Meet Martinus Evans, the 300-pound marathon runner leading the 'slow AF' club
The New Yorker has run eight marathons, and wants others to know they can do it too
Originally published June 15, 2023.
About a decade ago, Martinus Evans went to see his doctor, and was given an ultimatum.
"I'm sitting there and my doctor is like, 'Mr. Evans, you're fat. You need to lose weight or die,'" he told The Current's Matt Galloway.
Evans was there because of hip pain, but said the doctor seemed to ignore that problem to focus on his weight (he was approximately 360 pounds at the time). As the physician recommended buying trainers and taking up slow walking at an athletics track, Evans became frustrated.
"I said, 'Screw that, screw you. I'm going to run a marathon,'" he recalled.
"And he laughed at me, told me that was the most dumbest thing he has heard in all his years of practising medicine."
The doctor warned Evans that a marathon might actually kill him, but he did go on to run one — in fact in the years that followed he ran eight marathons.
What's the worst thing that can happen? Somebody tell you you're fat? You already know that.- Martinus Evans
He charted that journey on a popular Instagram account, @300poundsandrunning, and founded the Slow AF Run Club, an online community for others who wanted to join him, especially if they've felt their size or speed excluded from running in the past.
Now 36, he lives in New York and is a certified running coach, and has just published a book: Slow AF Run Club: The Ultimate Guide for Anyone Who Wants to Run.
A slang term, the suffix "AF" is often used as a superlative that means "as f--k," but Evans said it's open for interpretation in his club.
"It can mean Slow and Fat Run Club. It can mean Slow and Fabulous. I think AF is for anybody to decide what they want it to mean," he said.
Falling down, getting back up
Evans's path to a marathon wasn't an easy one, particularly as he didn't initially know how long a marathon was.
"I was saying to my friends, 'Yo, I'm gonna do this 5K marathon,'" he told Galloway.
"And they was like, 'No, wait, wait, wait, Martinus. Like, there's a 5K and there's a marathon, but they are not the same,'" he said.
While those extra miles didn't deter him, getting into training proved difficult. It was hard, Evans said, to find sports clothing in his size, and the books and training resources were all written by elite athletes, aimed at people trying to emulate them.
When he got on a treadmill, he choose a speed that he couldn't maintain.
"Fifteen seconds later, I fell off the treadmill and the sound my body made when it hit that ground was deafening — I was mortified," he said.
Evans started to think the doctor might have been right. But he has a tattoo on his arm that reads 'No struggle, no progress,' a reference to an 1857 speech by abolitionist Frederick Douglass.
"I knew what I had to do. I had to go through the struggle," he said.
He kept running, starting with a Couch to 5K program, then moving up to 10-kilometre runs, then eventually a half marathon.
After 18 months, he decided he was ready to take on the 42 kilometres (26 miles) of a full marathon — but even during that first race, other people's perceptions of him got in the way.
A support vehicle travelled the marathon route, picking up runners who got into difficulty and couldn't proceed. Evans said the vehicle started to pull alongside him repeatedly from the 19th mile, offering him a ride to the finish line.
"I get all the way to, like, mile 25, and I just have like a blow up at this guy because he's coming mile after mile, [saying] 'Hey, big man, get in the car,'" he said.
"I'm like, 'Yo, I am less than a mile away. Why would you even offer this to me?' And his words were, 'I can't help that you slow and fat. I thought I was helping you out.'"
Evans finished the marathon in just over seven hours, and when he made it to the finish line, he wept.
"It was amazing. And from that moment on, I knew that I can do anything," he said.
He wants others to know they have the same potential, and started the online Slow AF Run Club to offer encouragement and advice.
Fighting your inner critic
Part of Evans's mission is to challenge what society might think a runner looks like.
"These are individuals who are too fat, too slow, too fill-in-the-blank to be a runner, and these are the people that are my people," he said.
Evans said the word fat has been used to demean him or make him feel morally inferior his whole life, but he wants to make it as neutral as describing someone's eye or hair colour.
In 2022, he posed nude for Men's Health magazine as a way of challenging ideas around fitness.
"There's still men out there, men of size, who also have issues about their body and their body image," he said.
"I wanted to let them know that as a 300-plus-pound man, that I can be comfortable in my body, so comfortable that I can pose nude in Men's Health and let the whole world see."
He hopes that might help others start to feel comfortable in their own skin — and confront their "inner critic," the voice in their head that pushes negative thoughts and feelings.
Evans gave his inner critic a name, Otis, and a backstory: Otis is a drunk uncle who will say wild and inappropriate stuff. By doing that, he says it allows him to filter out those intrusive feelings and thoughts, and push forward.
For anyone who has felt excluded from running but wants to try, Evans said it's fine to feel afraid, but you can't let that fear take over.
"What's the worst thing that can happen? Somebody tell you you're fat? You already know that," he said.
"If I can battle with my own mind and battle with Otis, the next guy is not as strong. Their words don't sting as much."
Audio produced by Howard Goldenthal
