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