By Soh Rui Yong
Soh Rui Yong in action at the World Half Marathon in Copenhagen, Denmark. (Photo by Dorothy Pao. Used with permission.)
Soh Rui Yong, 22, is a Singaporean undergraduate at the University of Oregon. He represented Singapore at the recent 2014 IAAF World Half Marathon Championships where he set a new personal best time of 68 minutes 18 seconds, which makes him the second fastest Singaporean over the distance. He shares with us a first-hand account of the race.
Copenhagen, Denmark, Saturday, March 29, 2014 — For the third night in a row, I lay in bed, wide awake, at 2.30am in the morning. It was race day, and I was due to toe the line against some of the best athletes in the world at the 2014 IAAF World Half Marathon Championships. Sleep and rest was what I needed, but could not get.
I lay in bed, eyes closed, for another hour but was nowhere near falling back to sleep again. Giving up, I threw off the covers, and looked to my right. The Southeast Asian (SEA) Games marathon champion, 5000m and half marathon national record holder, Mok Ying Ren, lay peacefully in bed.
“Lucky him,” I thought to myself.
The jet lag resulting from my travel from Eugene, Oregon to Copenhagen, Denmark had left my body clock jumbled and confused. 2.30am in Copenhagen was 6.30pm in Eugene.
I visited the bathroom, and turned on my cell phone. I scrolled through my Whatsapp messages, seeing a number of well wishes from my friends in Singapore and in the United States. Yet another good luck message from Erwin Wong. I never fail to get a text from him before a race. I replied to some texts, then got on Facebook.
More well wishes.
“I miss you……….r cooking,” my younger sister Romaine said.
I typed some replies, scrolled some more, then turned off my phone and decide to go for a shakeout jog. I washed up, put on my trusty Nike Zoom Pegasus 30 training shoes, and headed to the nearby pond to run some loops. I went no faster than 8min per mile (5min/km) pace, reminding myself to conserve energy for the big battle ahead. All I needed to do now was stretch out.
I jogged 2 miles, then headed for breakfast. Since the race was not till 1pm, I ate heartily. Eggs, potatoes, toast, fruit and cereal. All the good stuff. Then I went back to my room, shower, and got back to bed just as Mok rose for his shakeout jog.
Now I felt tired. Now I could sleep. I lost consciousness soon after my head hit the pillow.
Two and a half hours later, I was shocked out of my deep slumber only by my trusty phone alarm. I felt tired, but got out of bed before I fell asleep again. I fixed my hair, put on my contact lenses, then headed out the door with Mok and my racing gear.
Months of training with a single-minded focus, and my hour of reckoning had arrived.
Showtime.
After going through a warm-up jog and engaging in some chit-chat and laughter, Mok and I drifted into our own sets of drills. I engaged my body in some dynamic stretching exercises, which I picked up from my coach and teammates at Team Run Eugene. Athletes all around me seemed to be doing much faster warm-up jogs or more intensive exercises than I was, but I shut everything out and focused on my own thing. If it worked for me in practice, it is good enough for now.
Soon after, we were called to the start line. Dressed in a singlet, shorts, and a set of gloves and arm sleeves, I suddenly found it too warm to be in gloves and sleeves. I stripped them off and looked around for team manager Jason Lawrence, but could not find him in the thick crowd around the start line. I looked around for the nearest friendly face, and made eye contact with one of the Japanese coaches, who spoke little English, but we were thankfully able to communicate with the help of sign language. He took the gloves and sleeves from me, and a few seconds later, the gun went off.
The World Championship had begun.
Less than a second into the race, an African runner got tripped amidst all the excitement and was shoved to the ground, taking a tumble and a roll. This caused some minor confusion, and I stayed calm, not running a single step until I saw a clean opening. A few seconds wouldn’t matter in a long race, and I wanted to play it safe. Getting stepped on was no way to begin the race of my life thus far.
As the confusion cleared, I stepped to the left around the mess and accelerated into my rhythm. The plan was to start fast, then settle into a steady pace of no faster than 5min 15sec per mile, which is what I had prepared for in training.
Tapering from my heavy training load had worked wonders. Running felt so easy, my legs carrying me forward smoothly, lightly, effortlessly. I caught up with Mok in a heartbeat, and passed him, settling into my own pace, and looking around for others who are running at similar speeds for company. Mok goes past me a few hundred metres later, and I latched on to him. It was nice to have a familiar face in the early stages of the race.
We passed the first mile in 5min 01sec.
“Wait … 5:01?” I thought to myself. I had spent trainings simply pounding my butt off and not breaking 5:15, and here I was running 5:01 so effortlessly?
Thinking that it might be the adrenaline, or the excitement from the amazing roaring crowd, cheering our every step, I tell myself to settle, settle, settle. I tag along the back of a chase pack which included a couple of Danes, a Latvian, a Tajikistani, and Mok, who seemed to be really going after a fast time.
The second mile passed in 5:07. Unbelievably fast, considering I wanted no faster than 5:15. But it still felt so easy, so smooth, so effortless. Perhaps, cutting down on those consecutive 70-mile weeks had allowed my body to bounce back to heights never before reached in my life. I stopped worrying. “Perhaps today will be something special?”
Would I be right? Or would the early pace kill us off in the later stages of the race? Entering mile 3, I knew we would soon find out.
Read Part 2
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