As Singapore prepares to host the 28th SEA Games 2015 in June this year, all eyes in the international marathon community will be fixed on our sunny island nation. Not only is former SEA Games marathon Gold winner Mok Ying Ren getting to compete on home ground territory, Singapore is doubling its chances of medal counts by sending a second representative in the same event.
At just 23 years old, Soh Rui Yong is the current national record holder of the 10,000m distance and in December 2014, he ran his first-ever marathon in 2:26:01, the second-fastest time set by a Singaporean for this distance. Rui Yong kindly took a moment out of his athletic and academic commitments to sit down with JustRunLah! for an interview, and shared with us his running story, his goals for the SEA Games, his advice to young aspiring athletes, and even his go-to recipe.
Read on for more details…
JustRunLah!: You are currently the national record holder of the 10,000m distance, and your first marathon attempt resulted in an impressive 2:26:01 finish, making you a shoo-in for the SEA games. What’s less discussed in the media, perhaps, is your running background. So tell us a bit about your running story. How did you get into running? How have you evolved on this journey as a runner?
Rui Yong: That depends on how you define running. I feel that running is something that everyone did as a kid, you know, as five or six-year-olds running around the playground. We ran more as children than we do as adults, so when people ask ‘why do you run?’, my question in return is ‘why did you stop?’. People have other things to do in life, and they become more sedentary when they start school or jobs. As kids, running was so fun, it’s something the human body was engineered to do, and we derived a lot of joy from running, and it’s sad that along the way, people lose that, and you see the negative consequences.
I was always running and being active, playing soccer, but I only started training as part of a school cross-country team in Hua Chong Institution (then known as The Chinese High School) when I was 13 in 2004. I joined the team but at that stage, I had no idea what serious training was all about. I went for training, but I didn’t know about nutrition, rest, etc. Sometimes, I wasn’t prepared. For example, I would play a game of soccer before training, and then wonder why I sucked so much at running that day, and it took me quite a while to realise that if you’re not well rested, and you’ve been running around for 2 hours before training, you are going to suffer cos your body is tired.
I was never part of a soccer team but I played a lot of void deck soccer, during recess and after school. I was pretty nuts about soccer when I was in primary school! We always had kampong-style playground soccer competitions – that’s how I did a lot of running when I grew up, and it probably gave me a good base.
When I started at Raffles Junior College at 16, I decided that I was reasonably good at running, and gradually became more involved in it. I structured my life around training, and showed up ready to go. Once I became more competitive and serious in my head, I decided I stood a chance in the national championships or in the top 3… something special.
If there was one thing I wanted to do well, I stood a chance in this one craft, so I went into JC and started with a new coach, Mr Steven Quek, whom I would say is the most accomplished JC coach in the Singapore school system. He was a very strict coach, and many athletes couldn’t handle his tough love approach, but he produces results and he pushes you really hard. He didn’t just help me become a better runner; he made me more serious in the classroom as well.
I was a bit of a trouble-maker in school. Once I threw a toy cockroach in class to scare the girls, and it landed on the teachers table. Mr Steven Quek heard about it and got so upset I wasn’t paying attention in class, he told me ‘I don’t just want you to be a good runner, I want you to be a good student as well, so if you’re going to do stuff like that, I will not allow you to train with us.’ I thought, to be a good runner, it looks like I need to behave as well!
I didn’t really understand it then, but now I realise if your life is in order, you’re going to be a better runner. The discipline you apply in running can be applied to many other aspects in life, so the more disciplined I became in class, the better I became on the track, and that confidence translated into other aspects of life and it became a cycle. I’m glad I bought into this one passion that keeps my life together.
JustRunLah!: It sounds like your coach Mr Steven Quek was a big influence in your life.
Rui Yong: Mr Steven Quek had the biggest impact in my life when I was 17 and 18 years old in JC because I saw him twice a week on the track for two hours each time, and on Saturdays, and he had at least 6 hours a week watching over me, which is a lot of time together. We were working together to become the best team in Singapore, and under him, it was the best two years of my running up to that stage.
I was happy because I was running well. It was the national school championships in April 2008; prior to that my best ever position was 4th, but going into this, I knew I was better. There were 5 contenders who stood a chance, but as the finish line approached and we were down to four, three, and two, I was like ‘wow, I’m still in the race’. So in the final stretch, I managed to outsprint my opponent and win by 0.17 seconds. That never happens in cross-country, so it was a very dramatic win, and the biggest win of my life thus far.
I’m guessing that was my breakthrough – it gave me the confidence to think ‘you can win races, you can be the best in Singapore if you put your heart into it’. For the rest of my JC life, I no longer had the doubt whether I could be the best, it was a matter of saying to myself ‘if you do the little things right, you are going to be the best’ and by the end of JC, I was not just trained to be the best in Singapore but to get out of Singapore and compete with other countries, and to show that Singaporeans can run well too. One success leads to more things, and you use the platform as a floor to climb onto the platform, so it was in JC when I decided to take it seriously and improve as a runner.
The second big change was moving to the University of Oregon. I had spent a year in the University of Singapore and I was improving. I was still winning races in Singapore but I looked on a global level and thought ‘being the best in Singapore means nothing when there are still so many other people better than us and if I went to Kenya, there will be hundreds of people who will be better than me’.
What’s the point of being contented with the best in a small playing field? At the end of the day, you want to become the best runner you can possibly be, and not just comparing yourself to those around you, since everyone has different abilities and levels of talent.
I wanted to find out how good I can be based on the tools I’ve been given, so I had a few options to go overseas. I was looking at Australia, as it has good universities and good distance runners; I also looked at Europe and America. But Eugene, Oregon was known for its long distance runners and it also offered a degree in Sports Business.
JustRunLah!: So to clarify, you chose your University according to what running opportunities it offered? You are currently enrolled in a Business Administrative Degree at the University of Oregon. How do you strike a balance between your training with your academic commitments?
Rui Yong: I would say, two main reasons: firstly, it offered a Sports Business degree, and secondly, there are many professional distance runners here who devote their lives to this one pursuit of becoming a better runner and without either reasons, I wouldn’t have come here.
I was already a business student, but I wanted to concentrate on specialisation in sports business, specifically, how a sporting culture can be engrained into our nation’s culture. I wanted to do something that really helps me achieve what I want to do. I’m already on a scholarship from the Singapore Sports Council, and I figured I might as well study something that I’m going to apply later on.
I wrote to the University of Oregon explaining that I was doing OK in Singapore but I really wanted to fulfil my full running potential. I came to Eugene on an exchange programme for a term, and decided this is what I wanted to do, so I transferred here and it was my second big breakthrough.
In Singapore, even with Mr Steven Quek, I was training 4 times a week, maybe 5, which is very little running compared to what the best runners in the world do. I came here, looked around, and people were training 9 or 10 times a week, which is twice a day almost every day.
The long runs I’d been doing back in Singapore were 20, 25km at most, whereas over here, I’m running 32km on the longest days. It opens up your mind to how the human body is capable of so much more, and the only way to become good at something is to gradually do more and more of it. There’s really no shortcuts to being a good runner and being here, knowing that there are people working hard around me, gives me the confidence that I can do it too. I gradually built up my mileage from 60km a week, to 70, 80 and eventually over a year, I got up to 160km per week, and that’s how I ran the marathon, with this mileage for preparation.
In Raffles Junior College I learnt to be more focused and disciplined, and building that up earlier in my life allowed me to handle a heavy training load and a University school load which is no joke in itself. I wouldn’t have done well here if I didn’t have the background in RJC. At the same time if I had stayed in Singapore, I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing now either.
JustRunLah!: It sounds like athletics a big part of student life at your University. Who are your sources of inspiration?
Rui Yong: On a very basic level, the people I’m around every day; they inspire me to push myself harder. My coach inspires me to believe that I’m always capable of more than I’m able to achieve. I have great training partners whom I run with every day, such as my best friend Alexi, who is one of the best 5000m runners in America and one of my most compatible training partners, pace-wise. On days when I’m not feeling motivated, she inspires me to go out and run, and vice versa. It’s a win-win situation for both of us.
JustRunLah!: Let’s now talk a bit more about the SEA Games. Earlier in your career, you were racing distances of 5000m and 10,000m, but that qualifying performance for representing Singapore at the SEA games was your first marathon. You’ve already described how different your training strategy and mental approach is for long distance racing. Could you describe to us your average training week?
Rui Yong: I must first clarify that I don’t run 160km every week, but pretty often, so I’ll do 3 weeks of that, and drop it down to 100km on the fourth week just to let the body adapt and recover before bumping it back up to 160km again. Right now, I’m base-building for my upcoming marathon cycle, which will start 14 weeks out from our SEA Games marathon. Until then, I’m running and training, but also focusing on staying healthy, to prevent injuries from happening for when I step up my training.
Mondays and Thursdays are the same, I get up at 6, have breakfast and I’m at the gym by 7 for an hour of core and plyometrics exercises, which help you become stronger, faster, and prevent injuries. It’s an aspect of running we should definitely not overlook, for running offers a limited range of motions, but these others help you get stronger and better balanced. Then I change into a run at 8 and do about 15km, get home for lunch, and go to class.
I have anywhere from 2 to 6 hours of lessons a day, and if I end school too late, I don’t have time for a second run; I have to cook dinner since eating out is very expensive. If I end earlier, I will fit in a second run. It’s clockwork.
On Tuesdays and Fridays, I get to the track at 7 and do my warm-ups, and the training starts at 8. The workouts will depend on what I’m preparing for. Sometimes we’ll train on the tracks, or on the trails; not too often on the roads because it’s very stressful on the joints, although you still need a bit of that stress to be a good marathon runner. Then I drive home, have lunch, and try not to fall asleep in class after a hard workout!
I’ll come home for a nap, or get some homework done before heading out for a second run. It’s hard to go out for that second run when you’re body’s beat up from training, and all you want to do is sit down at the end of the day, but going for that second run actually helps to flush out all the lactic acid and waste products, so you feel better after the run. You’ll start off feeling awful, but you’ll come home more relaxed.
On Wednesdays, I don’t meet my coach, so I’ll just run 16km whenever I can. I take Saturdays off since I do doubles on Friday and on Sunday I go for a long run, which can be anywhere from 1.5 to 2.5 hours, depending on which stage of my marathon training cycle I’m at. So I like to take Saturdays off, one day when I don’t think about running, and just relax and decompress. I’m losing one day of training and one day of mileage every week, which some people don’t like, but it helps me stay injury-free.
I look forward to my rest day because I know I don’t have to do anything, and I go into my long runs on Sundays feeling better. I believe in one rest day a week. It certainly helps to prevent psychological burnout as well. I am pretty cautious about preventing burnout. People may think that 140-160km a week is a lot, but that’s actually considered low by the standards I’m measured against.
My rivals at the SEA Games are probably running 200km to 250km a week. But I believe staying injury-free is more beneficial than running huge mileage and stressing the body out. You might improve faster than me, but if you get hurt, I’m going to catch you while you’re out! That’s my strategy, and it’s paid off so far in that one marathon.
JustRunLah!: On a related note, what do you foresee to be your biggest challenges at this event?
Rui Yong: Coming up against a lot of opponents who have a lot more experience than I do. Every one of the favourites have won at least one gold medal in the SEA Games before, whereas I have never been to the SEA Games before, so it’s basically nada for me, against people with so much experience.
I’m going to be running my second marathon ever, while some of these guys already have 9 or 10 SEA Games medals under their belts. They know what it’s like to race a championship marathon, beat people and win a gold medal.
What the public probably doesn’t understand, is that winning a race against people head-to-head, is very different from going out and running a fast time for yourself. When I ran 2:26:01, I didn’t have to care about anyone but myself. I finished 38th in a pretty fast field with lots of Kenyans, Americans and Russians, but I didn’t care if I lost to them. I ran patiently for 32km, and overtook as many people as possible in the last 10km.
It’s going to be different at the SEA Games. There aren’t so many people, we’re 12 to 14 people racing one another the whole way so it’s a very cagey situation, with people waiting for you to make a mistake. It’s about running the smartest race, not necessarily the fastest. I don’t think the SEA Games is going to be fast, even though the course is flat. It’s a hot a humid climate, and it’s going to be tactical; no one is going to push the pace and take the lead unless they know they can do it all the way to the end.
JustRunLah!: What are you’re A/B/C goals for this event?
Rui Yong: Speed is less important, I’d rather run 2:28 and win than run 2:26 again but lose.
When I train, I don’t train to lose to someone, so I train with the mentality of gold in mind. That said, the number one goal is a podium finish – there are three positions, and winning even a bronze in my first ever SEA Games and second-ever marathon is going to be a big achievement.
People like to talk about gold and nothing else. I believe in that, but I am not going to run with the mentality of ‘gold or nothing’. You’ve got to work your way up; first, try to win a medal before you start fighting for a silver and a gold. It’s a great achievement to just be the top three in South-East Asia, what’s there to be ashamed about?
So my A goal is to just win a medal, and my B goal is to get the gold, and I don’t think there is a C or a D goal!
Just Run Lah!: So, not trying to set a personal best?
Rui Yong: No, I would say it’s not important at all whether I set a personal best in the SEA Games. There are races where I chase personal bests; if the SEA Games don’t take too much out of me, I’ll run the Chicago marathon in October, and I want to run the Paris marathon next year in April, so Paris, London… all these are courses where I can chase a fast time.
After the SEA Games, my next goal is to break the national record of 2:24, and if I can do it at the SEA Games, great, but if not, the main goal is to just win.
JustRunLah!: Pre-race rituals… what is the one thing you always do before a race?
Rui Yong: Pre-race rituals… I actually don’t have one, but I should try to find one. Before the California marathon, I actually had pasta, and a little bit of beer! I slept pretty well, probably because of it, so I’ll probably have a beer before every one of my future races!
Samuel Wanjiru, the Kenyan who won the Olympics marathon in 2008. He got pretty successful early in life, and lived like a king back in Kenya, so he wasn’t living the typical disciplined athlete’s lifestyle. The night before the Chicago marathon in 2009, he got really drunk, woke up hungover, and broke the course record. So is a pre-race beer bad? I don’t know, some people handle it better than others.
JustRunLah!: It sounds like you’ve adapted well to life in Oregon. Do you miss Singapore?
Rui Yong: When I went to Eugene in July/August 2013, I didn’t go home for 1.5 years. The only time I went home was in December 2014, after the marathon and my final exams. On the flight, I began asking myself, ‘I’m going back for the first time in a long while and I’m so happy in Eugene, what if Singapore doesn’t feel like home anymore?’
When you travel, you see different parts of the world. When you’re in Singapore, whether you like it or not, you’re certainly going to be comfortable there – your family and your home are there. Once you go out into the world, you know there is so much more out there, and you’re not sure if you can integrate back into Singaporean society. So I was worried about that, because I have to come back here to work!
The good thing was that I had so many things lined up when I returned, that I was never bored, or had nothing to do. I had just run the marathon, and broken the 10,000m record six months before, so the athletics community was keen to catch up with me, and I had 4 workshops lined up, so there were many things going on. I was literally at my first workshop 3 hours after I landed back in Singapore!
I got to see some old friends and I was really happy about that, but there were so many new faces I don’t know or recognise too, people with whom I shared all that I had learnt so far in Oregon. So ultimately, I was comfortable and it did feel like home again. I’m not rushing to go back home, but when the time comes, it will not be a problem, for it’s definitely still home. I grew up in Singapore, and there are just some things ingrained in our DNA.
And that’s also the point of coming here [Oregon] was not just to help myself, but to get some knowledge here and bring it back to help grow the sporting culture in Singapore. I shouldn’t lose sight of that fact!
I like being here as it helps me be a better runner; in Singapore, it’s a lot harder to keep doing the same training that I’m doing without my teammates or my coach, and the weather is less conducive, less trails in a big city like Singapore, so there are many obstacles when I go back, but at the end of the day, running is just one part of life, and there are lots of other things.
JustRunLah!: On your website www.runsohfast.com you have a Cooking tab with some delicious-looking meals. Would you say you are a good chef? How important is proper nutrition to you?
Rui Yong: I don’t know, you’ll have to ask my sister whether I’m a good chef! (turns computer)
Sister: Well, considering I’m sitting here alive? (laughs)
Rui Yong: I think you can take that as a yes!
JustRunLah!: So what’s your signature dish?
Rui Yong: I’d say my go-to dish – I wouldn’t call it my signature – is a base of pasta since it’s low GI, and as a marathon runner, you want low-GI for sustained energy during a long training session. My signature sauce is this recipe I learnt from a Singaporean friend, who learnt it from a Nigerian guy, and it’s called Nigerian curry. You use 8 to 10 tomatoes, put them in a blender, add in 2 habeneros, half a red onion, thyme, a tablespoon of salt and some oil, and let it simmer for an hour, and it turns out really nice! It’s a thick tomato sauce and it goes really well with rice, pasta, chicken.
Another dish I like is salmon, which is pretty affordable here compared to Singapore. I season it with salt, pepper, honey or whatever I can find in my kitchen, and put it in the oven or in the pan.
Cooking is a lot easier than many people think. It just takes a bit of common sense and the willingness to get your hands dirty. Before I came here, I never cooked because in Singapore, it’s so easy to get food, but when I came here (Oregon) I started to cook because eating out is expensive here! I’m glad I did because it’s a life skill.
You know what goes in, and you know what you need in your diet, so you can control what goes in. You don’t always know what you’re getting from outside. We all know that Singaporean food is great, but it’s not the best for runners! I love chicken rice, it’s just not a go-to dish.
Cooking my own meals has contributed to improving my performance. I’ve always paid attention to what I chose from outside, but I can’t always get what I want, in the quantity that I need, at an affordable price. I cook over the weekends and make it last for three or four days.
I recommend that if you want to be a good runner, definitely watch what you eat and learn to cook your own meals. It’s an important part of improving your performance.
JustRunLah!: What is the one advice you have for young aspiring athletes?
Rui Yong: Stay in the sport for as long as possible, because every day is a new chance to surprise yourself. You don’t become a better runner overnight, next week, or next month. It takes years to build up a solid base and every year you spend in the sport is another year of running under your belt. And that’s the way it’s going to continue.
Most Singaporean runners quit in their late teens to early twenties, but that’s when you’ve just started building up your base, and you are going to become a better runner if you keep going for another few more years. So many runners get demoralised when they look at their times and think ‘I suck, it’s time to move on to something else, or ‘I’m good, but there’s school’.
There are also lots of distractions in Singapore like clubs and bars, so people start drinking and hanging out, and running becomes that painful thing you did for CCA and you don’t want to do it anymore. If you really like it, make it part of your lifestyle; go out for a run first thing in the morning and it becomes part of your cycle. It is part of my cycle – I wake up at 6am daily and I go for a run, then I get on with the rest of my day. If I don’t run, I feel like something is missing from my day.
Stay in the sport for as long as possible. In this marathon that I ran, my last 10km was run in 33m 29s. Five years ago, I wasn’t running below 34m for 10K. That is the difference it makes. If I had quit 5 years ago like so many of my peers did, I wonder if I would have ever found out I could be this good in a marathon. I would never have discovered I could run a national record for the 10K.
I’m 23; there aren’t many elite athletes in Singapore who are older than me and that’s sad, cos I’m pretty young, and yet in the running community, I’m considered experienced. I’m not experienced, I haven’t even finished University!
Overseas, there is a bigger culture to be out there running and having something else apart from school. In Singapore, we tend to be a bit one-dimensional. Prior to exams, parents and the school will say stop all CCA activities. You can’t do that, it doesn’t make sense! A month before the national cross-country championships, you don’t stop going to school for one month, so why is it that before exams, you stop running, you stop moving, you stop all physical activity? It’s not as if you study 24 hours a day.
You need a bit of a balance, and if anything, exercising first thing in the morning before I get on with my day helps me become more productive, because you get the metabolism and endorphins going and you’re in the right state of mind for the rest of the day. Most parents and school don’t understand that, so it’s frustrating for Singaporean athletes because you’re always fighting the system. Be a balanced person. You take one month off running and that crashes your fitness and you have to start from scratch again.
Consistency and balance are important, making it a part of your lifestyle and staying in the sport as long as possible. The participants in my workshop were so young – 16, 18, 20… you have at least ten good years of running ahead of you. If you cut it off right now you’ll never find out how good you can be.
Starting late doesn’t mean you don’t have a chance either, it sometimes means you’re not in the sport because your parents or school forced you to do it, but because you want to do it. Training age is different to real age; starting later means you’re less susceptible to injury, and psychologically, you’re fresher so it’s never too late to start.
JustRunLah!: Complete this sentence. Success is…
Rui Yong: Success is performing to your full potential, regardless of what anyone else might think, might compare you to, or might have to say.
Rui Yong wishes to thank his sponsor Nike Singapore, and to give a big shout out to officials, athletes and coaches of the Singapore Athletes Association (SAA), who have been immensely supportive of him, and their efforts in developing the sport. It’s going to be a good SEA Games for the Singaporean team.
Corrections: Some of the competition Rui Yong is up against have got 9 or 10 SEA Games medals, not 9 or 10 years of experience in the SEA Games. Rui Yong ran the last 10km of his marathon in 33m29s, not 33m25s as reported in an earlier version of this article.
