tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-88161580075038351592024-02-20T17:38:07.914-08:00Why Ruiyong's chances of qualifying for Rio olympic marathon are very very slimRadio DJ Joe KShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14181443018029034346noreply@blogger.comBlogger17125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8816158007503835159.post-34327974012584457622016-06-23T06:41:00.003-07:002016-11-13T21:22:53.337-08:00SayonaraBefore we cease all operations on this blog with immediate effect, we thought we should have one final vain attempt at having Singaporeans and non Singaporean supporters/observers of Soh Ruiyong all over the world to take another final hard look at what, why, how, who they are supporting.<br />
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<u><b><span style="color: #0b5394;">Again, no offense given, none taken as well.</span></b></u><br />
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1)The past 5 months have been nothing short of revealing of the true character of Soh Ruiyong and the values he holds dear.<br />
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2)This man is still young and <b><i><span style="color: #990000;">very much immature</span></i></b>, much like most 25 year olds IN GENERAL!<br />
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3)This man has very clearly placed more value on successes and achievements, with his most famous statement whenever anybody has disparaging things to say about him:<br />
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"WHAT HAVE YOU ACHIEVED!"<br />
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"HOW MANY GOLD MEDALS HAVE YOU WON"<br />
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4) As if to explicitly suggest that your true value as a human being is overwhelmingly dependent on the number value or prestige value in your display cabinet, or how impressive a CV/resume can resemble.<br />
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5)Numbers and prestige are numbers and prestige, nothing more. These are appearances/illusions that though partly important in determining and testifying your success, aren't overwhelmingly the only factors that does so! Does this make sense?! From all our experiences and knowledge with life in general, outside of distance sport, the number value or prestige value of your achievements probably give no more than 20% credible information about your character and the type of principles/values/morals/ethics you hold dear in life!<b><i> Every one of you singaporeans and non singaporeans alike knows this TRUISM like ABC at the back of all of your minds!!! Can anybody dispute that? We know that nobody can. </i></b><br />
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6)Many of my readers have been wondering the reactions of<b><u><span style="color: #990000;"> Soh Ruiyong's parents</span></u></b> on the sidelines, meanwhile, amidst all these soap opera-like drama unfolding in the social media sphere, what with <b><i>this blog</i></b> and all the seemingly disparaging comments made about their own son?! Answer: we equally wonder! BUT, if we were Soh Ruiyong's parents, this is what has been suggested to be done by a couple well-meaning fans and supporters of SRY: <span style="color: #0b5394;"><b><i>TIE HIM UP ON THE HIGHEST TREE AVAILABLE AND WHIP HIM WITH THE TIGHTEST WHIP AROUND UNTIL HE COMES TO HIS SENSES, OR OUT OF HIS DISTANCE DELUSION!</i></b></span><br />
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7)If there is anybody given to boasting, let him boast the <u><b><span style="color: #0b5394;">TRUTH</span></b></u>! That is the only requirement! This is of course largely dependent on whether one knows the <b><u><span style="color: #0b5394;">TRUTH</span></u></b> in the first place! Don't go around social media telling people to 'dream big', or 'impossible is nothing'(Adidas slogan), because these are low-minded and unedifying phrases with no sustainable future or posterity! Instead we would like to hear people 'dreaming big ONLY to the extent that he/she is able to fulfill moral and ethical responsibilities as a respectable, much less educated, citizen of the world!' This is not even mentioning about familial responsibilities to your spouses/kids or kin in general!<br />
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8)Of all ethics/morals/principles/values we believe is most important, the greatest of them all is LOVE, followed by HUMILITY. These 2 virtues are like husband and wife, they come together, EVERY SINGLE TIME! Soh Ruiyong says he loves his art---distance running, he is passionate for attaining the best versions of himself in distance, we are almost swooned over by such LOVE, until we discovered recently he could simultaneously boast with reasonable abandonment his achievements and training in distance sport, and how he deserves to be crowned, by virtue of himself, the wildcard to Rio!(<a href="http://www.straitstimes.com/sport/athletics-wild-card-pick-still-up-in-air" target="_blank">Arrogance defined</a>) But HUMILITY is the deference to others, of believing and wanting to believe that others can have value equally important, if not more so, than you and your abilities/talents/skills! <b><i><span style="color: #990000;">Soh Ruiyong has therefore not love because he has not humility. His so called 'love' is only true as far as he has deceived himself! </span></i></b>Then, the way Soh Ruiyong treated me and my team was probably nothing short of the likes of those ones belonging to dictators of political history past. He constantly implicated us as brainless and retarded, calling our names a joke and disrespecting our very humanities, hoping to silence all of us through scare tactics, thinking we would give in to such triviality?! <b><i><span style="color: #0b5394;">He also repeatedly name-shamed and blamed a mysterious dude, whom we have no choice but to call his 'boyfriend' because of his bizarre fixation with him, and whom till today we have absolutely no idea. We at the blog would like to believe that this 'boyfriend' of his must have been earlier to the task than us, of getting him to drop his Rio olympic bid and change his morally and ethically questionable sports and personal conduct. For that, this 'boyfriend' deserves an award for his courage and genius. We are bummed that we weren't the pioneers of the notion that Soh Ruiyong has no use being at the olympics! By all means, we defer to him! If this 'boyfriend' can reach out to us and tell us who you are, we would be more than honored. Your identity will be protected, we assure you.....</span></i></b><br />
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9)Finally a word of thanks to a total of 5 full-time whistleblowers and 2 part-time ones for all your input into the blog. Though, I ultimately help render structure and form to the arguments and analyses in all the 16 blogposts, you guys and girls are the ones who helped made all these possible! You know who you are. A big thank you to all of you! :)<br />
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A BIG THANK YOU TO ALL OUR READERS AND FOLLOWERS WHEREVER YOU ARE AS WELL!<br />
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We officially will cease the blog and will not be supplying it ever again, unless requested specifically to do so by you guys, and on a topic we believe to be worth studying and debating. As for Soh Ruiyong, we wish him all the best in his future endeavors, but our social media relationship with him has ended. He doesn't need any more advising. We have said everything we needed to say and it is now up to him to choose which path he wants to go down.<br />
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SAYONARA<br />
Joe<br />
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P.S The blog will always remain and anybody and everybody can return to this sea of critical thought whenever they feel like doing so. It will just cease operations, not closed or taken down :)<br />
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<br />Radio DJ Joe KShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14181443018029034346noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8816158007503835159.post-70355392915589277772016-06-22T12:27:00.003-07:002016-07-01T12:04:47.575-07:00A new beginning or beginning of the end?<a href="https://www.redsports.sg/2016/06/22/olympic-marathon-soh-rui-yong/" target="_blank">Ruiyong ends Rio bid</a>(article from redsports)<br />
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Chanced upon this piece of news while having breakfast, and we couldn't have been happier for Soh Ruiyong for deciding to renounce his Rio olympic bid! This is a new beginning. At this blog, we totally believe so. Really for once, we have absolutely nothing disparaging to comment, criticize or analyze, because for the first time in 5 months since we started this blog, Ruiyong has chosen to do the right thing. Maybe he didn't do it as consciously or willfully as we would have liked, seeing that he took a good 6 months to come to equilibrium, by introspection, with the notion that he would never make the Rio olympics in any way, and instead a turn of events such as the insidious physical pain and emotional emptiness('lack of fun and joy') he felt in training had forced his hand to preemptive action. There seems to be a total lack of sincerity on his part, in believing that he absolutely with 99 percent, doesn't have what it takes in any way to make the Rio olympic games, injured or healthy. And we are not proud of that, to make it clear to everybody.<br />
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Still, an outcome is an outcome, no matter how it was brought to bear. Good for him, finally, to have to be forced, against his will/belief, to drop the 2016 Gold Coast Airport marathon and hence the bid for Rio. We will take this any time and day, seeing how great already our impoverished need of solid demonstrations of moral and ethical examples in an increasingly ethically and morally corrupt world! And such need perhaps arising from an inner calling to edify and be edified! Does that make sense to you guys? If it doesn't, it is completely fine and you may treat these as random utterances....<br />
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Before we come to a close, we just wanted to tackle a couple possible misunderstandings people might have with respect to the certain quotes in the interview that Ruiyong made:<br />
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<span style="color: #2e2e2e; font-family: "open sans" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 25.7143px;">“Over a month, he(Chris Wetstine, a popular albeit controversial physiotherapist) adjusted the structure of my foot – popping a cuboid back into place here, adjusting a toe there, and so forth. A painful process, but my left foot is finally moving a lot more like it should be.”</span><br />
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<span style="color: #2e2e2e; font-family: "open sans" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 25.7143px;">"</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;">All I've achieved in running so far has been on a less-than-fully-functional left foot. Perhaps this injury was a blessing in disguise - realizing and fixing this biomechanical fault can unlock the potential to even better performances in the future."</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;">We would like to now bring the full extend of our knowledge and experience to bear one final time in 2016 on these 2 quotes of Ruiyong's, and forever leave him to his devices thereafter, and forever stop interfering with him through well-meaning feedbacks. We don't want to seem as ANTI-SRY for too much longer, in exchange for really only having been PRO-SRY the whole time! We find that an extremely poor trade-off, so to speak...</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;">To do that, we will use an example of Paula Radcliff's. Details(including images) of which can be googled, but just off of the back of our minds, Paula had surgery of her seemingly savagely distorted big toe, by virtue of a totally grotesque and perhaps even visually offensive bunion, something nobody supposedly ordained with distance running nuance will associate with a runner as legendary and outlying as Paula, in women's sports! But that was what it was---the unsightly bunion that was to supposedly be directly related to biomechanical flaws and/or inhibitions to the running motion was also simultaneously directly related to the stuff of running performance legends! She did indeed, with this supposedly great biomechanical hindrance, went on to record the 3 fastest and clean times in women's marathoning!?! Paula had also one of the, if not the most efficient(energy conserving) running biomechanics ever, although her head-bobbing seem to suggest otherwise. Analysis done by a couple of scientists and experts around the world on this matter seem to explicitly suggest that Paula's head-bob is and has been the only exception to the rule of efficient and energy conserving distance running, because unique to the biomechanical demands of Paula, the head bob provided much needed forward propulsion and raise the ratio of energy output for the same amount of energy input. Nobody could head bob like Paula and raise their energy output ratios, because every single one of them will invariably produce resistance to the forward motion and that lowers rather than increases ratios! Does that make sense? By corollary, if there ever was a distance runner who could do the most outrageous mechanical or non mechanical oddity, and have it propel them forwards more or otherwise increase their ratios more, then that is energy efficient UNIQUELY FOR THEM! To be even clearer, let's say somebody could sing songs throughout their marathon races and have the produced sound energy contributed positively to their forward propulsion, then singing is efficient uniquely for them! But we all know this isn't the realm of the possible for us, because 1) we are not this special person who can seem to convert sound energy in the direction of his motion 2) we have tried to speak/talk during a race for a couple moments, much less sing, and found it really energy sapping or inefficient! </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;">But you get the point, everybody is unique, and as long as certain conditions or laws---in this case the laws of physics and/or biomechanical efficiency, are met, or beyond met, then seemingly inefficient motions are physically---biomechanically sound!</span><br />
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<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #990000; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;">Question:What happened to Paula after invasive intervention in the form of removing/reshaping the bunion to make it look less unsightly and more conforming to the norms of normally shaped human big toes? And also supposedly make her 'more biomechanically aligned/efficient'?</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #0b5394; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;">Answer:She never reach the heights she once conquered! She also started running marathon and half marathon times significantly slower, assuming age effects(she wasn't that old for a marathoner at the time of surgery) are negligible and desire, commitment and motivation are most nearly the same as before the surgery.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #351c75; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;">Why?</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;"><span style="color: #1d2129;">Because distance running performances might be way much more than the sum of the changes one makes to one's biomechanics invasively! Direct proportional relationships do not necessarily exist between adjustments in this and your performance(read speed and endurance) in sport! </span><b><u><span style="color: #cc0000;">There might even be an inverse proportional relationship!</span></u></b><span style="color: #1d2129;"> Also, there might not even be any clear causation or correlation between invasively tweaking one's biomechanics and significantly better running performances, which Soh Ruiyong is obviously looking.</span><span style="color: #cc0000;"><b><u> Sports scientists are on the fence with regards to invasive methods to 'improve biomechanical effficiency' at about the highest levels</u></b></span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;"><span style="color: #cc0000;"><b><u> of distance sport. They tended to say " you are wonderfully made athlete already, change as much as you ethically can through the normal and natural process of training/plyometrics, and take no further action beyond that!"</u></b></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;">Let me give an example out of the myriads in my mind, and let this be justified for the lack of better ones I can think of at the moment:</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;">A young girl was a burnt victim with 2nd and 3rd degree facial burns. She had looked like a hideous monster in the mirror. Invasive plastic surgery would in this case cause or correlate with a higher degree of self-confidence she originally had with her original face(status quo) and cause her to be able to assimilate as easily as she was once able to do so with her colleagues at the workplace, before the burns. This girl was self-confident in her appearance and certified beautiful---by herself! Invasive surgery aims to retrieve back what was already there, and therefore fully justified!</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;"><span style="color: #1d2129;">Another young girl with pleasant looking facial features(at least from the point of view of her mum and dad), feels like a hideous monster upon comparison with Victoria's Secret Angels!! Invasive plastic surgery would almost always not necessarily cause or even correlate with a higher degree of self-confidence and/or cause her to be able to assimilate easily with her colleagues at the workplace or otherwise, because the lack of self-confidence and lack of assimilation are symptomatic of greater issues of character, values, and principles(ethics and morals) than of personal tragedy!! There probably wasn't a problem with her face/beauty, but a problem with how she thinks about her face/beauty. Invasive surgery doesn't aim to retrieve back any confidence that was already pre-existing before, it is now used in an attempt to create confidence out of nothingness(read zero!)!</span><b><u><span style="color: #990000;"> BUT HOW CAN ANYTHING IN THE HUMAN WORLD BE CREATED/RETRIEVED OUT OF NOTHING? </span></u></b><span style="color: #1d2129;">Does that make any sense? You create or retrieve a picture from a printer or photocopier, a picture that already existed as a saved JPEG file in your computer! You do not create or retrieve a picture out of nothing! Therefore surgery isn't justified at all! Again does that make sense? I hope it does.........</span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;"><span style="color: #1d2129;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><u><b>Therefore unless your feet is badly mangled in a car accident, where biomechanical surgery would obviously provide temporary or permanent relief to your walking/running motion, do not ever tamper with your natural biomechanics through surgery! Do not try to create something out of nothing, because there is nothing wrong with your natural feet. Do not try to think something is wrong about nothing!!!</b></u></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;">Let's see how this can be applied to Soh Ruiyong:</span></span><br />
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Soh Ruiyong has ran one of the faster, if not the fastest times in a couple of distance events in the history of Singaporean distance performances, with supposedly 'poorer' biomechanics than all other Singaporean distance legends past! Or is that really the case?! Might this view be more symptomatic of a lack of faith/belief in the very mechanical body that has brought him to such great heights, and could it be resolved with simply just waiting out the time by resting for a couple of months for his plantar injuries to heal, as it almost always does with time? And that there was no real need to get any physiotherapist to 'pop cuboids' and 'adjust toes' over a month?! Does his lack of patience with achieving success in the form of qualifying for an olympics cause him to seek help he doesn't really need, and could be perhaps counter-intuitive for possibly forever changing biomechanical motor patterns and movements that he has grown up with as a boy and represented him with so much distance success? Would he suffer the same fate as Paula Radcliff, who also upon physio recommendation had went for invasive adjustment(surgery) on her bunion in the hope that she becomes more biomechanically aligned and produce more motion in the forward direction of her running?<br />
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Our answers to all these seemingly profound questions---that he and his team at Blackdot and TRE perhaps in their ignorance probably have never considered in great depth, are an EMPHATIC YES! For the short-termed satisfaction or pleasure of continued distance training and going to the Rio olympics by wildcard selection, Soh Ruiyong might have inevitably exchanged out his long term running benefits or future that can simply be collected effortlessly by simply waiting out the weeks and months, with zero run training, for his plantar to heal completely and then start undertaking foundational traininng slowly but surely?!! This is what appears to be the case, and we have analyzed for all of us this conclusion. We are terrified of the consequences of his supposedly newfound biomechanical technique, because we have no idea what future it holds, and we don't want to know because it is terrifying to suggest to ourselves the end of his career.<br />
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Moreover, and for the uninitiated, remember that distance running performances are normally more than simply the mathematical sum or changes to your biomechanics. This mean 1) there are other so much more important factors affecting your distance running performances than biomechanical efficiency, like perhaps fuel efficiency if you are a marathoner 2) Changing your biomechanics invasively, rather than through natural drills and training, for supposedly a 'better' performance will almost always introduce EVEN MORE BIOMECHANICAL PROBLEMS/INEFFICIENCIES!<br />
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Let me explain point 2 using Paula's example:<br />
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One would normally and logically think that straightening out the big toe and removing/reshaping/repairing the bunion would result in better(read more efficient energy transfer) pronation of the feet with regards to the weight and size of Paula's physical body, which would in turn result in more optimal stride length and turnover again with regards to Paula's unique physical body. Simple equation: More geometrically advantageous shaped big toe would lead to more straight line forward propulsion and higher efficiencies. Proponents of this equation, including SRY himself, do not take into account that changing the geometry of your bones or feet only changes the physical structure, rather than the nerve impulses and its electrical wiring around your feet! Changing the former without changing the latter(which sadly cannot be changed much enough to be noteworthy in distance running performances beyond your former childhood years) will only confuse the body's motor nerve impulses even more and introduce more biomechanical errors, or at the very least the errors that were already originally present remain present despite the surgical changes or otherwise, and despite there being no more structural pain as well.<b><u><span style="color: #990000;"> I repeat----biomechanical errors can still exist as per normal despite the removal of the pain through surgical/physio correction---and this is apparently due to motor nerve impulse confusion! Because part or in fact all of what controls biomechanical movements and patterns are motor nerve impulses.</span></u></b><br />
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Proponents of this equation also do not understand that in changing the physical structure of the feet of an adult, nerve impulses would have to adapt to this new change in a way they can never do previously like in the former childhood years where the bulk of the development of a child's motor-neuron movement patterns and behaviors take place. This means, for an adult who had undergone invasive changes to the physical structure of their feet, nerve impulse adaptations will take place in such a way that running would never feel the same again. The same feet will ironically not feel the same familiarity of power and strength that was best developed in childhood <u><b>NATURALLY WITH THE NATURAL FEET STRUCTURE!</b></u> At worst, it is running with feet that isn't yours, because your electrical nerve wirings <b><u><span style="color: #990000;">could never be completely initiated/compatible</span></u></b> with the new physical structure and therefore new way of propelling yourself forward!<br />
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Far from 'unlocking his potential', in the words of SRY, we are sad to say that we overwhelmingly believe otherwise, and have justified our arguments as best as we could above :(<br />
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We apologize that the tenor of this post had gotten more and more depressive or apocalyptic as it went on, and the new beginning we had prematurely envisioned for SRY as a result of his 'good' decision to end his Rio bid might be concurrently and ironically, after analysis, the Sign of the End.<br />
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<b><u><span style="color: #990000;">We want to tell Soh Ruiyong one thing explicitly: Your 'less than fully functional' is perfect in its imperfect!!! Get that! All you needed to do was rest a couple months of no running, like Mok did when he had his turn of plantar, and everything would have been fine, your biomechanics will have continued to serve you well for many more marathons. But you chose not to.......</span></u></b><br />
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In our next post, we will have a post-blog party and give out credits to all our whistleblowers, as well as say goodbye to our main character Soh Ruiyong after all of 5 months.<br />
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Stay tuned!<br />
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<br />Radio DJ Joe KShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14181443018029034346noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8816158007503835159.post-297115155440118712016-06-13T07:36:00.001-07:002017-01-06T10:58:37.279-08:00Are we really psychos? Or is somebody else a dictator? Let's find out........<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "inherit" , serif; font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In this post, I will personally pen a written reply to a facebook reply by Soh Ruiyong on my facebook page to British running stalwarts, Jon, Ben and Stuart, on the April 11th. Excerpt of the message is reproduced below so that my readers may follow the points I subsequently bring forth.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="background: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "inherit" , serif; font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;">"</span><span style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 16.08px;"><a class=" UFICommentActorName" data-ft="{"tn":";"}" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/hovercard.php?id=739189967&extragetparams=%7B%22is_public%22%3Afalse%2C%22hc_location%22%3A%22ufi%22%7D" dir="ltr" href="https://www.facebook.com/ruiyong.soh?fref=ufi" style="color: #365899; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">Soh Rui Yong</a></span><span style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 16.08px;"> <span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a aria-describedby="js_f2" aria-haspopup="true" aria-owns="js_f1" class="profileLink" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/hovercard.php?id=734685500&extragetparams=%7B%22hc_location%22%3A%22ufi%22%7D" dir="ltr" href="https://www.facebook.com/bdpickford?hc_location=ufi" id="js_f3" style="color: #365899; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Ben Pickford</a><span style="font-family: inherit;">, </span><a class="profileLink" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/hovercard.php?id=549635675&extragetparams=%7B%22hc_location%22%3A%22ufi%22%7D" dir="ltr" href="https://www.facebook.com/stu.haynes?hc_location=ufi" style="color: #365899; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Stu Haynes</a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><a class="profileLink" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/hovercard.php?id=100000930127699&extragetparams=%7B%22hc_location%22%3A%22ufi%22%7D" dir="ltr" href="https://www.facebook.com/john.cheal.3?hc_location=ufi" style="color: #365899; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Jon Cheal</a><span style="font-family: inherit;">, I urge you to waste no more time on anyone named Joe KS, or "MG"... They are all the same person. He has created multiple accounts (there are more... easy to spot - dodgy profile pictures and info) to mak</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">e it sound like he has supporters. </span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<span style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 16.08px;"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">Once upon a time, this 11min 3000m steeplechaser was my teammate in Hwa Chong Institution. He used to believe he could make the 2005 SEA games. He didn't, what happened along the way I don't know, but eventually he went full psycho in shooting down all the distance runners who happen to stand out in Singapore.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">Please go on with your lives, and let him continue typing this crap from his mum's basement.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">As for guys like "R"</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">, you can continue slagging off and setting limits on other runners all you want. It says a lot more about your own bitter/jealous character than it does about them. And it's embarassing that some of our own singaporeans like you choose to shoot down our own sportsmen's ambitions rather than support them. Last I checked, a marathon is 42.195km, not 10km or 21.1km. So 42.195km is the distance I'm training for."</span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 16.08px;">"</span></span><span style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 16.08px;"> "LT"---</span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" style="background-color: #f6f7f9; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 16.08px;"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> realistic goals and work towards them gradually? so are you saying Rui Yong all these years putting in his hardwork during his RI/RJC track/xcountry days are non-realistic? He did work hard too like any other young talents out there in SG. Le</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">t's say he started off 5 years ago then we might be able to imply he is unrealistic. But in this case? No. To me you're just here to pin him down indirectly, I'm here to speak upfront to you. The things you promised people and not delivered in the past , owes people money and not paid up. Alot of people are aware of what's going on and also chose not to talk about it. So do you wanna make it into a discussion like Joe KS do? Tell me about it.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">Forgot to mention if we see F1 top runners , are not trained from scratch by you. sorry to say that , that's a fact i guess"</span></span></span></span></span><span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 16.08px;"><br /></span></span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="background: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "inherit" , serif; font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Dear </span><span class="5u8u"><span lang="EN-US" style="background: #dce6f8; color: #1d2129; font-family: "inherit" , serif; font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Soh Rui Yong</span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="background: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "inherit" , serif; font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;">, I have waited
for some time to allow some dust to settle before I give you a final word here
in the presence of the president of SA Mr Tang, Head of Long distance Ghana
Segaran, your mentor James Wong Tuck Yim, and reputable coaches Joe Goh and Bay
Hansen. I apologize to you guys for my long overdue reply. My apologies also to
the 3 estimated British gentlemen Ben Pickford, Jon Cheal and Stuart Haynes,
for the cryptic and unseemly behavior of my fellow countryman </span><span class="5u8u"><span lang="EN-US" style="background: #dce6f8; color: #1d2129; font-family: "inherit" , serif; font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Soh Rui Yong</span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="background: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "inherit" , serif; font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> who had tagged you
people looking to get a reply in one of my facebook posts. My silence on this
matter has officially ended, and on behalf of his childish and obnoxious
misdemeanors on social media and/or in real-life, I sincerely apologize.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="background: white; font-family: "inherit" , serif; font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="color: #1d2129;">Ruiyong, I hope you do not get yourself into serious trouble
shooting down what is innocent bystanders like this chap you are talking about
here, just because he happened to be one of your critics as well. </span><b><u><span style="color: #990000;">NOBODY IS HIM
EXCEPT HIM</span></u></b><span style="color: #1d2129;">,<b><u> please stop all your tactical name-shaming and superficial
blame-game, because we know you are using these as a tablecloth to hide every
of your moral, ethical and professional culpabilities--faults and weaknesses,
so as to also conveniently dissuade anyone else in the future in Singapore from
discussing and/or exposing serious issues of principle in your overall personal
and sports conduct.</u></b><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="background: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "inherit" , serif; font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;">If this chap you speak of---"MG", means so much to you
that you have to honor him time and again everywhere on facebook, he probably
must have been kind enough to also point out all that is wrong with your
personal/social-media grooming and the overall conduct of your sports career,
otherwise why would you be so ever compelled to unconsciously hand him dignity
as such?!!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="background: white; font-family: "inherit" , serif; font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="color: #1d2129;">One final time my dear friend, in case it didn’t register in
your mind---->></span><b><u><span style="color: #0b5394;">Please do not allow your weird and sickly preoccupation
with this chap of yours distract from the issues at hand that I have presented
in all my blogposts</span></u></b><span style="color: #1d2129;">---namely, your very unrealistic distance targets, your slow
pbs at the 5k, 10k and HM compared to what is required to run 2:18:xx, your
obnoxious and egotistical bragging and subsequently justifying these things as
excusable as long as you seem to be doing the country proud?! Time and again,
we are shocked and incoherent at how basic humility and teachability can so
easily elude such a finely educated lad like yourself?! Ask any of the
reasonable and knowledgeable officials and coaches around Singapore yourself,
and even Ben, Jon and Stuart(assuming they can remain impartial!), and see if
more than a couple have rave reviews about your overall conduct in terms of
basic professional ethics and morals in the past 6-9 months. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="background: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "inherit" , serif; font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Why do you make it seem like I and my team are in need of
supporters, or in need of public recognition as perhaps those at a TV awards
ceremony? Our lives and identities are big and strong enough to have no need of
such support in morale. FYI-----some of us are flying corporate/military
executives, humble and highly experienced specialist distance coaches, and also
important stewards of young lives, and combined with the persistence, rigor and
passion of our written analysis and arguments, don’t you think we serve a
higher purpose or calling than simply trying to boost local morale figures, or
worst, try to seem to oppress everybody into buying and possessing only our
views about you and your career. But that is ironically what you are trying to
achieve with all your tactical name-shame and dishonor. You try so hard to
render invalid every of those people who dares to criticize or stand up to your
views and actions, but not knowing that in doing so you might have implicitly
or explicitly rendered yourself one, because a real solid professional athlete
with solid ethics and morals will let their legs do the talking, every single
time. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="background: white; font-family: "inherit" , serif; font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><b><u><span style="color: #0b5394;">At the very least, learn to respect people's name, and not
call it a joke(s), and learn to respect people's decision(in this case mine)
not to reveal more details about myself and my team in the sense that we are
whistleblowers trying to achieve the full range of good effects with our
knowledge and experience. </span></u></b><span style="color: #1d2129;">We speak, and have always spoken with the conviction
of faith in all the knowledge and experience that we have. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="background: white; font-family: "inherit" , serif; font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="color: #1d2129;">As a scholar, the very least you can do, and we are
suggesting as well, is to respect the views, ideas, and opinions of both your
critics and your supporters. </span><b><u><span style="color: #990000;">Welcome them with open arms. Try not to give yourself
to paranoia.</span></u></b> <b><u><span style="color: #990000;">See the benevolence in others, more than you will tend to see only
the malevolence!</span></u></b><span style="color: #1d2129;"> This one is hard to do, but trust me, it is matter of how much
you really want it! Just as you want so much to run 2:18:xx, why can’t you
apply yourself similarly and want as much, if not more, to see the benevolence
in and of others? </span><b><u><span style="color: #0b5394;">Do you think the people whom you perhaps try to despise and
invalidate, like "MG", "R" and "LT", are so devoid of
sense(psychotic and/or neurotic) and of reason(presposterous) as to render a part
of themselves to see that you do not have a premature or less than fulfilling
end to your distance career?</span></u></b><span style="color: #1d2129;"> Do you
honestly think that way Soh Ruiyong? We are not either, by this statement insinuating
that your coach Ian Dobson doesn’t know what he is talking about when he says
he thinks you have what it takes to run 2:18:xx if you turned full-time
professional. We are definitely able to critically and objectively appraise his
view with statistical and analytical methods from science and math and reserve
a judgement for the time being, because we know full well in the reliability of
rigorously assessed and supported trends and models in distance running
achievement and performance.<b><u> Even if distance sport is part art and part
science, the part art is still quantifiable, and therefore statistically and
scientifically liable!</u></b> Does that make any sense at all?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="background: white; font-family: "inherit" , serif; font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="color: #1d2129;">So please, as a scholar, </span><b style="color: #1d2129;"><u>stop behaving in a rogue and
uncultivated manner online. </u></b><span style="color: #1d2129;">Young starlets are looking around looking for a
model to mimic, and the last thing we need is for such behaviors---ethics and
morals to go on air. We live in a democratic society, we thrive in a diversity
of views and constant dialogue, of which I have painstakingly tried to set up
here the whole time, but always got summarily dismissed as a psycho by one of a dictator like you. </span><b><u><span style="color: #990000;">Instead of denigrating these critics of yours in the
manner in which you are doing so, I hereby would like to enliven the courage,
dare-devil, and brutal transparency of these 3 vilified lads: "MG", "R", "LT", as well a few more well-meaning whistleblowers whose
identities I will so far find no need to spare a mention.</span></u></b><span style="color: #1d2129;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="background: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "inherit" , serif; font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Yours sincerely</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="background: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "inherit" , serif; font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;">*Some names are now initialed to protect the identities of some whistleblowers</span></div>
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Radio DJ Joe KShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14181443018029034346noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8816158007503835159.post-83723116214895345362016-05-30T10:58:00.003-07:002016-06-03T10:28:51.814-07:00The curious case of the Filipina Mary Joy Tabal?Welcome back to another chapter of our journey!<br />
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In this post, we will go ahead and examine, using the TALENT BANDS we so proposed in the previous chapter, the athletic prowess of Mary Joy Tabal, whom everybody know has just finally attained an olympic ticket to Rio in the marathon. We must admit that we are less familiar with the details of her career than perhaps Agus Prayogo's or Eduardo Buenavista's, and we grant that we might not be completely accurate in some of the factual information we are about to present, such as her pbs at the shorter distances.<br />
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According to a few seemingly less maintained websites, and from scant recollection of her results, we come gingerly to a list of fastest BANDS(not times, since we aren't exactly sure what her pbs are, since the IAAF website doesn't provide any compilation) below:<br />
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5k:16:50 to 17:20<br />
10k:34:40-35:40<br />
HM:1:17-1:19<br />
FM: 2:43:30 -2:47:30(for this band we already know exactly where in the band she stood with her recent achievement at the ottawa marathon of 2:43:30, but the band is nevertheless useful for statistical purposes when predicting how well some other female athletes with similar pbs run)<br />
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<span style="color: #134f5c;"><b>*Disclaimer: We believe Mary Joy's pbs for all these distances lie reasonably within the bands based on all our information sourcing, and if the predictor calculator that we are going to use together later below indicate some mismatch with the bands provided, the errors are acceptable if we can allow that there must also exists bands that overlap to some degree! As to what specific degree of overlap---this we can't say for sure until we actually run statistical tests on thousands and thousands of data. One should check personally with her to get more up-to-date information.</b></span><br />
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<b><u>First and foremost, why the use of bands?</u></b><br />
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Bands are primarily used, in fact always used, in data representation in the real-time and dynamic environment because no measuring instrument is perfect! This includes the men/women conducting the data measurement with the already imperfect data collecting instrument!<i> Does that make any sense?</i> So whether you are collecting temperature readings from the sea of Antarctica, PM2.5 readings from the Air Quality Station in Bukit Timah, or taking a survey of the human population regarding a trending subject of society, you get band(s) of measurements. Using these or their like, and often in combination/comparison with pre-existing data, scientists and researchers from the respective fields can do all sorts of magic with these data with equally magical statistical tools(software) ranging from probability distribution analysis, multivariate linear regression analysis, analysis of variance and your more familiar standard deviation and mean---something all local highschool students study in very simple terms. The results of these tools are extremely important in painting almost a beautiful picture or story of the very article of analysis, and how perhaps the said article behaves in the presence of other articles that you would also put through the same tools! And the article(s) can be anything you define in the world! Just name it! There is a saying that goes: "nothing in this world is unquantifiable, except perhaps dark matter or energy!" If you find a proposed value/quality that hasn't been quantified statistically in any way yet, that is only because it has not yet been done so. <i>Does that make sense?</i> Before the downing of MH370, vast swathes of the bottomless Indian Ocean have never been sonar-mapped! Why? Because it just simply hadn't been done so! There was no reason to find out how it looked like underneath unless you, or rather many people thought a jumbo plane had gone down there!<br />
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<b><u>Next to foremost, is there any precedence or suggestion of the use of such statistical bands in specifically the distance running world?</u></b><br />
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There are so many aspects of distance running sport to be quantified---that is virtually quantifying haven! For as long as sports science existed, sports scientists and their statistical tools of analysis, together with their coaches, instructors, physiotherapists, nutritionists, psychologists, doctors, technical directors and many more other assistants are constantly observing then recording and measuring everything and anything! Science attempts to want to control everything(though it really can't! And that's another topic altogether!), to find a physical, social, emotional, psychological reason behind anything and everything, and quantifying seems to be the only objective or non-objective way to go about the job! Our very own Singapore Sports Institute has taken the very lead in moving towards a more science-based(quantifying) approach to all kinds of sport, and one can peruse their website for evidence of such. Ruiyong has also probably been an unconsciously partaking exponent of SSI and the quantifying methods that had been the concept of its birth! He had embraced the altitude chamber in which he gain his oxygen carrying red blood cells, and gotten world class medical and technical running advice from them! <span style="color: #073763;"><b><u>He had ate, drank, and slept statistics and quantifying methods! But he now rejects virtually in wholesale the very thing that he has embraced, by claiming that one can overwhelmingly throw statistical trends and models in distance running performances into the dustbin when it comes to qualifying for the marathon in Rio! And perhaps leave it all to Father Miracle!</u></b></span><br />
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<b><u>What a bitter irony!?!</u></b><br />
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Sorry for the digression, and back to the topic of Mary Joy Tabal and her seemingly impossible mission of qualifying for the Rio olympic marathon, as suggested by Ruiyong's language expression on his facebook page! Was it really all that impossible that a MIRACLE had to happen, as was implicitly implied by Ruiyong, for Mary Joy to go to Rio? Let us start the analysis!<br />
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To make our case clear-cut and simple for the average non-statistical or non-scientific folk who might not find or have any predisposition towards quantifiable methods, we shall use the time bands for Mary Joy Tabal in its singularity and find out if they are simply mutually statistically consistent within some acceptable error using the algorithm of the world famous McMillian pace/results calculator. Then one also finds the time bands getting bigger with distance, and the reason of doing so was to conduct some really basic and non-complex 'standardization' of the bands by a factor of 2, to reflect the proportionate increase in distance. Next, we are not going to consider the bands could overlap---though in an environment as real and dynamic as the human being's psychological and physiological body, they actually definitely will! (Comment in the section below to enquire about what I mean by overlapping bands!) We are also not going to even think about any other factors, controllable and non-controllable, from the external environment or internally within the human being, that might or might not have caused Mary Joy to run faster or slower! The bands provided above are what they are, based on the little information on performances of Mary that we have right now, unless Mary Joy herself comes on board and be a willing specimen of our analysis! Is there a reason why I use the McMillian calculator? I don't have a scientific or statistical rationale for this, but Renato Canova himself uses this tool to predict training and race paces for his athletes, and therefore I would like to use it as well. How did I know that? He mentioned it a couple years back on the American Forum Letsrun.com. So here is the website to calculate:<br />
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<a href="https://www.mcmillanrunning.com/" target="_blank">https://www.mcmillanrunning.com/</a><br />
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Once you are in the website, you may enter Mary Joy's marathon result of 2:43:30 into the box for 'recent race time' and immediately click on the 'calculate paces'. Why did we do this? Why did we key in 2:43:30 into the box? Because this time was indicative of her current marathoning ability, and using this information we were then going to check against McMillians ultra reliable algorithm whether the time bands provided from our information sourcing above could provide a reasonable match! After calculation, one finds that we get a compatible match for the 10k band of 34:40-35:40. We didn't get a match for the 5k band of 16:50 to 17:20, missing a couple of seconds. We then had a final match for the half-marathon band of 1:17 to 1:19.</div>
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It is worthy to note that Mary Joy had a career opening marathon of 2:48:00, already only 3minutes away from the female olympic standard of 2:45. Is it the same for a male athlete who is 3minutes away from 2:19? The 3minutes in Mary Joy's case would be statistically closer to 2:45 than the mathematical or numerical difference in time suggests! Why? Because first and foremost if you are modelling or comparing the value of a race performance outcome from scratch without wanting to collect any sample data from anyone, then many variables such as velocity, gender, age and perhaps a quantifiable ability/talent would be ordinarily factored into some hypothetical partial differential equations for race performance ratings, from which one can then model universally and accurately across all genders, velocities, and talents, how excellent(well-rated) any performance was. If one doesn't understand this, just simply then think about how vastly different the speeds for 2:45 and 2:19 are, and that 3minutes of running at these paces will yield completely different lengths or distances! <i>Does that make any sense at all? </i>These things, as well as the fact that Mary Joy had very good time band matches using the world reknowned McMillian race predictor calculator, show us that, far from the 'MIRACLE' Ruiyong had posited prematurely and perhaps embarrassingly on his facebook page, one could instead safely come to the statistically and/or scientifically acceptable conclusion that the result of 2:43:30 was just<b><u> OPTIMUS!</u></b><br />
<b><u><br /></u></b><b><u>But the same cannot be held for Ruiyong, because upon keying in the required pace from his pb at 10k(good indicator of marathoning potential according to Science in Sport magazine), one doesn't get anywhere close to 2:18:xx!</u></b></div>
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Till next time</div>
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Radio DJ Joe KShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14181443018029034346noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8816158007503835159.post-10231703924789207262016-05-23T10:29:00.000-07:002016-07-26T08:42:43.168-07:00Hardwork doesn't beat talent if all things being equal!<i><span style="color: red;">Welcome back to my blog after a long hiatus in which the few of us required some much needed retrospection and introspection about our motivations and intentions for setting up this blog. After which we decided that we had virtually zero ill will in our hearts and could peaceably, with ourselves, continue supplying the blog as per normal. This also allowed our main character Soh Ruiyong time to reflect on a personally disastrous life story in 2016 so far, for all the reasons we have already painstakingly affirmed in every of our previous posts.</span></i><br />
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Indonesia's Agus Prayogo has a pb for 10000m in 29:25. If we define such ability as 'talent', then the million dollar question is: can 'hardwork' beat 'talent'.</div>
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For context, we obviously use our main character Soh Ruiyong, who comes from a background of 31:15 10000m speed. We are not talking about a guy already running say 29:50 for 10000m working also already very hard, and still looking to continue even more 'hardwork' to surmount the difference to 29:25, the supposed benchmark of 'talent' in the definition above. We are talking about a drastically slower guy who is only running 31:15 on the track with MORE THAN his maximum effort, as illustrated by the race video of 2 years ago on Flotrack where Ruiyong totally capitulated from physical and mental exhaustion at the end of the race! If that is the case, can Ruiyong with his 31:15 pb, with the support of already one of the best training ideologies and guidances from a very good elite distance coach and group be able to continue to work hard so that, according to him, 'hardwork' may beat 'talent'? And that means, he would be running sometime in the next 1,2, or 3 years, faster than 29:25, which would be 2 minutes faster than his current best? We of the blog, and any reasonable and knowledgeable distance running fan, coach, or competitor would obviously and completely reject such a notion.<u><b> In fact, we of the blog, are even willing to wager that this man will not even run 1 min faster than 31:15, much less 2minutes faster!</b></u><b><u> In fact, based on analysis of the entirety of Ruiyong's running career and trajectory, performances, emotional and mental thresholds and tendencies, and biomechanical style and efficiency, as well as some other work and climate related factors when he returns to Singapore, we do not think he even has a high chance of ever coming within a split second of his 31:15 again!</u></b></div>
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<b><u><span style="color: #0b5394;">HARD WORK DOESN'T BEAT TALENT BELOW A CERTAIN CUT-OFF STANDARD!</span></u></b> Can anybody disagree with that?! If yes, the onus is on you to prove it critically/theoretically/practically, for the sport of distance running only!</div>
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We would like every single Singaporean and non Singaporean runner, coach, parent, fan, competitor of distance sport, to stop promulgating notions such as these above without more critical thinking and analysis like we have done above, especially if you are well educated and have better ability to filter information and knowledge, and/or, differentiate reality from illusion, right from wrong, good from bad, morally and ethically!</div>
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<b><u>Instead, we propose the existence of TALENT BANDS!</u></b> There must be a band of runners of a certain ability by a certain age and perhaps also of a certain cultural heritage, who one would consider to be above the cut-off standard so that all their hard work may PROBABLY reap some small or large dividends! As you can see, being above the cut-off still doesn't guarantee hard work beats talent! And we speak mostly in probabilistic terms because so many other factors are at work still. We propose that for a senior runner in SEA to run 29:25 one fine day in his career, he needs to graduate from highschool at the tender age of 18 years or 19 years old with a pb for 10000m in the region of 30-31 minutes. This would be called a TALENT BAND! <b><u>A runner falls into this talent band if he comes from either vietnam, phillipines, singapore, burma, cambodia, laos, indonesia, malaysia, east timor, brunei, and is at most 19 years old and has run 30-31minutes in a 10k track(or road) race. Needless to say, Ruiyong at 18-19 years old, was nowhere near this BAND. In fact he was 4 BANDS away in the high 34min region. For him, no amount of hard work is ever going to cause him to beat a talent of Agus' stature, or run times close to 29:25! If he is going to prove this wrong to all of us, and insist, in his delusion, that hard work beats talent(whatever else that means to him), we wish him all the best in what we definitely believe is futile.</u></b></div>
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<b><u><span style="color: #134f5c;">At last word, we heard Ruiyong is hell bent on giving one last push for qualifying for Rio, by way of the Gold Coast Airport marathon 2016, in which Agus Prayogo is also entered(according to his instagram).</span></u></b> We have spoken quietly to everybody in the knowledgeable local distance running community, and a quick survey of opinions in general showed that 9 in 10 conversations were totally disagreeable and expressed shock and abhorrence at his naivety!<b><span style="color: magenta;"> We have no reason to lie about this and our meticulously objective analyses in all our posts speak for themselves</span></b>. Whoever is overseeing his running career at the moment, probably doesn't have enough influence in Ruiyong's life to prevent him from trying to qualify for Rio again in Gold Coast. That includes his PR agent Nicholas and his personal coach and assistant Ian. Even our own athletics association SAAA exponent C kunalan has questioned Ruiyong's questionable moral and ethical choices over the last few months of his running career, to no avail---no remorse and recourse by Ruiyong and his team at Blackdot. He thinks he can get in and out of the marathon game like an 800m or 1500m race---haphazardly putting together what he thought was a solid training block of 5-6 weeks, in between gingerly managing injuries and being injured and sometimes not training at all due to pain and discomfort, when real solid professional runners like Eliud Kipchoge settle for no less than 16-20 weeks except in this olympic year where the amount of time between the end of the London marathon and the Rio marathon allows for no more than a meagre 12 weeks of actual preparation. At his level, is this not showing any respect for the distance? Because this isn't an 800m or 1500m playtoy, and he knows that! He knows that the marathon distance is an extreme extension which requires months upon months of physical and mental practice to perfect, whereby any small chink in the armor, or weakness, is going to be amplified multi-fold----and he knows this! </div>
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Question of the day: how does he act so obstinately dumb? </div>
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<b><u><span style="color: #660000;">It's a no-brainer outcome at Gold Coast, just as it was in London: Soh Ruiyong is not qualifying by merit of time(sub 2:19). There could be a window of chance with regards to the national marathon record, but even with our best optimism, we think that is a long shot as well. A really long shot...</span></u></b></div>
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Radio DJ Joe KShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14181443018029034346noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8816158007503835159.post-57504998592289766412016-04-24T12:09:00.002-07:002017-04-18T07:51:50.033-07:00Ruiyong's London marathon post race bits and thoughts.....<div style="padding: 0px !important;">
Ruiyong had this to say about his London marathon race:</div>
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"<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;">Challenging experience. Raced London Marathon today worrying that every step could be my last. 2:37 wasn't what I was hoping for but I'm happy with my race today. Did exactly what I wanted to do for 32.2km, but having barely trained since being injured a month ago, the lack of fitness really showed in the last 10km when I struggled with cramps and white vision all the way to the end. After running at 34min 10km pace for the first 32.2km, I took over 50min for the last 10km.</span></div>
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W<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;">hen I do my next marathon, I'll be better trained, hopefully without injuries, and have a stronger finish.</span></div>
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Thanks for all the support! Still a step forward. Staying positive and looking forward to the next one."</div>
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We have all along mentioned Ruiyong's London marathon race was specially setup for failure, in light of all the recent events that has occurred surrounding him, which we do not want to waste our breath repeating. Those 'events' have been painstakingly analytically explained to everybody in a series of blogposts since March, so review them again if you will at your own time and leisure.</div>
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Ergo, there was nothing surprising with Ruiyong's poor performance in what was fantastic arctic weather and gentle breezes for running fast and well. His obvious lack of training in the 1 month since the world half marathon championships was telling when the race began at 30km! He had no energy or fuel left, consistent with either 1)lack of specific training 2)started way too fast for the amount he lacked in training. Ruiyong's splits have been posted on the London marathon live tracking website, with a halfway time of 1:12:27, but everybody knows halfway in a marathon is virtually not even the start of the race itself! 30km is where it all begins, and Ruiyong slowed not gradually, but exponentially, very much like how outlier performances behave! Except this outlier was a performance so bad rather than so good that it is likely the worst, or one of the worst performances out of all bad performances of runners who hit the wall and implode, by a large margin! The stats say it all, Ruiyong slowed to 4:51per km average in the segment 35-40km, and then 5:36 per km in the segment from 40km to the finish. Elite professional, semi-professional and even amateur runners, male or female, about the standard of Ruiyong do not implode so badly(drastic exponential) from 30km to the finish, because we have seen so many results list after another from year upon year of marathon majors and we know what are the trends and statistics regarding pacing, performances and just about anything and everything at the back of our minds! What is more alarming is that 4:51 and 5:36 are just averages for 5km segments, the reality would be Ruiyong had way slower than 4:51 and 5:36 per km paces from 30km all the way to the finish, perhaps, by our rusty mental calculation 5:30s and 6:10s per km anyhow for the majority of kilometers from 30km onwards.</div>
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<span style="color: #141823;">For those of you who thought his slowing down was within the realm of acceptable standard deviations, I am sorry to disappoint you people, because I have just advised that his slowing down totally demolished almost all acceptable standard deviations in statistical history for slowing down due to hitting the wall. You may ask how in the world that is possible? Answer: Ruiyong didn't just hit the wall, he was the wall itself after 30km, and therefore probably also one long before the race started, in the one month he took to nurse a plantar injury and a few adhoc and insipid workouts later. If he was supposed to be a walking wall for all of one month, then this was the reason why we had very accurately predicted that the London marathon race was specially setup for fools(ie failure!). Because how could a wall even think of starting the race? It pains us to call him a fool, because he is Singapore's precious 'talent' by local standards only. It pains us to see him eschew our team of guidance from great knowledge and experience to force his own path of self-deception--which he dogmatically rationalizes every now and then as something more noble such as self-belief or 'chasing your dreams with all your heart and mind!'. How foolhardy can such a belief be in light of the background of knowledge and experience we offer? In let's say a random Shakespeare example, Romeo and Juliet chased their dreams with all their hearts and minds and what happened? </span><b><u><span style="color: red;">They offered up their lives on the sacrifice! </span></u></b><span style="color: #141823;">There is a fine line between "chasing your dreams with all your hearts and minds MORALLY/ETHICALLY AND WITH WISDOM", AND, SELF DECEPTION/DELUSION!</span></div>
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We want the lessons gleaned from Ruiyong's career, with the help of all the analysis done in our 10 blogposts, to be a warning to all young and aspiring Singaporean teenage/youth runners, and even elite Singaporean adults in their 20s and 30s, that all the running, training and racing you are doing is inherently selfish or self-serving, first and foremost! Why? Because none of you belong in the category of Eliud Kipchoge and tons of other East Africans running by<b><u> NO CHOICE OF THEIRS!</u></b> These guys run for the most unselfish reasons---they run to make a living, feed families, and just generally upgrade to a better standard of living. They run to <b><u>give!</u></b> Give life and hope! You and I probably run, charity aside, to consume! You consume time and so many resources more than you can give time and resources back to mother Earth! So in general you<b><u> consume</u></b>! Those guys give more than they consume time and resources so in general they give! Can you see the difference between what your running stands for---at best a hobby and at worst a <b><u>VAIN PREOCCUPATION(!)</u></b>, and what theirs stand for---<b><u>LIFE AND HOPE!</u></b> Ponder upon these carefully, we urge you! We are not saying to immediately ditch running or any hobbies from this point on, we only want to create first and foremost a stepping stone of social awareness about the hobby that you might have been too heavily invested(possibly obsessed) in, and hopefully our words and advice can subsequently down the road produce changes and effects in your life in the direction of ethical and moral living! No change is immediate, no rational mindset gets switched from one frame to another in a couple of hours, days or even years. As they say, it takes a generation to have any type of social awareness finally producing concrete and actual patterns of behavior!</div>
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<span style="line-height: 19.32px;">Finally we hope the outcome of the race can bring closure to Ruiyong's yearning to become an olympian. Though it was foolish of him to run the race on the back of a plantar episode, he mentioned it was the only way he could gain spiritual ease. We take that, because that alone sounds reasonable by itself, but unpardonable based on knowledgeable wisdom.</span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 19.32px;">For those of us who think he is over and done with his plantar issues just simply by his lack of mention in his facebook race report, I urge you not to jump so quickly to such a conclusion. The lack of mention doesn't equate to NO FLARE-UP. It could mean 1)NO FLARE-UP 2) FLARE-UP but dun dare to report 3)FLARE-UP and forgot to include in report 4)FLARE-UP but finding an opportunity to report in the coming days or even weeks!</span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 19.32px;">All in all our top local coach Lexus always reminds his athletes to 1) BE HUMBLE 2) BE REALISTIC(NO DECEPTION) 3) ALWAYS LET YOUR RUNNING DO THE TALKING, NOT YOUR MOUTH!</span></div>
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Till next time :)</div>
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Radio DJ Joe KShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14181443018029034346noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8816158007503835159.post-65125283322993704832016-04-19T12:18:00.004-07:002017-04-18T07:45:02.003-07:00Exemplary morals from the protege of our current national marathon record holder Murugiah Rameshon<span style="color: red;"><b>"He who glorifies himself will be condemned(by others obviously!), while he who humbles himself will be glorified(by others as well obviously!)"</b></span><br />
<span style="color: red;"><b>Source: Universal book of morality and ethics!</b></span><br />
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It isn't very hard for <b><i>any educated or even non educated person </i></b>to understand the above quote. Is there anybody, or creature, since the beginning of time who had glorified himself/itself and not be condemned at some or all points in time subsequently? Is there anybody or creature? Can anybody name me somebody or some creature? I think you will find, in all history, whether in sports, politics, business or any other domain of life, as well as the animal kingdom(!), nobody and no creature who has glorified himself/itself with IMPUNITY! NOBODY! NO CREATURE! Again, if this is not true, just as I am not infallible, let it be known to us here that we may be forced to do what we do best: ANALYSE!<br />
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Without further ado, the couple of us would like to introduce one of the most humble schoolboy athletes of all time, who also happened to be extremely gifted in distance running with regards to local schoolboy standards,<b><u> though not as gifted as the other secretly brewing talent from out of Australia--Lui Yuan Chow(8:50 3k and 3:58 1500m, while 16 years of age!).</u></b><br />
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But this will do for our purposes for now: his name is <span style="color: red;"><u><b>Jeffrey Ng</b></u></span>, and our goal is to glorify NOT THE MAN, but the MORALS AND ETHICS the man carries! We want to make this absolutely and decisively clear! The man is disposable, for it could have been any other man, and man derives from the transient state of the disposable flesh that will soon wither away, whereas morals and ethics do not dispose ever, <b><i><u><span style="color: red;">it exists in abstract spirit-like form that cannot die because it is not of the flesh</span></u></i></b>, and men must always strive to not dispose with morals and ethics although his tendency is to be tempted to dispose with them! Once this is clear enough to understand, let us furnish you with the link to the website of our current local national marathon record holder, who is himself another very humble man: <b><u><span style="color: red;">Murugiah Rameshon!</span></u></b><br />
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<a href="http://rameshon-m.blogspot.sg/2016/04/about-jeffrey-ng-3000m-heats-in.html" target="_blank">http://rameshon-m.blogspot.sg/2016/04/about-jeffrey-ng-3000m-heats-in.html</a><br />
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Once you are on the site, the story of one of the most, if not the most humble schoolboy athlete to ever grace the distance running scene in Singapore, becomes very clear, but maybe we shall just highlight one totally mind-bending act of humility in Jeffrey Ng. This man had qualified as one of the candidates of President Scholarship, the nation's most prestigious award. Mind you, he had been selected by peers and teachers to run for the award, as a result of his absolutely good running results and even better academic A level results. But guess what, and this is extremely mind-boggling even for us---Jeffrey turned down the offer to try running for the award by SECRETLY not turning up for an interview all candidates were required to grace. How is that possible for somebody his age(then 18!), in the prime of his life and probably also on the cusp of some greatness whom everybody would think would be looking for the greatest and most advantageous benefit for his future endeavors, DARED TO TURNED DOWN AN OFFER OF SUCH MAGNITUDE?!! <span style="color: red;"><u><b>Unless the boy was deranged with a dose of psychosis, which he clearly doesn't just exhibit, then we can only look for more humbler explanations----Jeffrey was too clearly self-effacing, perhaps even balking at the idea that there should even be an awards ceremony for being great at sports and studies, perhaps for fear that such flattery might condemn him to egotistical and narcissistic views about himself in future?</b></u></span> And maybe other presidential candidates would do better to mimic his mindsets and attitudes towards successes and achievements! We are simply brainstorming the origins of humble undertakings! We are not sure what really happened in that little teenage box wonderland atop Jeffrey's shoulders, and if we placed ourselves in his shoes, we would be thinking exactly the way we suggested, perhaps!<br />
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By all accounts as well, a good protege must have been laser-guided by an equally good, if not better, master---marathon record holder Murugiah Rameshon! This man might have retired from competitive distance running, but the beauty out of this man's achievements was his ability to STAY CONSTANT with regards to the upholding of almost perfect ethics and morals, foremost of which was humility. He could never boast a word of his training or race performance. You may say he was not talented for boasting, but whatever you call it, he was universally humble at the end of the day. And then we know from humility must spring truthfulness, love, patience, faith, trust, forgiveness, courage and justice/equity. There was no doubt throughout the career and life of Rameshon in general, there was always an abundance of these virtues of which we speak, from all the accounts and anecdotes we have gathered from mutual friends, friends of friends, and current SEA Games marathon finalist Ashley Liew, from as many as 20-30 years!<br />
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We sincerely hope that all athletes from any sport can learn from Jeffrey Ng and Murugiah Rameshon and glorify ethical and moral outcomes in their pursuits of sporting excellence, and if one sees errant behavior, or any suggestion of errant behavior from any athlete,<b><u><span style="color: red;"> one should sound the alarm bells and hyperbolize the possible consequences of such behaviors, so that the particular athlete has overwhelmingly no illusions of the severe magnitudes of his/her actions on his/her personal and public lives, and others' as well----seeing that youth and even adult athletes are constantly looking out the window for a role model to copy!</span></u></b><br />
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We are disappointed with Ruiyong's dogmatic insistence in running the London marathon despite his most serious injury yet. We totally do not endorse his participation on this back of an injury episode, that for all intents and purposes, definitely hasn't recovered 100% upon 100%! There are consequences for what we believe is a foolhardy decision, and you and I are forced to contemplate that now!Radio DJ Joe KShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14181443018029034346noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8816158007503835159.post-59893419862115869042016-04-13T13:38:00.004-07:002016-08-29T07:53:23.489-07:00Ruiyong is going down a dangerous slippery slope! Please be careful not to continue validating, without FILTER, his thoughts, words and actions!<div style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px; margin-bottom: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Before we get into a new topic of discussion today, allow me to reproduce some words of wisdom from the world of proverbs!</span></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">"<span style="background-color: #fdfeff; color: #001320; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;">Listen to advice and accept discipline, and at the end you will be counted among the wise." Proverbs 19:20</span></span></i></b></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">"<span style="background-color: #fdfeff; color: #001320; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;">The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, But a wise man is he who listens to counsel." Proverbs 12:15</span></span></i></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fdfeff; color: #001320; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;">If Ruiyong has or will have any wisdom from this point onwards, it would be because he started listening to our, or at least some of our advice that came from a combined total of 30 and more years of experience and knowledge with life in general, notwithstanding distance sport, which has usually been our primary domain of discussion and analysis. <u style="font-weight: bold;">But a recent facebook post by Ruiyong on 'racing to deceive' has gotten us extremely uneasy and worried about how possibly deep he has sunk into the pit of ethical and moral depravity! This post has been reproduced below in its purest origin, just in case he deletes that post for fear of whatever repercussions. </u></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fdfeff; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Disclaimer: Our views here for this post only are not intended to be pragmatic due to the nature of what we intend to write about: morality and ethics. They are instead intended to be absolute and decisive according to what we view as absolute and decisive. This is therefore also our bias. This bias, or view, is exclusively ours and ours only! We do not intend to claim that we have the best advice/bias on the planet, and that Ruiyong has to only listen to our advice/bias, in full or partially. We do not come, in all humility, from any appearance or lack thereof of ethical and/or moral high ground despite trying to be decisive and absolute in our views, and every one of our readers can be safe in the belief that all our hearts and minds are in 'the right place' FIRST AND FOREMOST, 99% guaranteed(since nothing is 100%). That really means for 99% we have as close to pure a desire as possible to simply and ably impart sound and absolute ethical and moral advice, according to what we view as absolutely ethical and moral, to a man we believe is going down a slippery slope slowly but surely to depravity and/or some sort of destruction, so that his distance career could in all probability become a warning lesson throughout the generations and generations of Singaporean distance and/or non distance athletes.</span></b></span></div>
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<b><u><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Here is Ruiyong's facebook post below before we delve into what we do best---CRITICALLY ANALYSE FOR THE TRUTH!</span></u></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">"The traditional Asian adage "Always Be Humble" is cliched. It does not always apply.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">As much as training is about humility and honest hard work,</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Deceiving yourself - to believing you're faster than you actually are.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Bluffing your opponents - to fearing you're better than you look on paper.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Lying to your body - that no matter how bad you think you're hurting, you can always give more.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And no matter how much everything tells you to stop, you can go that one more mile.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Want to be always right? Just go into every competition saying you're not as good as everyone else, or you can't hit a certain mark. You can't jump this height. You can't throw that far. You can't run that fast.</span></div>
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You will always be right.</div>
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Want a shot at upsetting the odds? Psyche yourself up. Psyche the others out. Then hit them with all you have.</div>
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That way, at least you have a chance."</div>
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<span style="color: #141823;">Let's now analyse the rhythm of the words in Ruiyong's post, and strain our ears to hear the heartbeat of the 'truth' we are about to put forth! Ruiyong says there are 2 categories concerning distance sport---racing and training. While he says, and we therefore assume he believes as well, that honesty and humility, or truthfulness, should apply in training, you should throw these infinitely beautiful, eternal and time-tested virtues out the window when you race?!!? He justifies these with SEEMINGLY(beware!) logical explanations such as "believing you are faster than you actually are", "making your opponents call your bluff that you're better than you look on paper", and "lying to your body so that no matter how bad you think you're hurting you can always give more."</span><span style="color: red;"> Anybody who truly possess wisdom and knowledge will know that the double virtues of honesty(truthfulness) and humility(meekness) are footstools and foundations of love, patience, kindness, thoughtfulness, forgiveness, respect, dignity and integrity, and always reliably with 100% guarantee(in a world where nothing is 100%!) work perfectly--providing you have FAITH to use these virtues in the first place, which one must provide for out of his/her own willing mind and heart! This brings us to the question--might Ruiyong have a lack of a willing mind and heart and therefore lack of a certain faith then? If Ruiyong cannot carry through the virtues of honesty and humility in racing, and instead have to rely on calling bluffs and other self-deception techniques, then he certainly has a lack of a willing mind and heart and therefore a lack of faith. If he cannot carry through the virtues of honesty and humility, if he cannot stay TRUE and be TRUTHFUL at all times whether in racing or training, might he be guilty of also lacking the other accompanying virtues that lay on top of honesty and humility, such as love, respect, dignity and kindness etc? Yes, to a high probability! When the foundations of truth and humility are missing, those on top of these will likely collapse under its own weight as well!!! Can we therefore say he lacks patience and therefore love for the sport because he is willing to believe a self-made delusion "that he is much faster than he actually is in training", and that this delusion is one of the primary causal effects of his lack of love, patience, respect, integrity and basically all of the virtues spoken of above? </span>Yes to a high probability as well!</div>
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It's seems clear, to us, that for all the love of the sport that Ruiyong claims he overflows hitherto, that could not stand up to the weight of our analysis! Something doesn't add up in his love for the sport! You should be starting to then question his motives and intentions for wanting to do what he is doing and saying, whatever he is doing and saying!</div>
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Let us try another angle of analysis: we have thought about this momentarily and wondered if Ruiyong might have gotten confused over semantics(ie, confusing the definitions of deception or deceive, which is of something bad or evil in nature, with something of good nature such as thinking positively in a moderate and realistic sense, and/or self-defense in the sense of defending one's own turf and not allowing your opponents to think for even one moment that you are 'easy meat'. </div>
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According to the Cambridge English dictionary, 'to deceive' can mean any of these 3 things, and we will be 'judging' Ruiyong's theories for 'racing to deceive' against the background of these 3 conditions below, AS WELL AS ONE PARTICULAR CASE STUDY!</div>
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1)<span style="color: #222222; font-size: x-small; line-height: normal;">deliberately cause (someone) to believe something that is not true, especially for personal gain.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-size: x-small; line-height: normal;">2)</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: x-small; line-height: normal;">(of a thing) give (someone) a mistaken impression.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-size: x-small; line-height: normal;">3)</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: x-small; line-height: normal;">fail to admit to oneself that something is true.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-size: x-small; line-height: normal;">Case study: Haile Gebrselassie raced an Olympic 10000m final on a moderately injured Achilles Tendon, against a Paul Tergat in extremely fine form. The twist: Will Haile uphold honesty(truthfulness) and humility(meekness) in his quest for a 2nd Olympic gold, in front of the watching eyes of Paul Tergat, or will he ditch them and employ 'dirty' deceptive tactics to lure what you and I suppose would be an unsuspecting Tergat into a trap so that Tergat lets down his guard for the race! (though we think Tergat, a Kalenjin, is made of better spirit--ethics/morals than that!)</span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">As documented in Haile's biography, "The Greatest", Haile landed in Sydney with one great concern---not to show any sign of physical and/or mental weakness to his greatest rival for the gold--Paul Tergat. As a result, his injury was a tightly secured affair, with no journalist privy on the matter, except for perhaps Haile's wife, and agent Jos Hermans. So from the press conference for the race to the race warm up at the practice track and call room race lane assignment, Haile did one thing he knew he had to do---NOT TO SHOW ANY SIGN OF PHYSICAL AND/OR MENTAL WEAKNESS to Paul Tergat. Haile even made sure to do some powerful strides within watching distance of Paul Tergat at the practice track. QUESTION OF THE DAY: Is any of what Haile is doing intending to deceive? That means, does any of Haile's actions satisfy any of the 3 conditions for deception above? Let us see!</span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">First: Does the lack of presenting any signs of physical and/or mental weakness akin to deception? NOPE! CLEAR NO! That is the realm of DEFENSE, or SELF DEFENSE! Footballers have all sorts of worries on their minds, from personal worries like family and finance to universal ones like mortality knowing their playing days are numbered! Do they show this worry, or have the need to show this worry on the football pitch just because they don't want to deceive their opponents in that they are worry-free and mentally 100%? NOPE! They weren't even asked a question by their opponents if they had a worry on their minds, why the heck would they voluntarily present their mental struggles and worries in a free-for-all revelation to their opponents who are probably also strangers to them! Nobody in their right minds, including athletes, will present any hint of mental and/or physical weakness WITHOUT BEING ASKED A QUESTION! BECAUSE THEY ARE DOING SELF-DEFENSE! This begs the question: what if somebody asked 'how are you?' before a football match, and you do indeed have some physical and/or mental weakness/problem? The right thing to do would always be the ethical and moral way: BALANCE the TRUTH of your weaknesses with the need to also SAY THE TRUTH to your enemy(your opponent)!!! It's all about balance, it has always been about balance in anything and everything, an issue I spoke about in my previous posts! So you might say something like "oh well i've had some setbacks recently, but I'm looking forward to giving my best shot in this match and hopefully progress to the champions league finals!" While being careful not to reveal the 'setback' you have! This is saying the truth, WITH LOVE AND CARE! Truthfulness always accompanies the virtues of love and care, no matter the circumstance!</span><span style="color: red;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">This is something Ruiyong obviously have no clue about based on his beliefs above racing!</span></span></div>
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Haile then took some powerful strides in front of a watchful Tergat! Is this akin to deception, since Haile knows the existence of the injury, and is then trying to put on a <b><i><u>seeming</u></i></b> theater show for Tergat, to show Tergat his lack of an injury? BUT TERGAT DOESN'T EVEN KNOW HAILE HAS AN INJURY, OR NOT!!! Haile isn't trying to change the belief and/or attitude Tergat has towards him, since Haile already knows that Tergat DOESNT know the existence of his injury!!! Definitely NO DECEPTION ON HAILE'S PART!!! What Haile had been doing is this: SELF DEFENSE, AGAIN!!! Haile is making sure he doesn't lose the aura of invincibility already gained<b> <i><u>long ago</u></i></b> from years of championships gold medal racing ability, THAT IS SELF-DEFENSE. If you are a lady and walking down the street with an expensive handbag and somebody snatches from you something that is ALREADY YOURS and you defended with kung-fu kick, THAT IS SELF- DEFENSE! Defending what is already yours, and already gained. Haile isn't trying to gain something more than he already gained by using a method of deliberately trying to cause someone(Tergat) to believe something that is not true, because 1) Tergat doesn't at all know Haile is injured 2) Haile isn't trying to gain anything except to conduct maintenance on what he has ALREADY HONESTLY gained with his gold medals in the years 1993, 1995, 1997 and 1999!!!</div>
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So since Haile's doing and speaking doesn't satisfy the first 2 conditions of 'deceiving', let us see if he might be guilty of the 3rd conditions---failing to admit to oneself that something is true. Haile went into the race knowing he had an injury, he admitted his weakness personally as well as with his coaches and agents, and knew after the race he needed to go for reconstructive surgery on his Achilles tendon. At no point in time did he deceive himself or view the injury with much less respect than he should, which was why he employed the tactics he employed during the race, which was to sit and kick only at the last moment---in the last 100m! Instead of the usual last 250-400m! Of course you could argue that he shouldn't have raced in the first place knowing the destruction it will cause his achilles, but heck, distance running is his first and only professional job ever, and his existing and surviving depends solely on his ability to run fast and perform, and for a man of his talent and ability, he has a pretty solid exception to risk his personal health and safety for the sake of a chance at retaining his OLYMPIC GOLD! The highest athletic honor in the universe! Haile's circumstances are completely different from a certain Ruiyong racing and training on an injured plantar at the world championships 2 weeks ago! So Haile hasn't deceived himself in any way, although there is legitimate argument that he shouldn't have ran the race.</div>
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Bottomline: the legendary distance runner in the entire universe---Haile Gebrselassie, a runner who is an example to millions of distance and non-distance athletes alike, shows us that it is completely 100%(in a world where nothing is 100%) possible to race with 100% truthfulness and therefore 100% humility! If our young singaporean distance athletes do not take after the best in the universe--Haile's ethics and morals, what will they take after? Ruiyong?!? We strongly advise against that after all the analysis we have done for you! Make no mistake, Ruiyong---Haile was so humble in that 10000m race in Sydney, that he mentioned in the aftermath that he was RESIGNED, before the race EVEN STARTED, to LOSING THAT RACE OUTRIGHT TO PAUL TERGAT! He only decided to race because of the cultural weight of expectations from the entire Ethiopia, A DISTANCE RUNNING MAD NATION, and his out-of-this-world distance running talent which was also his professional duty! It was also an OLYMPIC GOLD AT STAKE! <b><u>You do not come from a 1) distance running mad nation 2) do not have out-of-this-world talent 3)Not running in an olympic final 4)this is not your rightful professional duty given your academic qualifications and other educated skills!</u></b></div>
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Finally, with all of the knowledge from the analysis we have made, let us kindly school Ruiyong in his attitudes and mindsets towards racing, so that he does not mislead the entire distance running population, of whom some might be partially or completely blind or taken over by the supposed ILLUSION propagated by a SEA Games marathon GOLD medallist!</div>
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Wrong and misguided statement by Ruiyong in black, and adjusted for ethics and morals in red:</div>
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<span style="line-height: 19.32px;">"Deceiving yourself - to believing you're faster than you actually are." </span></div>
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<span style="color: red;">It depends on how much faster you BELIEVE you actually are as compared to your training evidence! If you are training with paces of 1:10:00 for the HM and believe you can run 1:03 on actual race day, surely my dear friend, you are DECEIVING YOURSELF(DELUSION!). However, if say, you believe you can run in the region of 1:09 or even slightly under 1:09, that is positive thinking done realistically and moderately, and you are in no way deceiving yourself! As mentioned above, deception is of an evil and bad nature, and in no way under any circumstances in your life in general should you be deceiving anybody including yourself. WHITE LIES included!! A lie is a lie, a deception is a deception!</span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 19.32px;">"Bluffing your opponents - to fearing you're better than you look on paper."</span></div>
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<span style="color: red;">As mentioned above in our analysis, you never get anybody to call your bluffs, never deceive, never deception! Never, never, never try to make gains by deliberately causing somebody, by your words or actions, to believe something that is not true(ie looking better than you look on paper!). That is not ethical or moral. As presented to you above, Haile didn't do any such 'dirty' thing. <u><i><b>Question is, who is your mentor, and what has led you to conceive of sport in such a 'cheap' and 'dirty' manner! I wouldn't be surprise if you would resort to drug-taking, given the kind of ethics and morals you carry in this sport.</b></i></u></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 19.32px;">"Lying to your body - that no matter how bad you think you're hurting, you can always give more."</span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 19.32px;"><span style="color: red;">Again, clear cut self deception and delusion, if you are talking about injury! You telling yourself during your half marathon world championships race that you can hold out till the end of the race despite an acute pain injury is nothing short of mind-bending depravity. If you are referring to the 'pain' of lactate accumulation, you also DO NOT LIE for one moment to yourself that you are not feeling that pain! I cannot believe you are writing such a statement if you were referring to lactate pain. Ask any elite professional athlete on the planet, and they will tell you that the key to surmounting the pain is FACING AND ACCEPTING THE PAIN HEAD ON WITH COURAGE AND WILLPOWER. That is different from lying to your body, which I perceive as---ignoring the pain, or that the pain doesn't exist, WHICH IS NOT TRUE! The pain exists, accept it, deal with it, but don't deal with it by lying or deceiving yourself thinking that the pain doesn't exists. Similarly, if you have a problem in life in general, you face the problem with courage and will power head on in a collision course! You do not lie to yourself that the problem is smaller than it is, or worst, that it doesn't exist in the first place, because you will then be digging yourself a deeper pit to sink into! That would then be a delusion!</span></span></div>
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So get out of the delusion, come back to Singapore for treatment and do not loiter in England any longer. Accept, with all TRUTHFULNESS AND MEEKNESS, that your Rio Olympic journey has come to an end, and work towards Tokyo 2020 for the sake of those who care about you!<br />
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If you want to have a shot or chance at Tokyo 2020(qualifying only, not top-ten), do it only with truth, humility, and in both racing and training, and outside of distance sport in your life in general as well! If it can't be done, it can't be done, nothing to be ashamed of. Don't do anything 'at all costs'. That will likely tempt you to deceive, to lie, and to get into an agreement with evil, to your demise. Then refer to the first 2 proverbs at the top of this post again.</div>
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<span style="color: purple;">It is opportune to repeat once more, to all his sponsors, agents, sports associations and people in top management levels in these associations that Ruiyong is going down a dangerous slippery slope that you probably haven't been concerned enough to heed against. Please be careful not to continue validating through the pathways you have been using to validate him, without FILTER in the form of the words and advice we have provided above to him.</span></div>
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Radio DJ Joe KShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14181443018029034346noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8816158007503835159.post-89968727788414749562016-04-01T02:28:00.002-07:002016-04-02T00:27:24.359-07:00Longevity and health in distance running (2)As promised in this post, we go on and discuss why, if you love the sport of distance running, you ABSOLUTELY MUST have the desire to protect your distance running health, and express outward evidence that you do indeed desire to protect this health all the way till you leave the face of this Earth! Otherwise, we question your 'love' for the sport, that you are perhaps deluded in some aspects of the love for distance running sport, and would need guidance to be brought back on the right path. <b><u>And we think Ruiyong needs some real guidance on how to conduct his mindsets and attitudes towards distance running sport.</u></b><br />
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1) In distance running sport, the INDIVIDUAL comes first. Considerations for safety, health, integrity must always come first. This is a little selfishness but a good selfishness to have. A good ego to have as well. This is something that must be taught and glorified in all forms of sport education. THERE IS SO SUCH THING AS SACRIFICING YOUR SAFETY, HEALTH AND INTEGRITY for the greater good of say the country's pride, honor and reputation. This isn't an patriotic act, just in case you are tempted to think that way---it is in fact a perversion of the good sense of selfishness or ego.<br />
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2)Once considerations for the INDIVIDUAL have been taken care of, we may then discuss about how well he/she may serve in the various areas of his/her life or career. If he/she were a professional distance runner, he/she may then consider how he/she may make his/her country proud and bring honor to her by perhaps showing great sportsmanship and ethics/morals. If he/she were a professional lawyer, he/she may consider how he/she may conduct his/her profession in such a way where he/she does not defile both the morals and ethics society demands he/she should know, as well as expecting the same from his/her clients, and then also show masterful ability to balance the safety, health and integrity of himself/herself and those of his/her clients, whatever that means in the profession of law.<br />
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3)Let's say you find while doing your professional job that you have to sometimes, or, all the time trangress some safety, health and integrity, or society's ethics and morals(assuming you know what they are), or been asked by those of your clients to start trangressing ethics and morals in the name of perhaps more rewards such as money or gifts, and you give in to that temptation, <span style="color: blue;">THAT IS CORRUPTION OR PERVERSION OF THE GOOD SENSE OF EGO AND SELFISHNESS, as defined above.</span> You now have a bad ego, and you are selfish in a bad sense as well! Similarly, if you a professional distance runner and find yourself having to make the decision during a race when you suddenly acquire a serious injury with clear and acute pain signals emitted, and you failed to stop the race and drop out immediately to protect your health, safety and integrity, which is the ethical and moral thing to do,<span style="color: blue;"> YOU HAVE CORRUPTED YOUR OWN BODY PHYSICALLY, MENTALLY AND EMOTIONALLY, BECAUSE YOU GAVE IN TO TEMPTATION AND SELF DENIAL TO KEEP RACING!</span><br />
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As everybody already knows, our very own local athlete Ruiyong has failed to uphold the proper ethical and moral considerations of his sport, and failed to therefore protect the safety, health and integrity of his own mind, body and spirit. This is regretful but unsurprising concurrently. Seeing how clouded his mind in thinking he has the wheels and body to run a 2:18:xx marathon, we do not find it any surprising that he can be equally clouded in failing to protect his safety, health and integrity! If you are cloudy in one area of life, there is a sometimes high probability that you are also cloudy in another area. This cloudiness is another way of describing <b><u><span style="color: red;">DELUSION.</span></u></b><br />
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You might then ask, can a professional distance runner continue improving his personal best times and and run better and faster without sacrificing his/her safety, health and integrity, or perversing his/her own good sense of the ego and selfishness? Absolutely yes! And the key is obviously to not deceive or delude yourself at any point in your life as a distance professional or amateur runner, which means to always be working within the bounds of reality and realistic targets, which also means working within the bounds of societal expectations. What do I mean by working within the bounds of societal expectations? If you are a mum with say 2 young kids, and also hold a full-time stressful day job, but then also want to become a professional distance runner, don't become a professional distance runner in the first place, but you may work towards just becoming a good HEALTHY(READ INJURY FREE AND HAPPY) distance runner who makes sure she leaves enough family time and energy for her young kids and romantic dinners with her hubby, as well as enough time and energy for her full-time professional day job, and if that only allows her to run 3:03 for the marathon in the best weather possible, she SHOULD BE content with that time. She mustn't steal time from family and her kids, reapportion time from her romantic dinners with hubby, or frequently go off early at her professional day job, just so that she can put in training to only run 3:02! NO, THAT IS IN FACT ALREADY DELUSION OR CORRUPTION of her mind and body, because she has perversed good ethics and morals and spoil the balance between what is only her hobby and family and career.<br />
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The point I am getting at is this: you do not destroy the balance between the various aspects of your life so that you may run faster and better, because running faster and better isn't your professional job, and a case could be made against you that you are indeed egotistical and selfish<b><u> if you insist on running faster than the balancing of the various aspects of your life would naturally allow</u></b>. Let me explain further: if you are already achieving a perfect balance in family, career and running, perhaps your family is prospering and happy, you are also doing well in the office and people are happy with your productive output, and you have ran a fantastic marathon of 3:03 as a lady, STOP THERE! Dun look for any improvements IF IT COMES AT THE EXPENSE OF SPOILING THE BALANCE! If you have to neglect the school soccer matches or birthday parties your young kids want you to be present at, just so that you can get in supposedly more rest and recovery so that you may have a greater output at training so that you may run 3hours flat for the marathon as a lady, DON'T DO IT, THAT ISN'T NATURAL! The natural thing to do is to be with your kids and spouses, or be working at your professional job! Your running hobby would have become your obsession, which isn't natural. So do just enough running---train and race hard and whatever timings result from your efforts are what it is! If somebody runs faster than you, say an American lady your age runs 2:44, she is simply more physically gifted than you are, and you simply accept it.<b><u> This isn't defeatist attitude! Do not attempt to usurp the delicate balance that is your life.</u></b> How does it apply to Ruiyong specially?<br />
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As Ruiyong doesn't have a career or family(wife+kids) yet, we will be speaking of 'balance' in terms of his attitudes towards injury and national patriotism!<br />
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At the world half marathon championsips, Ruiyong made the bad decision to even start the race knowing his plantar has re-emerged in kenya, and then making another bad decision to continue racing despite sharp, severe and acute pain setting in. <b><u>That is a double corruption to the safety, health and integrity of his own mind and body, and therefore a corruption of society's ethical and moral values. </u></b>Ruiyong has also selfishly and egotistically manipulated the balance between national pride and his own health and safety. Ruiyong has conveniently, by his corrupted self and ego, overlooked his own safety and health in favor of national pride and honor, and this act then brings a bad name to those who truly do bring real national pride and honor to Singapore. <b><u>He is a terrible example for the young teen and youth runner anywhere in the world.</u></b><br />
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There is no point in destroying the balance so that one may achieve better results. This is similar to the concept of 'win at all costs', and such a concept is deluded and corrupted, and we see many instances of this in our sport today, most recently Alberto Salaazar's scandal here:<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/athletics/2016/03/16/ethical-grounds-only-way-to-pursue-alberto-salazar/" target="_blank"> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/athletics/2016/03/16/ethical-grounds-only-way-to-pursue-alberto-salazar/</a><br />
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It must be infinitely better for Ruiyong, to remain as a 2:26-2:40 runner well into his 50s, sensing how much he says he 'loves' the sport of distance running, while maintaining the balance in all aspects of his life! <span style="color: blue;">We cannot forsee(after considerations from the type of society we live in, the weather conditions, the amount of talent Ruiyong has, and many more factors) that, while maintaining this balance, he can actually become top ten olympics 2020 or be running 2:18:xx 2:17:xx or 2:16:xx,</span> because many things are going to come along his way as he grows with more responsibilities and sensibilities to balance and manage, and it only gets more complicated to balance, rather than easier. Besides, he will age and he will slow down. This brings us to another point<span style="color: red;">---examples of 30-something or 40-something runners who are still breaking marathon pbs are obviously heart-warming, but WHAT NOBODY TELLS ANY OF YOU IS THIS: THE PROBABILITY OF ANYBODY BREAKING THEIR MARATHON PB AFTER 35 YEARS OLD IS NOT HIGH, LIKE PERHAPS 10%, AND IN THIS 10%, MORE THAN HALF ARE PROBABLY PROFESSIONAL, and we have no idea if they are doing it ethically and morally. The chances are they are not!</span><br />
<u><b><br /></b></u><u><b>At the end of the day, we just don't believe a SINGAPOREAN 3 hour male marathoner already training very hard and well, will one day run 2:30:00 or even 2:40:00 ethically and morally, a few years down the road. And we don't want ANYBODY to try to be so foolhardy to prove this statement wrong, because that is not the point of this post, and he/she could bring himself/herself untold physical and emotional hurt.</b></u><br />
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Feel free to provide some comments please.<br />
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<br />Radio DJ Joe KShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14181443018029034346noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8816158007503835159.post-40969406113525900312016-03-29T02:25:00.006-07:002016-03-29T12:10:38.795-07:00Longevity and health in distance running(1)In today's post, a couple of us are going to analyze a specific theme--longevity, using Ruiyong's career as a context.<br />
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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 <b><u>lots of room</u></b> for error in transcription and semantical translation:<br />
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His wife replied first:<br />
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"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."<br />
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Haile corroborated:<br />
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"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)...."<br />
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"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."<br />
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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. <b><u>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.</u></b><br />
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<b><u>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.</u></b><br />
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<b><u><span style="color: blue;">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!</span></u></b><br />
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<span style="color: red;"><u>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. </u></span><br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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<i>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.</i><br />
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<br />Radio DJ Joe KShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14181443018029034346noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8816158007503835159.post-69164641473889482822016-03-27T00:59:00.003-07:002016-03-27T22:06:57.409-07:00Devastation and disbelief in CardiffRenato Canova once said there are 2 types of breakdown that can potentially occur at the limits of distance running performance. They are:<br />
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1)Mechanical breakdown or failure<br />
2)Physiological breakdown or failure<br />
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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!<br />
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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!<br />
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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:<br />
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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.<br />
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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. <b><u>What, in the world, is Ruiyong doing? And, WHO does he think he is or try to be?</u></b> 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. <b><u><span style="color: red;">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!</span></u></b><br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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!<b><u><span style="color: red;"> 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............</span></u></b><br />
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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!<b><u><span style="color: red;"> Why?!!?</span></u></b> 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, <u>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! </u>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? <u><span style="color: red;">Why?!!?</span></u><br />
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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!<br />
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*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.<br />
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**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.<br />
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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 <u><b>absolutely no pride</b></u>, and <b><u>we are totally embarrassed</u></b> that he has <b><u>messed up ethical and moral values upside down and gotten his priorities all wrong</u></b>.' Nation before self' is only for individuals who are fit and healthy. <b><u>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!!!</u></b> <u><b>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!!!</b></u> That is (foolish)^1000.(excuse my hyperbole).<b><i> <span style="color: red;">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!</span></i></b><span style="color: blue;"><b> </b></span><br />
<span style="color: blue;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="color: blue;"><b>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!</b></span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;"><b>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.</b></span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;"><b><br /></b></span>Radio DJ Joe KShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14181443018029034346noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8816158007503835159.post-13016959807496695632016-03-25T11:19:00.004-07:002016-03-25T11:44:38.684-07:00World 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.<br />
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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,<u><b> in fact many more</b></u>, 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.<br />
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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,<b><u> 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%)</u></b> <i>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.</i> 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.<br />
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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. <b><u>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.</u></b><br />
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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, <b><u>because he says those were 'best' workouts or runs ever in his life.</u></b><br />
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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.<br />
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We wish him all the best :)Radio DJ Joe KShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14181443018029034346noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8816158007503835159.post-80516121271954514312016-03-13T01:36:00.000-08:002016-03-13T09:35:52.134-07:00Let us EVALUATE Ruiyong's TEMPO RUN?In this post we analyse Ruiyong's most recent tempo run in Iten.<br />
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As any serious or moderately serious distance runner would probably know, tempo runs,<b><u> also called lactate threshold runs</u></b>, 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.<br />
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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,<b><u> regeneration, fundamental, special and specific</u></b>, and if what you thought you were doing was called tempo run today,<b><u> he doesn't really care what you think because he only cares about how that run would be defined in his model!</u></b> 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 <b><u>with no view of what their specialized event might be</u></b>, 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.<br />
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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!<br />
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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<b><u> way too luxurious and incredibly underdosed</u></b>, 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?<br />
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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!<br />
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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.<br />
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Feel free to provide some comments please :)Radio DJ Joe KShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14181443018029034346noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8816158007503835159.post-77484160740192369202016-03-07T11:48:00.005-08:002016-03-08T10:21:54.597-08:00Does 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.<br />
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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? <b><u>Except, and I really mean EXCEPT</u></b>, 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.<br />
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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. <b><u>I do not have a lack of faith for the sake of having one, otherwise there is no logical and rational causation to whistleblow!</u></b> And I should just shut down the blog....<br />
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To be very explicit, the model I am calling to whistleblow Ruiyong is very simple and straightforward to understand.<b><u> 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.</u></b><br />
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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.<b><u>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)</u></b>. 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 <b><u>WHERE</u></b> 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,<b><u> incredibly underdosed workouts and long runs?!</u></b><br />
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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.Radio DJ Joe KShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14181443018029034346noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8816158007503835159.post-30103248847528131392016-03-05T11:29:00.003-08:002016-03-09T10:32:38.803-08:00Is 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'.<br />
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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.<br />
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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!<br />
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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. <b><u>What then is Ruiyong doing in Kenya if he isn't trying to maximize transferability in his long runs,</u></b> 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 <b><u>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.</u></b><br />
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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.<br />
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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!<b><u> 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!)?</u></b> 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<b><u> 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.</u></b><br />
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http://veryslimchance.blogspot.sg/2016/03/this-is-post-in-reply-to-ruiyongs.html<br />
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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............<br />
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Feel free to provide some comments please.<br />
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In our next post, we examine the volume of Ruiyong's track workout so far...<br />
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<br />Radio DJ Joe KShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14181443018029034346noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8816158007503835159.post-12845405418535985502016-03-03T22:41:00.002-08:002016-03-14T14:36:51.831-07:00Does 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 <b><u>RENATO CANOVA MARATHONING TRAINING MODEL!</u></b><br />
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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 <u><span style="color: red;">HIGHEST PROBABILITY OF SUCCESS</span></u> 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 <b><u>exactly great</u></b> 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.<br />
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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.<br />
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<i>*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 <u><b>sine quo non.</b></u></i><br />
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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.<br />
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From Ruiyong's facebook page his training a week ago goes 1600m x 8 with these set times <span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;">5:17, 5:19, 5:21, 5:19, 5:17, 5:19, 5:18, 5:13. 2min jog recovery in 400m meaning </span><span style="background-color: white; color: red; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;"><u>5min/km jog rest.(will analyse this more later below)</u></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;">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.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;">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.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;">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!</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;">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<u><b> not on the power of his physical strength and endurance, but on the power of his mental strength and fortitude.</b></u> And that is very skewed and dangerous. Would he then run faster if he had a couple more years to prepare<b><u> PHYSICALLY</u></b>? 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'.</span><br />
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Feel free to give your comments below please.<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;">We will next examine another one of his workouts, the long run in our next post.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;">Stay tuned</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;"><br /></span>Radio DJ Joe KShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14181443018029034346noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8816158007503835159.post-63485589747316349292016-03-01T11:34:00.003-08:002016-05-28T00:58:51.015-07:00https://www.facebook.com/sporeathletics/<br />
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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.)<br />
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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.<br />
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Ruiyong had an issue with Lexxus when he said <b><u><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">"<span style="background-color: #f6f7f8; color: #141823; line-height: 14.6182px;">I wonder what will be the outcome if Agus Prayogo ran the Sea Games last year."</span></span></u></b><br />
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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!<br />
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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. <u><b>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.</b></u> 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.<br />
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The next statement Ruiyong had an issue with Lexxus was this : <b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><u>"<span style="background-color: #f6f7f8; color: #141823; line-height: 16.08px;">There is no miracle in running and is a long long long way to go for Asian athletes to meet Olympic marathon qualifying time."</span></u></span></b><br />
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<span style="color: #141823;"><span style="background-color: #f6f7f8; line-height: 16.08px;">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!</span></span><br />
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.<br />
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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, <b><u>REGARDLESS OF TYPE OF TRAINING</u></b>. 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<b><u> hard, serious, and dedicated training </u></b>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. <u style="font-weight: bold;">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. </u>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!<br />
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Finally Ruiyong has an issue with the statement <b><u>"athletes should take things step by step and be more realistic"</u></b><br />
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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.<u> 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.</u>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, <b><u>and can be taken as good as fact.</u></b> 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).<br />
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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.<br />
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Anybody feel free to comment and reply.<br />
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<b><u>Excerpts of conversation</u></b><br />
<span style="background-color: #f6f7f8; color: #141823; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 14.6182px;"><a aria-describedby="js_8l" aria-haspopup="true" aria-owns="js_8k" class=" UFICommentActorName" data-ft="{"tn":";"}" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/hovercard.php?id=100000042825789&extragetparams=%7B%22is_public%22%3Atrue%2C%22hc_location%22%3A%22ufi%22%7D" dir="ltr" href="https://www.facebook.com/tan.sweetiong?fref=ufi&rc=p" id="js_8m" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">Lexus Tan</a></span><span style="background-color: #f6f7f8; color: #141823; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 14.6182px;"> <span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">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.<br />There is no miracle in running and is a long long long way to go for Asian athletes to meet Olympic marathon qualifying time.<br /><br />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)<br /><br />Below is extract from : AdrianSprints<br /><br />TOKYO Marathon 2016 (28 Feb) - Southeast Asian Results -<br /><br />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.<br /><br />MEN<br />62 ... Agus Prayogo (INA) 2:23:29 ... (1:10:41)<br />128 ... Kuniaki 'Neko' Takizaki (CAM) 2:32:12 ... (1:13:39)<br />200 ... Fang Jian Yong (SIN) 2:36:56 ... (1:15:35)<br />264 ... Mohammed Syahidan Alias (MAS) 2:39:09 ... (1:17:28)<br />404 ... Derek Shian Li (SIN) 2:44:22 ... (1:22:09)<br /><br />WOMEN<br />70 ... Rachel See (SIN) 3:02:26 ... (1:29:43)<br />85 ... Qi Hui Date (SIN) 3:04:22 ... (1:29:45)<br />171 ... Baoying Lim (SIN) 3:14:24 ... (1:36:54)<br /><br />*half marathon time in bracket</span></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #f6f7f8; color: #141823; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 14.6182px;"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><br /></span></span></span>
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<span style="background-color: #f6f7f8; color: #141823; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 14.6182px;"><a aria-describedby="js_8o" aria-haspopup="true" aria-owns="js_8n" class=" UFICommentActorName" data-ft="{"tn":";"}" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/hovercard.php?id=157864337622558&extragetparams=%7B%22is_public%22%3Atrue%2C%22hc_location%22%3A%22ufi%22%7D" dir="ltr" href="https://www.facebook.com/sohruiyong/?rc=p" id="js_8p" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">Soh Rui Yong</a></span><span style="background-color: #f6f7f8; color: #141823; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 14.6182px;"> </span><span style="background-color: #f6f7f8; color: #141823; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 14.6182px;">Lexus Tan,<br /><br />"I wonder what will be the outcome if Agus Prayogo ran the Sea Game last year."</span><span style="background-color: #f6f7f8; color: #141823; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 14.6182px;"><br /><br />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.<br /><br />"There is no miracle in running and is a long long long way to go for Asian athletes to meet Olympic marathon qualifying time."<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />You seem to have a lot of beliefs. How many SEA Games medals has that won you?<br /><br />Have a good day. <span class="emoticon_text" style="clip: rect(1px 1px 1px 1px); height: 1px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; width: 1px;">smile emoticon</span><span class="emoticon emoticon_smile" style="background-image: url("/rsrc.php/v2/yx/r/pimRBh7B6ER.png"); background-position: 0px -340px; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: auto; display: inline-block; height: 16px; vertical-align: top; width: 16px;" title="=)"></span></span><br />
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*Guntime is 2:23:29 but Net-time is 2:23:04 for Agus in the Tokyo marathon.<br />
**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<br />
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<br />Radio DJ Joe KShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14181443018029034346noreply@blogger.com0