would have obviously beaten Ruiyong in any type of race, fast slow or tactical. Agus potential in the marathon has been unveiled AS EVIDENCE for all to see in Tokyo this past weekend, when, according to live race video was stuck at the back of the pack for the first 2-3km and had to spent a huge amount of energy accelerating hard after the 2nd km to get to the front of elite field because he wasn't assigned an elite status, inducing alot of unnecessary lactate in his blood and he still ran 2:23:04 slowing down dramatically in the last 7km as result of spending so much energy making up lost time, and thrashing singapore's national record easily. Without these unfortunate events, Agus would actually be running much faster in the region of 2:21. Is there any reason to doubt that Agus would not ordinarily win the marathon race last year without much fanfare, because it is 99.9 percent expected of a runner of such genius caliber? There is only 1 reason--that is anything can happen on race day, and it would take a severe illness or injury, or a car accident during the race to eliminate Agus completely from the race and give Ruiyong the smooth path to victory. Faced with these facts, there is little to argue about that Ruiyong had been very fortunate to win gold last year, in the absence of Agus, and given a battle-weary and worn runner in Eduardo Buenavista as competitor.
The next statement Ruiyong had an issue with Lexxus was this : "There is no miracle in running and is a long long long way to go for Asian athletes to meet Olympic marathon qualifying time."
Ruiyong disagrees but maybe he isn't sure what he is writing or saying either. So let me help by first saying-- A miracle is defined as some event, with regards to distance running performances, that is hardly ever at all expected to occur given the constraints of time and other types of resources like talent, training and other ability. First let us start by analysing ruiyong's highschool talents. As much as he ran hard trained hard under former highschool coach Mr Steven Quek with decent mileage of 60km comparable to any highschooler kid in America, Canada Britain or Japan, he only managed personal bests of 5k and 10k at the end of highschool (18-19 years of age) of 16:03 and 34:42 respectively. He wasn't sleeping on a couch potato running these times, he was working his ass off probably harder than any high school kid in the world in terms of effort and discipline. One can ask any reasonable distance running coach or guru with no vested interest in Ruiyong's future--- if coming out of high school with these mediocre times he can be TOP TEN MARATHON OLYMPICS BY TOKYO 2020(in the words of Ruiyong). The answer is very clear NO. Ruiyong is obviously applying total hyperbole to both his Rio and Tokyo social media and marketing campaign because even way speedier 15:00 5k and 31:00 10k American kids out of highschool like perhaps Shadrack Biwott, Jacob Riley, and Elkanah Kibet who turned professional in the USA a couple of years back can't even get into the top 3 in the USA olympic marathon trials last month to qualify for olympics, much less trying to be top ten at the olympics. If these pros who were once very speedy kids can't even get into the olympics, how could Ruiyong, not a pro and not speedy like them as a kid get into an olympics and worst, be top ten in a field of runners dominated by almost all africans. Top ten at every championships since 2004 or 2005 has been dominated by athletes of AFRICAN DESCENT! These athletes were kids who were once even speedier than those kids Shadrack Biwott, Jacob Riley, and Elkanah Kibet!
Is a miracle happening such that Ruiyong will in 4 sweet and short years be running marathons in the sub 2:10 region to challenge for top ten Tokyo olympics? NOPE! Any reasonable and objective distance running coach or guru with no vested interest or relationship with Ruiyong will probably say that. In fact, there is no amount of time for which he will one day become a sub 2:10 marathon runner to challenge for top ten in tokyo. Ruiyong will age, and can only get slower, not faster, like how eduardo buenavista and soon Agus Prayogo will also, and he doesn't have a infinite fountain of youth to keep improving without the effects of age and free radicals due to oxidative stress from distance running.
The second part of the statement tackles Asian athletes, but Lexxus must have again accidentally messed up his intended word--SOUTH-EAST ASIANS. If South east asians is the word, then it is true(and how could a very experienced and by corollary knowledgeable ultra runner not know that Japanese and Koreans were very good marathoners in history past?) that SEA runners have a long long long way to go to olympic qualification. The only sub 2:20 runners in SEA history are Eduardo Nabunome of Indonesia 2:19:18 and Eduardo Buenavista of Phillipines 2:18:44. Both of these guys were sub 15min 5k and sub 32 minutes 10k runners out of highschool, far ahead of Ruiyong when he was in highschool, and Nabunome wouldn't qualify for the marathon by today's standards, and buenavista will have just scrapped by qualification. Both of these cases, as well as the examples of american runners provided above, and even many more examples I cannot provide due to space and time limitations on this blog, shows you the standards one must have coming out of highschool, REGARDLESS OF TYPE OF TRAINING. All training for teenagers administered by knowledgeable and vested youth distance coaches are not very event specific as a teenager is still growing, so training at such ages should still be very general and conservative, with slight adjustment for culture, talent and other mental and emotional aptitudes, and whatever results from these conservative but hard, serious, and dedicated training such as the personal best times at the end of 18-19 years of age are very good indicators, or yardsticks of olympic potential in any distance event. Again I have no reason to put down Ruiyong's talent or achievements, because I am fully able to simply, totally, and objectively as possible vouch for the facts and trends. In any case, korean and Japanese athletes are no longer as competitive as they once were 2 decades and more back. If Ruiyong says that Asian athletes are still dominating the world championships and olympics for marathon, he probably doesn't mean it!
Finally Ruiyong has an issue with the statement "athletes should take things step by step and be more realistic"
Dear Ruiyong, I am no coach, but if a prestigious ultra coach like Lexxus could spend time writing that statement for you, and if you haven't had a feud with him in any moment of history before, then you can be pretty sure that this coach is probably exercising his coaching instincts to care, love and concern for not only his athletes but those outside his purview! Whoever told you that you can chop more than 7minutes from your 2:26:01 might probably have such a vested interest in your running career that even he/she is tempted and deceived into the lure of quick success, and quick because you are trying in less than 6 months since your precarious plantar injury to chop off those minutes, and this act of yours stinks of desperation, unprofesionalism and foremost of INSECURITY! Are you afraid you aren't going to make it or be around when Tokyo 2020 rolls around due to some feared consequence like injury or marriage/kids. And office work as civil servant as well? If you do have this fear, deal with it and don't try to rush your success story with Rio. You don't have the personal bests times at 5k 10k and half marathon to tackle a sub 2:19 marathon, you also don't have the CONSISTENT BLOCK of physical conditioning required so soon after a torrid plantar injury that probably was also brought about by your desire to rush your success for Rio. Haven't you heard of the saying "if something is too good to be true(ie going from 2:26 to 2:18), then it probably is". That means, brother, if a miracle happens and you do indeed run in the region of 2:18 to qualify for Rio and become the fastest SEA marathon runner with literally the slowest 5k 10k and half marathon pbs ever, we might suspect you to be on drugs, since it must be too good to be true to chop that amount of time in less than 6 months, AND COMING OFF AN IMPOSSIBLE PLANTAR INJURY. I like to believe, no matter how hard it is for me, a reasonable and knowledgeable fan of distance running, that you might still be able to run a 2:18 in tokyo, though I stand absolutely by my belief, that no amount of training, time, energy, science and other resources is going to get you into the top ten in the marathon in 2020. Period.The latter part of my previous sentence stands as opinion per se, but has been well supported by a combination of rigorous historical trends and facts, with very little deviation, and can be taken as good as fact. The probability of you becoming top ten olympics in tokyo exists, but only much less than 1 percent, by me. The probability of you becoming a 2:18 runner by tokyo 2020 also exists, slightly higher, by me at 5 percent. Please understand that these are still very extremely low odds, statistically, and mathematically becomes approximated as zilch(zero).
Finally please note that Lexxus isn't such a bad character shooting you down, because he, like I and definitely many more, feel like something is out of norm in a worrisomely selfish and deluded way. It's all about you and your Rio goal at all costs even with very low probability of success, kinda a very real delusion we are looking at right now. You have so many other opportunity costs of your time and energy that will give you a better probability of success on your investment as a result of your higher education. People like Lexxus care about you, and probably can give you the most objective advice barring the lack of the ability of expressing himself well in the English language, because he doesn't have vested interest or any relationship with you, like I do as well. There are many more out there that oppose your actions and decisions, and that is normally normal, and so you have to make sense of which ones you should seriously consider, and you should start with this post and Lexxus.
Anybody feel free to comment and reply.
Excerpts of conversation
Lexus Tan I strongly think our young talented athletes must take thing step by step and be more realistic. Marathon running involves a long training process and a good foundation must be developed from young.
There is no miracle in running and is a long long long way to go for Asian athletes to meet Olympic marathon qualifying time.
I wonder what will be the outcome if Agus Prayogo ran the Sea Game last year. (complete Tokyo marathon last Sunday in *2:23:29hr; 10km PB: 29:25min; **21km PB : 1:07:17hr)
Below is extract from : AdrianSprints
TOKYO Marathon 2016 (28 Feb) - Southeast Asian Results -
Indonesia's AGUS PRAYOGO set the fastest Southeast Asian 42K time in 10 years with 2:23:29 ... Thailand's Jirasak Suthichart ran 2:23:23 in January 2006.
MEN
62 ... Agus Prayogo (INA) 2:23:29 ... (1:10:41)
128 ... Kuniaki 'Neko' Takizaki (CAM) 2:32:12 ... (1:13:39)
200 ... Fang Jian Yong (SIN) 2:36:56 ... (1:15:35)
264 ... Mohammed Syahidan Alias (MAS) 2:39:09 ... (1:17:28)
404 ... Derek Shian Li (SIN) 2:44:22 ... (1:22:09)
WOMEN
70 ... Rachel See (SIN) 3:02:26 ... (1:29:43)
85 ... Qi Hui Date (SIN) 3:04:22 ... (1:29:45)
171 ... Baoying Lim (SIN) 3:14:24 ... (1:36:54)
*half marathon time in bracket
Soh Rui Yong Lexus Tan,
"I wonder what will be the outcome if Agus Prayogo ran the Sea Game last year."
Agus did run the SEA Games last year. He won silver in the 5000m and gold in the 10000m. Were you even watching? And for the record, Agus' marathon personal best then was 2:32. The fastest runner in the field was Eduardo Buenavista with 2:18. There's a reason Agus ran on the track and not in the marathon. If you're trying the undermine the results of last year's SEA Games marathon medalists, please try a lot harder than that.
"There is no miracle in running and is a long long long way to go for Asian athletes to meet Olympic marathon qualifying time."
Disagree. Miracles happen to those who work hard enough and believe. Asia comprises of many countries with strong distance runners like Japan, Korea and China. They all have athletes at Olympic standard. Ser-Od Bat Ochir from Mongolia is Asian. He has an Olympic standard. Korea and Japan went gold and silver in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. So I don't understand where you are getting all your facts from when you made that statement.
For the record, "After Kenya, for sure I'm confident of meeting the Olympic mark" was not exactly what I said. I simply said "for sure (I am MORE confident). Newspapers quote you slightly different sometimes. Deal with it and move on.
Finally, I agree with your point that "our young talented athletes must take thing step by step and be more realistic". At the same time, I think some "coaches" need to focus more time on coaching and less time on undermining their fellow Singaporeans on Facebook. As a coach, guide more athletes to SEA Games medals, rather than trying to shoot down athletes going for bigger things.
You seem to have a lot of beliefs. How many SEA Games medals has that won you?
Have a good day.
*Guntime is 2:23:29 but Net-time is 2:23:04 for Agus in the Tokyo marathon.
**Agus half marathon pb is inaccurate given his superb ability at 5k , 10k and now the full marathon. Pace calculators on reputable websites put Agus in the region of 65:00 equivalent based on 10k of 29:25
This is a post in reply to Ruiyong's facebook reply to Lexxus Tan and not meant to side with anybody whether Ruiyong or Lexxus. Website is listed above (and article is the one on "Soh targets London Marathon for passport to Rio Games". Excerpts of conversation has been reproduced at the bottom of the page.) This is a post meant to present the facts of Ruiyong's potential with regards to qualifying for Rio, and comparing it to well-accepted and rigorously assessed and therefore thoroughly and absolutely reliable trends in the world of distance running--the marathon. (ie, I am doing this as objectively as possible, without having any bias on either side of the fence! I have no sinister or non sinister reason whatsoever to 'put down' Ruiyong's ability and achievements, because I am able to simply and objectively vouch for the facts and trends.)
A word about my credentials is I have none. I am not a fanatic distance runner, and I dun run as often as I would like but still do run moderately, but I am a fanatic fan of Kenenisa Bekele and Zersenay Tadesse and have followed their progress as athletes from way back in 2000 when Paul Tergat and Haile Gebrselassie was still around competing hard. In the SEA region, I have followed the careers of Boonthung Srisung and Eduardo Buenovista also since early 2000s and recently followed Agus Prayogo on instagram, and i love to compare all their running careers, training and performance to each other. In the Asian region, I am a fanatic fan of Toshinari takaoka, also from way back in the 2000s, long before Yuki Kawauchi(an athlete I totally abhor due to his very warped idea of training and racing and therefore a poor example for any young athlete to follow). These are my 'credentials', so correct me if I'm wrong about a historical fact I write below in reply to Ruiyong's facebook reply to Lexxus. If it is a matter of difference of opinion you have with me, it will be pretty clear to the both of us later and we should agree to disagree.
Ruiyong had an issue with Lexxus when he said "I wonder what will be the outcome if Agus Prayogo ran the Sea Games last year."
One can sense that Lexxus obviously and accidentally missed typing the word 'marathon' after the word 'games'. A runner of Lexxus stature(one of singapore's best ultra marathon runners ever together with fabian williams from fwcc) would obviously know what or who the man Agus Prayogo is, as would 95 percent of anybody in the distance running community who takes running more than a little seriously and follows trends and athletes as well as running news. Ergo, Lexxus obviously would know Agus ran the 5k and 10k last year at the sea games and he was questioning instead whether the outcome of the sea games marathon would be different HAD AGUS RAN IT!
My take on this is: Nothing is for sure, nothing is guaranteed, but and here's the thing Agus had personal best times in the 10k so fast he would have made our sea games marathon gold medallist look not only mediocre, but extremely mediocre, an afterthought. 29:25 10k in 2010. While having never ran a truly proper half marathon race with maximum effort in the best and coolest climate possible, Agus only has a mediocre half marathon pb of 67:20, which is exactly Ruiyong's half marathon pb. One would imagine how a man so fast at 10k and 5k as well(14:02) can only manage a such a slow half marathon? The secret was Agus never really attempted an all-out half marathon in cool weather, and had he done so earlier on, the protracted result and a very good estimate would be in the region of high 64 to low 65. You can say with 99.9 percent certainty with little room for error that Agus will fall within this region of time range or faster! So with such immensely superb times at 5k 10k and half marathon, if Agus had trained well and moved up to the marathon for real in June last year, he would have taken the scalp of Ruiyong, without a shadow of doubt. Agus also has age factor going for him, being only about 30 years of age last year. Whereas Eduardo Buenavista the fastest SEA marathon runner in history with 2:18:44 was already 37 last year, and ran that time 12 years ago! Which means that time is as good as defunct in current era. Eduardo wasn't the same runner he was 12 years ago, when he was 25, which is currently Ruiyong's age this year 2016. Ruiyong didn't beat a runner that was firing on all cylinders, and there was no glory, as anybody keen enough to observe the finer details, in beating one who is a shadow of his former self. Eduardo though still ran a pretty respectable time in SEA last year with 2:24:12, but that is an astronomical distance away from 2:18:44, justifying the appearance of him being a shadow of his former self. Recent 10k and half marathon performances by him have also been extremely slow, with him clocking, according to adriansprints and a number of other results sources a 10k track time of only 31-32 flat last year and the year before, and half marathon of only 1:09-1:10. We might not know the goal of these races of his, but if we try to use it to assess current form and ability, he is obviously not firing on the level of his former self 10-15 years ago. That leaves only Agus, the only active distance runner who is firing on all cylinders and had he trained and ran the marathon last year, would have obviously beaten Ruiyong in any type of race, fast slow or tactical. Agus potential in the marathon has been unveiled AS EVIDENCE for all to see in Tokyo this past weekend, when, according to live race video was stuck at the back of the pack for the first 2-3km and had to spent a huge amount of energy accelerating hard after the 2nd km to get to the front of elite field because he wasn't assigned an elite status, inducing alot of unnecessary lactate in his blood and he still ran 2:23:04 slowing down dramatically in the last 7km as result of spending so much energy making up lost time, and thrashing singapore's national record easily. Without these unfortunate events, Agus would actually be running much faster in the region of 2:21. Is there any reason to doubt that Agus would not ordinarily win the marathon race last year without much fanfare, because it is 99.9 percent expected of a runner of such genius caliber? There is only 1 reason--that is anything can happen on race day, and it would take a severe illness or injury, or a car accident during the race to eliminate Agus completely from the race and give Ruiyong the smooth path to victory. Faced with these facts, there is little to argue about that Ruiyong had been very fortunate to win gold last year, in the absence of Agus, and given a battle-weary and worn runner in Eduardo Buenavista as competitor.
The next statement Ruiyong had an issue with Lexxus was this : "There is no miracle in running and is a long long long way to go for Asian athletes to meet Olympic marathon qualifying time."
Ruiyong disagrees but maybe he isn't sure what he is writing or saying either. So let me help by first saying-- A miracle is defined as some event, with regards to distance running performances, that is hardly ever at all expected to occur given the constraints of time and other types of resources like talent, training and other ability. First let us start by analysing ruiyong's highschool talents. As much as he ran hard trained hard under former highschool coach Mr Steven Quek with decent mileage of 60km comparable to any highschooler kid in America, Canada Britain or Japan, he only managed personal bests of 5k and 10k at the end of highschool (18-19 years of age) of 16:03 and 34:42 respectively. He wasn't sleeping on a couch potato running these times, he was working his ass off probably harder than any high school kid in the world in terms of effort and discipline. One can ask any reasonable distance running coach or guru with no vested interest in Ruiyong's future--- if coming out of high school with these mediocre times he can be TOP TEN MARATHON OLYMPICS BY TOKYO 2020(in the words of Ruiyong). The answer is very clear NO. Ruiyong is obviously applying total hyperbole to both his Rio and Tokyo social media and marketing campaign because even way speedier 15:00 5k and 31:00 10k American kids out of highschool like perhaps Shadrack Biwott, Jacob Riley, and Elkanah Kibet who turned professional in the USA a couple of years back can't even get into the top 3 in the USA olympic marathon trials last month to qualify for olympics, much less trying to be top ten at the olympics. If these pros who were once very speedy kids can't even get into the olympics, how could Ruiyong, not a pro and not speedy like them as a kid get into an olympics and worst, be top ten in a field of runners dominated by almost all africans. Top ten at every championships since 2004 or 2005 has been dominated by athletes of AFRICAN DESCENT! These athletes were kids who were once even speedier than those kids Shadrack Biwott, Jacob Riley, and Elkanah Kibet!
Is a miracle happening such that Ruiyong will in 4 sweet and short years be running marathons in the sub 2:10 region to challenge for top ten Tokyo olympics? NOPE! Any reasonable and objective distance running coach or guru with no vested interest or relationship with Ruiyong will probably say that. In fact, there is no amount of time for which he will one day become a sub 2:10 marathon runner to challenge for top ten in tokyo. Ruiyong will age, and can only get slower, not faster, like how eduardo buenavista and soon Agus Prayogo will also, and he doesn't have a infinite fountain of youth to keep improving without the effects of age and free radicals due to oxidative stress from distance running.
The second part of the statement tackles Asian athletes, but Lexxus must have again accidentally messed up his intended word--SOUTH-EAST ASIANS. If South east asians is the word, then it is true(and how could a very experienced and by corollary knowledgeable ultra runner not know that Japanese and Koreans were very good marathoners in history past?) that SEA runners have a long long long way to go to olympic qualification. The only sub 2:20 runners in SEA history are Eduardo Nabunome of Indonesia 2:19:18 and Eduardo Buenavista of Phillipines 2:18:44. Both of these guys were sub 15min 5k and sub 32 minutes 10k runners out of highschool, far ahead of Ruiyong when he was in highschool, and Nabunome wouldn't qualify for the marathon by today's standards, and buenavista will have just scrapped by qualification. Both of these cases, as well as the examples of american runners provided above, and even many more examples I cannot provide due to space and time limitations on this blog, shows you the standards one must have coming out of highschool, REGARDLESS OF TYPE OF TRAINING. All training for teenagers administered by knowledgeable and vested youth distance coaches are not very event specific as a teenager is still growing, so training at such ages should still be very general and conservative, with slight adjustment for culture, talent and other mental and emotional aptitudes, and whatever results from these conservative but hard, serious, and dedicated training such as the personal best times at the end of 18-19 years of age are very good indicators, or yardsticks of olympic potential in any distance event. Again I have no reason to put down Ruiyong's talent or achievements, because I am fully able to simply, totally, and objectively as possible vouch for the facts and trends. In any case, korean and Japanese athletes are no longer as competitive as they once were 2 decades and more back. If Ruiyong says that Asian athletes are still dominating the world championships and olympics for marathon, he probably doesn't mean it!
Finally Ruiyong has an issue with the statement "athletes should take things step by step and be more realistic"
Dear Ruiyong, I am no coach, but if a prestigious ultra coach like Lexxus could spend time writing that statement for you, and if you haven't had a feud with him in any moment of history before, then you can be pretty sure that this coach is probably exercising his coaching instincts to care, love and concern for not only his athletes but those outside his purview! Whoever told you that you can chop more than 7minutes from your 2:26:01 might probably have such a vested interest in your running career that even he/she is tempted and deceived into the lure of quick success, and quick because you are trying in less than 6 months since your precarious plantar injury to chop off those minutes, and this act of yours stinks of desperation, unprofesionalism and foremost of INSECURITY! Are you afraid you aren't going to make it or be around when Tokyo 2020 rolls around due to some feared consequence like injury or marriage/kids. And office work as civil servant as well? If you do have this fear, deal with it and don't try to rush your success story with Rio. You don't have the personal bests times at 5k 10k and half marathon to tackle a sub 2:19 marathon, you also don't have the CONSISTENT BLOCK of physical conditioning required so soon after a torrid plantar injury that probably was also brought about by your desire to rush your success for Rio. Haven't you heard of the saying "if something is too good to be true(ie going from 2:26 to 2:18), then it probably is". That means, brother, if a miracle happens and you do indeed run in the region of 2:18 to qualify for Rio and become the fastest SEA marathon runner with literally the slowest 5k 10k and half marathon pbs ever, we might suspect you to be on drugs, since it must be too good to be true to chop that amount of time in less than 6 months, AND COMING OFF AN IMPOSSIBLE PLANTAR INJURY. I like to believe, no matter how hard it is for me, a reasonable and knowledgeable fan of distance running, that you might still be able to run a 2:18 in tokyo, though I stand absolutely by my belief, that no amount of training, time, energy, science and other resources is going to get you into the top ten in the marathon in 2020. Period.The latter part of my previous sentence stands as opinion per se, but has been well supported by a combination of rigorous historical trends and facts, with very little deviation, and can be taken as good as fact. The probability of you becoming top ten olympics in tokyo exists, but only much less than 1 percent, by me. The probability of you becoming a 2:18 runner by tokyo 2020 also exists, slightly higher, by me at 5 percent. Please understand that these are still very extremely low odds, statistically, and mathematically becomes approximated as zilch(zero).
Finally please note that Lexxus isn't such a bad character shooting you down, because he, like I and definitely many more, feel like something is out of norm in a worrisomely selfish and deluded way. It's all about you and your Rio goal at all costs even with very low probability of success, kinda a very real delusion we are looking at right now. You have so many other opportunity costs of your time and energy that will give you a better probability of success on your investment as a result of your higher education. People like Lexxus care about you, and probably can give you the most objective advice barring the lack of the ability of expressing himself well in the English language, because he doesn't have vested interest or any relationship with you, like I do as well. There are many more out there that oppose your actions and decisions, and that is normally normal, and so you have to make sense of which ones you should seriously consider, and you should start with this post and Lexxus.
Anybody feel free to comment and reply.
Excerpts of conversation
Lexus Tan I strongly think our young talented athletes must take thing step by step and be more realistic. Marathon running involves a long training process and a good foundation must be developed from young.
There is no miracle in running and is a long long long way to go for Asian athletes to meet Olympic marathon qualifying time.
I wonder what will be the outcome if Agus Prayogo ran the Sea Game last year. (complete Tokyo marathon last Sunday in *2:23:29hr; 10km PB: 29:25min; **21km PB : 1:07:17hr)
Below is extract from : AdrianSprints
TOKYO Marathon 2016 (28 Feb) - Southeast Asian Results -
Indonesia's AGUS PRAYOGO set the fastest Southeast Asian 42K time in 10 years with 2:23:29 ... Thailand's Jirasak Suthichart ran 2:23:23 in January 2006.
MEN
62 ... Agus Prayogo (INA) 2:23:29 ... (1:10:41)
128 ... Kuniaki 'Neko' Takizaki (CAM) 2:32:12 ... (1:13:39)
200 ... Fang Jian Yong (SIN) 2:36:56 ... (1:15:35)
264 ... Mohammed Syahidan Alias (MAS) 2:39:09 ... (1:17:28)
404 ... Derek Shian Li (SIN) 2:44:22 ... (1:22:09)
WOMEN
70 ... Rachel See (SIN) 3:02:26 ... (1:29:43)
85 ... Qi Hui Date (SIN) 3:04:22 ... (1:29:45)
171 ... Baoying Lim (SIN) 3:14:24 ... (1:36:54)
*half marathon time in bracket
Soh Rui Yong Lexus Tan,
"I wonder what will be the outcome if Agus Prayogo ran the Sea Game last year."
Agus did run the SEA Games last year. He won silver in the 5000m and gold in the 10000m. Were you even watching? And for the record, Agus' marathon personal best then was 2:32. The fastest runner in the field was Eduardo Buenavista with 2:18. There's a reason Agus ran on the track and not in the marathon. If you're trying the undermine the results of last year's SEA Games marathon medalists, please try a lot harder than that.
"There is no miracle in running and is a long long long way to go for Asian athletes to meet Olympic marathon qualifying time."
Disagree. Miracles happen to those who work hard enough and believe. Asia comprises of many countries with strong distance runners like Japan, Korea and China. They all have athletes at Olympic standard. Ser-Od Bat Ochir from Mongolia is Asian. He has an Olympic standard. Korea and Japan went gold and silver in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. So I don't understand where you are getting all your facts from when you made that statement.
For the record, "After Kenya, for sure I'm confident of meeting the Olympic mark" was not exactly what I said. I simply said "for sure (I am MORE confident). Newspapers quote you slightly different sometimes. Deal with it and move on.
Finally, I agree with your point that "our young talented athletes must take thing step by step and be more realistic". At the same time, I think some "coaches" need to focus more time on coaching and less time on undermining their fellow Singaporeans on Facebook. As a coach, guide more athletes to SEA Games medals, rather than trying to shoot down athletes going for bigger things.
You seem to have a lot of beliefs. How many SEA Games medals has that won you?
Have a good day.
*Guntime is 2:23:29 but Net-time is 2:23:04 for Agus in the Tokyo marathon.
**Agus half marathon pb is inaccurate given his superb ability at 5k , 10k and now the full marathon. Pace calculators on reputable websites put Agus in the region of 65:00 equivalent based on 10k of 29:25
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