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.