Sayonara

Before 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.

Again, no offense given, none taken as well.

1)The past 5 months have been nothing short of revealing of the true character of Soh Ruiyong and the values he holds dear.



2)This man is still young and very much immature, much like most 25 year olds IN GENERAL!



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:

"WHAT HAVE YOU ACHIEVED!"

OR

"HOW MANY GOLD MEDALS HAVE YOU WON"


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.



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! 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. 





6)Many of my readers have been wondering the reactions of Soh Ruiyong's parents on the sidelines, meanwhile, amidst all these soap opera-like drama unfolding in the social media sphere, what with this blog 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: 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!






7)If there is anybody given to boasting, let him boast the TRUTH! That is the only requirement! This is of course largely dependent on whether one knows the TRUTH 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!




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!(Arrogance defined) 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! 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! 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?!  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.....




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! :)



A BIG THANK YOU TO ALL OUR READERS AND FOLLOWERS WHEREVER YOU ARE AS WELL!


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.




SAYONARA
Joe

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 :)

A new beginning or beginning of the end?

Ruiyong ends Rio bid(article from redsports)

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.

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....


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:

“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.”

&

"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."


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...

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! 

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!

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'?

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.

Why?

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! There might even be an inverse proportional relationship! 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. Sports scientists are on the fence with regards to invasive methods to 'improve biomechanical effficiency' at about the highest levels 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!"

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:

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!

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!)! BUT HOW CAN ANYTHING IN THE HUMAN WORLD BE CREATED/RETRIEVED OUT OF NOTHING? 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.........

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!!!

Let's see how this can be applied to Soh Ruiyong:

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?

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.


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!

Let me explain point 2 using Paula's example:

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. 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.


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 NATURALLY WITH THE NATURAL FEET STRUCTURE! At worst, it is running with feet that isn't yours, because your electrical nerve wirings could never be completely initiated/compatible with the new physical structure and therefore new way of propelling yourself forward!


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 :(


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.

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.......


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.

Stay tuned!

Are we really psychos? Or is somebody else a dictator? Let's find out........

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.

"Soh Rui Yong Ben Pickford, Stu Haynes Jon Cheal, 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 make it sound like he has supporters. 

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.

Please go on with your lives, and let him continue typing this crap from his mum's basement.

As for guys like "R", 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."

" "LT"--- 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. Let'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.

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"

Dear Soh Rui Yong, 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 Soh Rui Yong 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.

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. NOBODY IS HIM EXCEPT HIM, 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.

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?!!

One final time my dear friend, in case it didn’t register in your mind---->>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---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.

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.

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. We speak, and have always spoken with the conviction of faith in all the knowledge and experience that we have.

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. Welcome them with open arms. Try not to give yourself to paranoia. See the benevolence in others, more than you will tend to see only the malevolence! 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? 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?  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. Even if distance sport is part art and part science, the part art is still quantifiable, and therefore statistically and scientifically liable! Does that make any sense at all?

So please, as a scholar, stop behaving in a rogue and uncultivated manner online. 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. 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.

Yours sincerely

*Some names are now initialed to protect the identities of some whistleblowers

The curious case of the Filipina Mary Joy Tabal?

Welcome back to another chapter of our journey!

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.

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:

5k:16:50 to 17:20
10k:34:40-35:40
HM:1:17-1:19
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)

*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.

First and foremost, why the use of bands?

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! Does that make any sense? 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. Does that make sense? 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!

Next to foremost, is there any precedence or suggestion of the use of such statistical bands in specifically the distance running world?

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! 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!


What a bitter irony!?!

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!


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:

https://www.mcmillanrunning.com/

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.

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! Does that make any sense at all? 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 OPTIMUS!

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!

Till next time

Hardwork doesn't beat talent if all things being equal!

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.

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'.

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. 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! 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!

HARD WORK DOESN'T BEAT TALENT BELOW A CERTAIN CUT-OFF STANDARD! 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!

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!

Instead, we propose the existence of TALENT BANDS! 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! 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.

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). 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! We have no reason to lie about this and our meticulously objective analyses in all our posts speak for themselves. 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! 

Question of the day: how does he act so obstinately dumb? 

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...

Ruiyong's London marathon post race bits and thoughts.....

Ruiyong had this to say about his London marathon race:

"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.

When I do my next marathon, I'll be better trained, hopefully without injuries, and have a stronger finish.

Thanks for all the support! Still a step forward. Staying positive and looking forward to the next one."

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.

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.

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? They offered up their lives on the sacrifice! There is a fine line between "chasing your dreams with all your hearts and minds MORALLY/ETHICALLY AND WITH WISDOM", AND, SELF DECEPTION/DELUSION!

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 NO CHOICE OF THEIRS! 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 give! 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 consume! 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 VAIN PREOCCUPATION(!), and what theirs stand for---LIFE AND HOPE! 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!

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.

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!

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!

Till next time :)

Exemplary morals from the protege of our current national marathon record holder Murugiah Rameshon

"He who glorifies himself will be condemned(by others obviously!), while he who humbles himself will be glorified(by others as well obviously!)"
Source: Universal book of morality and ethics!


It isn't very hard for any educated or even non educated person 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!


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, 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!).


But this will do for our purposes for now: his name is Jeffrey Ng, 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, it exists in abstract spirit-like form that cannot die because it is not of the flesh, 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: Murugiah Rameshon!

http://rameshon-m.blogspot.sg/2016/04/about-jeffrey-ng-3000m-heats-in.html


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?!! 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? 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!

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!

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, 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!

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!