Ashley Liew 's Weight Loss Program. and His Marathon Strategy. (Part 2)

Ashley Liew - From 80kg overweight dude to 56kg Hot Bod

Marathon performance time.

ACJC Year 2 - Before enlistment in the Army - 4hr 29min
2009 SSCM - 2nd in men open (local section) - 2hr 51min

2010 SSCM - 2nd in men open (local section) - 2hr 52min

Picture 1 - 80kg Ashley in Singapore Standard Chartered Marathon 2004 at 18, 4hrs 29min(Courtesy of Lim Thow Wee)

Ashley Liew told me that when he was 80kg, and overweight, he used to keep doing sports actively. I asked him on how many days per week does he play games. He told me that he does it for 5 times per week.  Even then, he found that he was still overweight. At that time, he found that he was not particular about food.

I always have this notion that training is 50% and diet is 50% in sports performance. In Loughborough University of Technology, I have done sports science. One of the module that I did was Nutrition. No matter how hard a person trains, if the diet is not good, filled with kuay teow mee, roti prata, laksa, deep fried food, chicken rice, nasi lemak, french fries etc. one cannot progress in running performance. May be, the person will be fit with training with a poor diet. Hence, I decided that it will a good idea to ask Ashley on his battle against the bulge that he had endures for long and had achieved great seccess to surmount this hurdle.

Ashley told me that he used to eat very late at night. His food habits were not that good. Over a period of time, he start eating more fruits. In his food, he used to take a lot of vegetables. It is good to take note that fruits and vegetables are usually low in glycemic index and has abundant complex carbohydrates. He took only some poultry and meat products. In terms of eating chocolates, Ashley eats less and not more, even though he likes them. He hydrates himself well throughout the day with water. If he trains, he drinks more water. He cuts down a lot on eating carbohydrates that have simple sugar.

Marathon Strategy during Singapore Standard Chartered Marathon 2010

Picture 2 - Ashley Liew, with an admirable 56kg sculptered body

Ashley's marathon strategy was to run 3min 48sec per kilometer to attain a time of about 2hr 40min. While on the run, he saw the 1km distance marker. He did 3min 40sec for the first kilometer. At the two km mark, he could not find the marker and did not know what pace he was going. I told him that he could have seen this a day before. To this he said that he came down a day before to see the distance marker but the organisers were putting it late in the evening and he had to focus on his sleep. He told me that putting the kilometres in the afternoon would be a good idea for the organisers or allow the elite Singaporeans to go for a tour around the route.

Around the 3km mark, Galen Ruben told me that he saw a footage, courtesy of Donald Ng, showing that Ashley was the one running just behind the elite men runners from Africa. After that, there were elite female runners running just behind Ashley. In actual fact, the runner behind Ashley was none other then the Commomwealth women champion,  Irene Jerotich (see below). At the 4km mark, the same thing happened. I saw the watch and found that Ashley was doing 3min 25sec to 3min 30sec per km pace. He could have slowed down and recover more but was keeping at this pace until he was overtaken by Mok Ying Ren at the 10km mark. At 5km, Ashley did 17min 40sec as opposed to 18min 30sec and he is supposed to control himself on pace judgement. At 10km mark, the time was 37min 15sec.
http://rameshon-m.blogspot.com/2010/10/irene-jerotich-kosgei-commonwealth.html

After the 10km mark, Ashley felt that he was getting tired. However, he reached the half-marathon mark at 1hr 20min 18sec. He told me that he was doing his personal best time while running this year's marathon. At the last 13km mark, Ruben Galen and I went down to support Ashley, after seeing several road blocks. At that point, he was still on target for a 2hr 45min. However, judging from his mistake of the first 5km, I predicted that he will come in second but he may hit around 2hr 45-2hr 50min.

At the last 12km mark, Ashley was doing about 1hr 58min and he felt very tired. Towards the end, Ashley was extremely tired and missed his personal best and did 2hr 52min. He stopped 5 times during the race. Towards the finish Ramesh was coming very near but Ashley was able to hold Ramesh off and win the second placing.

As of now, he has been selected by Singapore Athletics Association to fly to Hong Kong and represent Singapore in  the Hong Kong Standard Chartered Marathon 2011 in Feb 20 . It was suggested by me that I don't mind going over as a coach/manager. Ashley was appreciative that I was willing to come forward and he thank me for this gesture. The SAA has told me and him that they will consider this appeal. We hope to hear some good news from SAA.

After giving us a treat at Gokul, an Indian vegetarian shop, Ashley told me that he will tell in the interview on his experience and running along the route in the next page of the blog. He told me that this may benefit the runners of Singapore, young and old.

Conclusion
Ashley told me that he does not want to go back to the horror of 80kg where it was cumbersome to run and play and also leave some space for people sitting next to you in bus. With the weight of 56kg, he feel that it is easy to move about, work, train and study. I recounted my bringing down of weight from 73kg to 55kg in the past and I told him that overweight is never my option in life.

Picture 3 - A treat given by Ashley and Dr Benny Goh for their good result in the SSCM 2010