Martin Onayemi

Fast, Without the Sales Pitch

A first-year runner brings ambition, candour, and a healthy suspicion of pretending every kilometre is delightful.

Martin Onayemi won’t tell you running is the most fun a person can have.

“I consider success to simply be not hating running,” he says.

There’s honesty in that answer, and more ambition around it than you might expect. The first-year Lightning runner wants to cover the home course at under four minutes per kilometre. Beyond that, he’d like to become the fastest male runner at St. Mary’s.

He can find a pastime merely alright and still intend to get very good at it. These positions coexist comfortably.

Martin has very little interest in the usual athletics brochure language. There is no claim that every workout is a revelation. He shows up because he wants to run faster, and because running is something he has decided is worth doing. The candour makes the ambition more interesting. He is not trying to sell you the sport; he is trying to improve at it.

The home-course target makes that ambition measurable. The longer-term wish to be St. Mary’s fastest male runner makes it unmistakable. However casually he describes the pastime, he is paying attention to where he could finish.

Martin first joined cross country and track in Grade 9. He enjoyed it enough to want improvement, then ran intermittently through the next two years. The summer before Grade 12 changed the arrangement.

Other runners at Scarlett were faster. He didn’t want to return as the person trailing every practice. So he trained seriously for six weeks and arrived at school noticeably stronger over distance.

What once felt difficult began to feel possible. He became one of the quicker runners at his school, and the season confirmed a belief he’d held about his ability. It felt, he says, like completing a long-overdue task.

There is confidence in that description, and a useful piece of self-knowledge. Martin knew being among faster students would feel uncomfortable unless he prepared. Rather than wait for the school year to expose the difference, he used the summer to address it. Six weeks could not tell him everything about his future in running, but they showed him how quickly deliberate effort could change his present.

He also knows that increasing the work too quickly can create problems of its own. His advice about building volume cautiously sits neatly beside his impatience to get faster: he wants progress that leaves him able to keep training. A recovery day can be part of the plan even when it does not feel especially productive.

That matter-of-fact approach carries into his other interests. He spends time researching history and ideology, subjects that shape how he interprets the world even when he isn’t discussing them aloud.

His advice to beginners is similarly practical: build running volume gradually and respect recovery. He sees patience as part of avoiding overuse injuries, rather than a reason to doubt commitment.

Martin shows up because he wants to improve, have some fun, and see how fast he can get. No elaborate mythology required.

The work can speak for itself. He’ll reserve the right to have an honest opinion about the hill.