“I got hit in the ribs, hard, by this bearded guy who resembled a caveman” – Soh Rui Yong

By Soh Rui Yong/Red Sports

Soh Rui Yong in the colours of the University of Oregon. (Photo © Brian Leeson. Used with permission)

Eugene, Oregon, Saturday, September 21, 2013 – The Northwest Cross Country Classic was second ever cross country race in the United States and I finished the 6.7km route in 18th place, clocking 21 minutes 35 seconds.

As an early-season race, I used the meet as a hard training run, a gauge of fitness and a learning experience.

Things started on a gloomy note though, as it started pouring two hours before the start of the meet. After enduring a cold and wet warmup routine, made more bearable with my ever fun teammates from the University of Oregon Running Club, I put on my Nike Victory XC spikes and prepared for the wet battle ahead. Just then, the rain subsided and a beautiful rainbow formed in the clear skies. The weather had just turned perfect for the men’s race.

As usual, the field took off hard from the gun, and I found myself buried after 200 metres. Staying calm and settling into my own pace, I tackled the first hill on the course and began to pass guys after the first mile, working my way up with teammates Ryan Jones and Josh Gordon. The main challenge of the course lay in the tight turns and banked grass surfaces which meant that we hardly were running on a flat grass surface.

Moving through the field at 3:12 to 3:13/km pace, I eventually began to lose steam at 5km. With the pack in front seemingly maintaining their lead despite my best efforts to close in, my motivation gradually began to ebb away.

Then possibly the best thing happened to me. I got hit in the ribs, hard, by this bearded guy who resembled a caveman both in look and in mannerism. Wearing a purple singlet, he sped past me. Thrown off balance, I almost fell into the ditch by the side of the race route, as the spectators by the side gasped in surprise. My coach, Tom Heinonen, who was nearby, even looked up from his stopwatch to have a better idea as to what was going on.

Recovering from my initial shock, I got myself back on balance and angrily chase after the Purple Caveman. Pulling even with him up the third hill in the course, I turned to the left and stared daggers at him. He responded with another elbow and tried to pull away from me again as some of his teammates by the side cheered him on.

I must say that racers in America tend to be more physical in fighting for their own space compared to the Singaporeans, and I’ve taken my share of lumps since I started racing here. In this case however, the route was so wide and spacious, both incidents were unforgivable. He had more than enough room to pass me on both occasions, but chose to get all physical about it.

Either way, there was no way in hell I was going to lose to this guy. Forgetting all my prior fatigue, I threw an aggressive surge and tried to get away from him and show him that cross country is won with your heart, lungs and legs. Not your elbows.

We engaged in a duel for the next few hundred metres, before my teammate Josh Gordon caught us both and passed us. Sensing my chance, I went with his surge, caught a few more guys in the pack in front of us, and soon dropped the Purple Caveman into oblivion, crossing the finish line comfortably in front of him.

It has been a while since I had got such a satisfaction out of beating someone, but the elbowing really got me all fired up. If the Purple Caveman had not thrown me an elbow and just gone past me quietly, I certainly would not have responded as aggressively as I did, and he would have perhaps finished in front of me as I was tiring really quickly at that point.

So to quote the great Kenyan Paul Tergat: “Always ask yourself, can I give more? The answer is usually, ‘yes’.”

Soh Rui Yong joined the Red Sports Crew in 2010 after taking his GCE A Levels. He was an A Division cross country double winner and is the second-fastest Singaporean in the 10,000m with a time of 32 minutes 26 seconds. An undergraduate at the National University of Singapore, he is now in the University of Oregon on an exchange programme.