S’pore distance runner Soh Rui Yong breaks 10,000m national record despite hiccup

SINGAPORE – Everything appeared to be in order for Soh Rui Yong before his 10,000m heats at Tokyo’s Nittaidai Challenge Games on Nov 29.

Scheduled to compete in heat 1 at 7.30am, he woke up at 4am, took a taxi to Nippon Sport Science University and arrived by 6am, before completing his warm-up routine.

But his preparations were upended when he checked the start list and discovered that his name was missing.

Attempts to clarify the situation – complicated by the language barrier – eventually revealed that he had been reassigned to heat 6, after the organisers had mistaken him for a South Korean athlete.

The mix-up came after South Korea’s team manager requested that their runners be moved to a later heat.

Having already warmed up, Soh asked to be placed in heat 2 instead. He squeezed in another warm-up jog before racing and delivered despite the circumstances, clocking 30min 33.29sec to eclipse the previous mark of 31:02.40 set by Shaun Goh in August.

Reflecting on the chaotic series of events, Soh said: “I dealt with it with even emotions. It’s easy to freak out, no one speaks English then you’re panicking.

“Maybe now I’m 34, I’m more mature, I just asked (the organisers). I know I can’t go back and change the mistakes, so I thought, ‘Let’s see if we can make the best of it’ and I ran and had a good result.”

Going under the 31-minute barrier had been a target for him since he first claimed the national record in June 2014 with a 31:15.95 run.

Though he switched his focus to the marathon from 2015, he still dipped under the national mark for the 10,000m twice more before Goh surpassed it three months ago.

Soh believed sub-31 was possible overseas, in cooler conditions, and the race in Japan aligned with his schedule.

Leading up to the event, he had been training consistently since July, which was also when he began experimenting with double threshold training.

This is a method involving two threshold-intensity sessions in the same day to accumulate more time near the lactate threshold, without the excessive fatigue of a single, long session.

This approach is used by the likes of Norwegian Jakob Ingebrigtsen, who won the 1,500m gold at Tokyo 2020 and the 5,000m gold at Paris 2024.

In Thailand, Soh also incorporated heat training and sauna work, which he feels has contributed to building his fitness and race performance.

He said: “The experimenting has helped a bit in my growth. I don’t attack training as aggressively as before, partially because I’m 34 years old now, not 24.

“By attacking in training all the time, I was just trying to prove to myself that I could handle a pace, rather than doing what is best for my body on any given day and building my base of fitness.”

His run in Japan is a timely boost ahead of the Dec 9-20 SEA Games in Thailand, where he will be hoping to get on the podium again after clinching the 10,000m silver in 2023 in Cambodia.

But he is not thinking about the biennial meet just yet, as he prepares to take on the half-marathon and marathon at the Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon (SCSM) on Dec 6 and 7.

He said: “For any SEA Games, I try to strategise the best way to get a medal. But right now, I’m thinking about next week’s half-marathon and marathon...

“I’ve been to the SEA Games three times and it’s not something completely new, but the Singapore Marathon Double Up Challenge is something I’ve never done before, so that’s an even bigger challenge.”