Martin Dinh

Martin Dinh

Then... back in 2011

Here is Martin's story...

This is my story about my journey how I ended up got myself into running, what inspires me to run and why running becomes part of my life. I’ll further discuss how running becomes a life changing experience over the past many years of my life. That means going through life challenges, battling inner demon and finding purpose in life that defines me for who I am today.

Before I was introduced to running 9 years ago, I was neither a person into distance running nor capable running 1500m and I was overweight during my teenage year. When I was in my late teens, I was referred to a psychologist to work on how to manage depression, anxiety, stress and emotional outburst. One day, she highly recommends me to go for a walk couple of times a week for 15 minutes. I took her advice.

In the middle of 2010, I got bored of walking. This is where I started mix with short jog along with walking to keep myself motivated and change the dynamic. Overtime, I was able to jog a bit longer without having to walk. Eventually I got to the stage where I can jog for 20min without walking but barely faster than a walking pace and got plenty of niggles. Despite I was able to jog longer, I wasn’t really into running. However, I had a friend who I met at ‘Northcott’ who has visual impairment had done a City2Surf. When I seen him showing off his finishing medal, I was deeply overwhelmed with inspiration. This is where I started entering my first running event which is City2Surf in 2011.

In 2012, while I was on my way to TAFE in a bus, on several occasions, I saw my high school friend’s father running around my local neighbourhood who runs many marathons. While I was in a bus, I thought to myself I wish I can run like him. This is where my passion for running starts by entering many races as well as strong desire achieve things I never done before such as running my first half marathon and marathon in 2013 and 2015 respectively.

After I did my first marathon, I joined the local running club called ‘Westies Jogger’ by a good friend of mine who is also my physio. I absolutely enjoyed this club because the club always make me feel welcome, great place to socialise and make friends no matter how old or young. This is where I was introduced to trail runs such as Sixfoot Track marathon which I did in 2017 and it is one of my favourite running event.

I found running is a sport which you can use as a great platform to inspire other people regardless of your running level. I’m not an elite runner and never will be but one thing that keeps me motivated for running over the past many years, it is a sport that allows me to set goals and test my body limit. This enables me to challenge myself to go better and possibly achieve the things that I never thought it was possible. Sometimes there are setbacks such as injuries, sometimes in pain for weeks even months and there are times when I get extremely depressed, I lost interest in running and my parent strongly disapprove me doing long distance running due to their fear of me getting chronic injuries later in life. Despite the setbacks, it hasn’t stop me running and I’ll keep doing this for many years, decades to come until my body can no longer physically sustain running.

Most importantly, running has helped me a lot when it comes to mental health. Whenever I go for a run, it helps clears my mind which helps when dealing with anger, stress and anxiety becomes easier to manage. This also help increase my academic/workplace performance, showing more positive emotion, become more sociable and less likelihood and severity of depression. In contrast, I could not imagine I still be walking on Earth right now without running. There are times when I don’t run for weeks, even months I found myself vulnerable to depression and thoughts about committing suicide which is a very dangerous position for me to be in. Because I was constantly exposed to high levels of life stress with academic anxiety, life failures, constant anxieties where my future is heading and having these flashbacks of the things I’ve regret and ashamed of the action I’ve done in the past that repeats in my head over and over again. All these accumulation of thoughts become too unbearable to manage. In comparison to all the activities I do to filter out these negative mindset, I found out that running is by far the most effective way to clear my mind temporary. Whenever I’m able to clear my mind, I have much better control of my life no matter what challenge life poses and easier to make life decision where I want to go.

To summarise, before I was into running, being inspired is what got me started running. Witnessing people do amazing things inspires me to do all these amazing things as well as discovering life benefits such as improve mental health, increase life productivity, better health/fitness, etc. To keep myself motivated to run for many years is to have aspiration by signing up to certain running events, have goals and always give it 100%. I would love to become a role model one day to help runners achieve their goals around local running clubs by coaching and offer them guidance. Running has changed my life over the last 9 years. Running teaches me to have purpose, how to be disciplined, how to be dedicated and how to be resilient which is something I applied throughout my life to become a better person. From the bottom of my heart, that’s why I love running and my life would never be the same without it.

And now...

Thanks for sharing your inspirational story with us Martin.