Slow AF founder Martinus Evans’ personal journey began ten years ago, when his doctor called him fat and told him he needed to start walking to “lose weight or die.”
Faced with the shame and stigma many people in larger bodies face, Martinus made the choice to stand up for himself. “Screw walking,” he said. “I’ll run a marathon.” He left the doctor’s office and bought running shoes that same day.
Ten years later, Martinus has been an adidas spokesperson, a model on the cover of Runner’s World, and a Boston Marathon finisher. Martinus has ran over 100 races including 8 marathons.
Now he’s set his sights on changing the perception of what a runner is supposed to look like. He founded The Slow AF Run Club to be the world’s largest inclusive online community for back-of-the-pack runners.
Listen to this episode of The MOVEMENT Movement with Martinus Evans about the importance of inclusivity in the running community.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
– How it’s important for the running community to support slower runners and challenge traditional ideas of what a runner should look like.
– How high protein, high-fat diets don’t automatically enhance athletic performance.
– Why people should seek individualized approaches to training and nutrition.
– How there is a lack of diversity in the running industry and marketing should be more inclusive of all body types.
– How it’s vital to embrace your body type and run without pressuring yourself to change it.
Connect with Martinus:
Guest Contact Info
Instagram
@runslowaf
Facebook
facebook.com/RunSlowAF
Links Mentioned:
slowafrunclub.com
Connect with Steven:
Website
Xeroshoes.com
Jointhemovementmovement.com
Twitter
@XeroShoes
Instagram
@xeroshoes
Facebook
facebook.com/xeroshoes
Episode Transcript
Steven Sashen:
If you’re going to take up running the obvious goal, get fitter, get faster, or is it? Maybe that’s what’s getting in the way of you having what you want when it comes to running or actually anything else you do in your life. We’ll get into that on today’s episode of The Movement Movement, the podcast for people who like to know the truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body starting feet first, those things at the end of your legs that are your foundation. We are here to break down the propaganda and mythology, sometimes the straight out lies you’ve been told about what it takes to walk or run or hike or play or to yoga or CrossFit or whatever it is you like to do and to do those things enjoyably, efficiently, effectively. Did I say enjoyably? Trick question. Of course I did.
I know that if you’re not having fun, you’re not going to keep it up anyway, so make sure you’re doing something you enjoy, which is something we’re going to be talking about on today’s episode. I’m Steven Sashen, Co-Founder of Xero Shoes, and here we are with some Xero Shoes behind us, the Host of the Movement Movement podcast, and we call it that because we’re creating a movement that involves you, really simple. More about that in a second. About natural movement, letting your body do what it’s made to do without getting in the way with things that are supposed to be good for you that may not be, in fact actually aren’t. So how can you get involved? It’s really easy. Nothing you need to actually do do other than the obvious. Spread the word. Give us a thumbs up, give us a like, give us a five star review. Give us any sort of review, frankly. Share this all over the place.
If you want help doing that, go to our website, www.dojointhemovementmovement.com. You don’t need to do anything to join, that’s just the word that’s in there, but you will find places where you can subscribe to hear about new episodes, where you can find all the old episodes, how you can find us in social media and engage with us there, and as they say, much, much more. So let us jump in, shall we? Martinus, do you want to say hi and tell people who you are and what you’re doing here?
Martinus Evans:
What’s up everyone? Good morning, good evening, good afternoon. My name is Martinus Evans, Founder of Slow AF Run Club, a community of 40,000 members worldwide, and our goal is to get 1 million people to start running in the body they have right now.
Steven Sashen:
Well, so let’s break that down because boy, you did that nice and fast and I want to hit each one of those. So Slow AF Run Club. Actually, yeah, say something more about the Slow AF part and then we’re going to talk about the body you have part, and then we’re going to back up and talk about some other things.
Martinus Evans:
Yeah, so the Slow AF part. I think when it comes to just the running industry in general, if you run anything slower than a 10-minute mile, then the running community don’t see you as a runner. But there’s thousands, I would say even millions of people out there who run at that pace, and we are just there to affirm them, let them know that they are runners. So that’s the Slow AF part. What was the next part?
Steven Sashen:
Bodies of any type.
Martinus Evans:
Bodies of any type. I think that’s another thing that kind of goes into it is that just thinking about people who are afterthoughts when it comes to running, right? When you think about the traditional runner, and everybody close your eyes and just think about traditional runner, you see a 300 pound man who’s ran over eight marathons and 100 of the different races including three of the six world majors? Probably not, but that’s me, right? And I think just letting people know that they can be a runner in the body that they have right now, they don’t have to change it. You don’t have to do any of that stuff. You can just start where you at and just move from there.
Steven Sashen:
When you tell people that you have run all those marathons and all those other races and you are not the typical body type in their mind for a runner, what’s their reaction and then how do you respond?
Martinus Evans:
They’re like, “Oh wow, good for you.” They kind of give me the condescending, “Good for you.” But for me it’s one of those things where I am who I am before I got here, and it is one of those things that I’m quite proud of to be able to run as many race that I have and I’m quite proud.
Steven Sashen:
I love the condescending compliment idea. I have a friend who I haven’t seen in a number of years. So let’s say I had a friend whom I haven’t seen in a while who was maybe 5’7″, close to 300 pounds. I mean, this woman was round and she was a triathlete and just did lots of tri’s, and it always amazed me watching exactly what would happen when she would tell people, “I’m going to do a triathlon this week,” and you would just watch them again try to politely respond in some way and never ask what would be the obvious question is, “Really? Talk to me about doing that in your body type because that is not what I ever imagined,” which would’ve been a much more interesting conversation. Does anyone ever just come back at you with this straight question to have a real conversation?
Martinus Evans:
Absolutely not. I think that’s the thing about the running industry and/or diet culture, right? Everybody has a preconceived notion of what a runner is or what a person who lift weights is. So it’s definitely a question that rarely anybody asks me.
Steven Sashen:
Well, happily I am that guy. I’m also the guy who when someone’s riding by in an electric wheelchair, I’ll stop them and say, “Okay, seriously what’s your top speed?” Or if they’ve got artificial legs, “Okay, what can you do with those that you couldn’t do with regular legs?” I’m just really curious about things that are not the norm. So from your experience, I mean given the number of people that you have in Slow AF Running Club who are both slower and often bigger, what’s the difference that you experience, and how do you work with people about not only the running part and what may be different for people running if they are slower, A, larger, but also literally that societal cultural part of how to go out in the world and address this?
Martinus Evans:
Absolutely. I would say there’s two things you have to worry about, right? I think the first thing is teaching people how to run, and letting them know the traditional wisdom out there is completely useless for you.
Steven Sashen:
Oh wait, so then I’m going to pause there before I go to the social part. So again, let’s break that down to the teaching them how to run. So I want to hear more about that and then whatever the hell the second sentence was that I lost about how it’s just a completely different part. So there’s more.
Martinus Evans:
It’s just completely useless. So just think about me as a 300 pound man, right, and you think about your basal metabolic rate. You know what that is? That’s the amount of calories you just burn by sleeping in the bed, just being, right?
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Martinus Evans:
So my basal metabolic rate is about 3000 calories. So now you think about that and you add on training for a marathon and how they’re like, “Well, on average you burn what, a hundred calories per mile?”
Steven Sashen:
Not a lot, but yeah, I mean, yes, you add it up. I mean people actually think that running marathons…
Martinus Evans:
That math don’t math for me.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, no. Well, so you just made me think of Dean Karnazes who when he ran 50 marathons in 50 days in 50 states would order a pizza and tell people who are going to deliver it roughly where he would be while he was running to meet him and deliver it, and then he would roll it up like a burrito and eat it while he was running. That was the only way he could have calories.
Martinus Evans:
So imagine that, right? I even think about just salt intake or the amount of salt or potassium you are expiring while sweaty. Completely different when you think about just the mathematics and the traditional running industry, and all of the math is based off of somebody that’s like 125 to 150 pounds.
Steven Sashen:
Oh dude, not just all the math. The entirety of the running shoe industry right now is based on that same thing. It’s like, “Hey, here’s these magic super shoes,” and the companies know that those are all tuned to a weight and speed. I mean, if basically you can run, oh, the 800 in under two minutes and you weigh about 145 pounds, those shoes are great for you. For anybody else, not so much. So the whole industry is not geared towards what you’re describing. So yeah, just the physiological part that’s really, really interesting. So let’s go back up to the teaching people to run part and that’s different than what’s happening for other people. And I’m going to preface this, do you know, oh God, Heather Vincent? I think she’s at University of Florida. Don’t hold me to it.
Martinus Evans:
Mm-mm. No, never heard her.
Steven Sashen:
I’m going to do the intro between the two of you because she’s an academic researcher, but her big research is on heavier runners and the differences between them and “svelte runners.” So I think you’d get a kick out of chatting with her. But talk to me about just the teaching people to run part and how even just the running mechanics may be different for those people slower and larger than “the normal runner.”
Martinus Evans:
I think this is very interesting, right, and I’m trying to put this in the way that that would make me seem like I’m an asshole, but…
Steven Sashen:
Go for the asshole version. That’s cool. You’re among friends here.
Martinus Evans:
So I’m a certified run coach, right, and I think about when I became a certified run coach and they gave us the Jack Daniels book on running. And they was like, “This is your Bible. This is what you’re going to need to run.” And you think about all the other people who just follow that notion, whether it’s the forums, whether it’s Reddit, whether it’s Let’s Run. All these people are like, “Yes, Jack Daniels book is the book.” And for slower individuals, none of that stuff works. Not when they don’t even have a pace chart, they go past a 12-minute mile or 11-minute mile, right?
Or some of the advice that I’ve seen in there, right? And I would just say this, “Most how-to running advice comes from elite athletes or coaches of elite athletes teaching you how to run their way.” So that whole notion of like, “Oh, you need to have a cadence of 180 steps per minute.” And when you read Jack Daniels just was watching an elite athlete run and he counted the steps and it’s like, “Yep, that’s what you should be doing.” And then you try to take that to the novice runner and then they don’t do it or they get injured and they blame themselves versus being like, “No, this is the system.”
Steven Sashen:
I think you just nailed one of the biggest things sort of across the board with athletics, but especially for running is exactly that. I think the major companies have literally trained people over the last fifty years to think that if you’re having a problem, it’s because of you, not because of something they’ve done, whether it’s a product or a teaching method. And I find that utterly, how do I want to put it? It’s intellectually amazing. It’s morally repugnant.
Martinus Evans:
Yeah, absolutely.
Steven Sashen:
So someone comes to you, they’ve never run, they are whatever size, whatever weight they are. What’s the first thing that you do?
Martinus Evans:
Well, the first thing I do is tell them, “Go run for 15 seconds. Go run for 15 seconds and walk for 90 seconds.”
Steven Sashen:
I love you so much right now. I can’t believe it. Yeah, please continue. Okay, then what’s the second? Now let’s start there. So they run for 15, they walk for 90. Give me the range of experiences that people have had and what you do with them after that?
Martinus Evans:
Well, the first thing is really to get them to understand what is running to them, what do they have in their head when it comes to running? Is it an all out sprint? Is it a coasting? Just getting people to really understand what is running to you? So 15 seconds, I think for me, when you think about a novice, you can get a lot of information off like, “Whoa, that was too much.” It’s like, you winded, you’re tired after 15 seconds? It’s like, “Yes.” I was like, “All right, you’re doing it wrong. You’re doing it too fast, you’re doing it too fast, you’re going out too fast.” Right? So I think for a lot of people it just gives them that, what’s the word I’m looking for? I lost the word, but it gives them the notion to let them know, “Oh, they’re going too fast or they’re going too slow to start out.”
Steven Sashen:
I totally love that, especially for the people who are going out too fast. It makes me wonder how many of them are potentially former runners or were more fit or thinner or something in say junior high or high school, and now they’re coming back and they still have that in their brain, but a body that doesn’t match.
Martinus Evans:
Absolutely. So I think about myself, I played football in high school and college and running was a punishment. And when it came to running, it wasn’t, “Oh, you run at this pace,” it was, “Run 110 yards at the fastest pace as you can.” And you get there, you’re going to turn around and you’re going to do that again over and over and over until you throw up. So really getting adults now who are adult onset runners or individuals who are just getting back into the sport to let them know like, “Oh, this is not your high school running. This is not your collegiate days or your middle school days. Your body is way different than it was back then, which means you have to do things a lot differently and think about running in a different way.”
Steven Sashen:
When I got back into sprinting, it took me two years to learn that, maybe two and a half. That when I have the thought, “Let me just do one more,” that was actually the cue to stop. How long did it take for your brain to catch up to your body?
Martinus Evans:
Oh man. It is a constant battle. One of the things I even talk about in my book was this time where I had just came off the injury and I wanted to get back to where I was at. I had a car accident and I wasn’t able to run. I was like, “All right, I need to get back.” So I’m going to do one of those run streak challenges that goes from Halloween to the New Year. And you think to yourself like, “Oh, it’s just going to be one mile a day or at least one mile a day.” Right? I was at one point getting up to eight and 10 miles on a three-week span, and then thinking like, “Oh my god, my knees, my achilles, all this stuff is hurting.”: It’s like, “Duh, ain’t nobody telling you to go run eight miles a day for three weeks straight.” I think that’s the thing with sports is that it is one of those things that can be a gateway to obsessiveness.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. Well, okay, so that was the wake-up call. But again, how long did it take until you were able to back up enough that you were not being crazy and stupid? Again, I’m fessing up two and a half years on my end.
Martinus Evans:
Probably about 10.
Steven Sashen:
Well, related to that, so I’m 61 now. So the thing that I’ve had to adjust for in the last 15 years is the aging part of that, and just acknowledging things like… Well, first of all, since I’m competing, competing it’s right in front of my face. The All-American times gets slower every year, and so the idea that I’m going to crush some 30-year-old, I mean, I never was that stupid. But now my goals have changed to, “Hey, if I could just hit the All-American times every five years when they change, I’m going to be a happy, happy man regardless of how slow that gets.” Because that’s good enough for me.
Martinus Evans:
And I think for me it’s just keep showing up. It’s literally just being able to run in the body that I have right now, and do that for as long as I can and I’m happy.
Steven Sashen:
When people come to you, how much do they already know about your philosophical stance, and what happens if somebody walks in thinking something very, very different because they haven’t taken the time to check you out?
Martinus Evans:
Oh man. I would say it’s probably about a 60/40 split.
Steven Sashen:
In which direction?
Martinus Evans:
In the direction of people don’t know my philosophical stance.
Steven Sashen:
So what happens then?
Martinus Evans:
We have to come to a meeting of the minds. And that’s typically the thing, right, of, for example, my latest client, they are still doing the caveman paleo type thing, and having this whole conversation of like, “Oh, I’m just not feeling good after my runs. I feel like I’m bonkie.” And me just wanting to be like, “Girl, just go eat a piece of bread. Your goals is not adding up. You say you want to run a half-marathon, but you’re doing this diet that does not translate to your goals. Go eat some bread.” And this is so conversation of like, “Oh, I should be able to do this by just eating proteins and fats because that’s what everybody else says.” And it’s like, “That’s dumb.” And me coming from a coach to be like, I can’t say that’s dumb, but that’s where I’m thinking, that’s dumb.
Steven Sashen:
I think you could say it. I don’t think there’s a problem there. I mean, I don’t know if it’s rare or not, there are some people for whom a low-carb diet can be functional, but I think this is a part of the mythology about bigger people is that, “Oh, you got all that fat, then you could just be burning that.” It’s like, no, no, no. The muscles under there have their own agenda. And so for you coming out of football where you’re primarily a fast twitch guy, you need carbs. I talked to a nutritionist. I’ve actually talked to a lot of people who think that I eat too many carbs. And I say, “Find me one power athlete, one sprinter who doesn’t have a high carb diet.” And they go, “Well, okay, I can’t think of any.” Point closed or whatever the phrase that should be. Case closed. That’s what I was looking for.
If you know Dr. Peter Attia, one of the reasons that I really liked Peter, we become friendly and he was Mr. anti-carb for years. He spent a lot of money with other people proving that carbs were in fact not good for you. And that if you ate nothing but protein and fat, basically even if your calories were equal, you would lose weight because of some hormonal thing. And when the study did not show that at all and showed that weight loss is all about calories regardless of composition, which has been done repeatedly, Peter changed his mind. Now his thing is, “Okay, well you want to get enough protein and then you want to play with the carbs and see if what happens to your blood glucose over an average of some amount of time, not just immediately after you eat something, and then that’ll let you know what your body’s currently and it may change currently able to tolerate for carbs and now you know something.” And of course that’s more complicated than just, “Hey, don’t eat carbs,” which is ridiculous.
Martinus Evans:
My background is in exercise science, and just looking at the research in itself about these high protein, high fat diets and athletics, and it does not help with performance at all.
Steven Sashen:
No. I mean, it cracks me up. For as much as people try to emulate 105 pound Kenyans who are running slightly over two hours in a marathon and look at what shoes they’re wearing and what shorts they’re wearing and whatever, they aren’t paying attention to the fact that those guys are like carb machines.
Martinus Evans:
Exactly.
Steven Sashen:
It is like, “Wait, how come you left out that part of the equation?”
Martinus Evans:
Because that’s the unsexy part. The sexy part is the shoes and the workouts and speed training. Everybody want to do the sexy part, but it’s just the unsexy stuff that actually gets you there.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, see, I think the food’s the sexy part. That’s just me.
Martinus Evans:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
So we had one other thought that popped in my brain from something you said. All right, so backing up, they go out, they do their 15-second run, they’re in whatever state they are, good, bad, indifferent. Again, what happens next?
Martinus Evans:
We talk about it. We talk about it. We talk about it, and from there we adjust, and then we go out there and do it again and say, “Okay, try 15 seconds, let’s see what 30 seconds look like.” Or let’s see what a minute looks like. Instead of walking for 90 seconds, let’s see what walking for a minute looks like. And we start to dial in what their base interval for just starting to run looks like, and then start to adjust from there. One of the things I always like to tell on people is that, “It’s not where you started, it’s where you’re going.” Right? So you can start anywhere. You can start at zero and get where you need to go. So yes, yes, you start with a 15-second run, but that don’t mean that’s where you’re going to end up when it’s all said and done.
Steven Sashen:
How much do you pay attention to or teach anything specifically about form?
Martinus Evans:
Oh, all the time. That’s another thing, right? I think first though, from what I’ve noticed from the people that I trained, they don’t necessarily get form just right off bat. Trying to teach a form to somebody who’s off the couch and be like, “All right, I want to go run. I used to run in high school. Let me go X, Y, and Z.” It don’t necessarily hit them, right? It don’t hit them the way it needs to hit them versus coming in back after two weeks and then knowing like, “Ooh, I was running and knee feels funny or my hip,” and it’s like, “Okay, well yeah, let’s talk about form now.”
Because now it makes more of an impact to you and you really understand what I’m about to say to you versus coming right off the bat to be like, “Okay, let’s talk about foot placement and holding your hand lightly so that a pebble can move freely but it won’t fall through or so on and so forth.” Or holding a bag of chips where you won’t crunch it, right? That stuff won’t hit them as properly right off bat versus hitting them a couple weeks afterwards.
Steven Sashen:
You don’t think that suggesting to a 300 pound runner to imagine holding a bag of chips wouldn’t be a problem? I mean, I am just thinking now what? I wouldn’t be able to handle that one.
Martinus Evans:
That’s a good point. But those are the mental cues that they give us though.
Steven Sashen:
Well, no, no, no, it’s worse. No, the cue is usually think about holding a potato chip in one hand and that would just make me want to reach for the bag. I’m not a bingey guy in general, unless it’s potato chips or french fries or anything crunchy actually. Anything crispy, crunchy, you can’t keep it in my house. It’s just bad news. But potato chips in particular, especially. And look, this is not a plug, but I’m going to have to say it. Maui onion potato chips, pure crack, just FYI. All right, well since you said the words foot placement, I’m going to come back and ask you about that. What do you say about foot placement?
Martinus Evans:
A couple of things, right? One of the things I try to get people is we just go with just running in place. Let’s start with running in place. How does this feel? How does your legs and your feet land under you? Let’s just run in place and get that feeling. Let’s add some lean to it and let’s work on these two cues of what’s your lean look like and how are you landing?
Steven Sashen:
Again, I can’t tell you how much I love you. This is a thing that I did way back when I met a guy who was a big deal venture capitalist, and he said, “Well, I love what you’re doing, but I mean I can’t run in your shoes because I got plantar fasciitis.” And I looked at him, I went, “I don’t actually think you do.” He’s like, “What?” I said, “Well, it looks to me like you have tight calves, but let me just prove it to you.” I said, “Let’s see what happens.” Can you just get up on your toes, just lift your heel off the ground? He goes, “Yeah.” I said, “Any problem?” He says, “No.” I said, “You don’t have plantar fasciitis.” Can you run in place? He goes, “Yeah,” and tried it. It’s like, “Cool. How’s that feel?” He goes, “Fine.” I said, “Great, lean forward just a little bit.”
And he starts running and as he’s running away he’s like, “God dammit.” And the guy still went and got surgery because I’m just a hippie looking dude. And his expensive doctor told him he needed surgery. The thing that I’m going to toss out there, two things. One, there’s an event I was at end of last year called the Mountain Land Running Summit. It’s a bunch of researchers about running and coaches as well coming out talking about the causes and cures of running injury. They had more speakers than ever before. And for the first time there seemed to be universal consensus. The number one cause of injuries is overstriding, end of story. Put your feet out in front of you when you land, you’re screwed. And everyone agreed. And then there was one guy there doing gait analysis.
My friend Doug Adams from RunDNA, and every one of the people he tested overstride and did not know it. That’s the part that gets to me. And I’m happy to report I was not one of those people. And that’s one of the things that got rid of all my injuries when I was an overstriding sprinter at first. I didn’t know what the problem was. When I went barefoot, I realized I was overstriding, stopped doing that. And I haven’t basically had a sprinting injury in 14 years, 15 now that I think of it, which is pretty much unheard of. So I love exactly what you just said. The second thing to reiterate on that, do you know Nick Romanov from Pose Method of Running?
Martinus Evans:
No.
Steven Sashen:
You don’t need to. I mean I love Nick dearly. The important part is the same thing.
He’s like, “The key thing is getting your foot landing underneath you. That’s it.” And if you do that correctly, a lot of the other things are going to work out. So his basic idea is as you get better at any physical movement, the better you get, the more you become like the other people who are really good with minor personal idiosyncrasies, but the fundamentals look the same. And the fundamental for effective running is when you’re landing your foot, you’re not overstriding, your foots as close to under your center of mass as possible, and your knees are basically aligned, or your trailing knee can be a little ahead of your stance leg. But that’s a whole other story.
Then what he does is watch it, shows you on video, and then gives you some cues to try to figure out what you need to do to get closer to that more ideal thing. Backing up to Heather Vincent, what she found was heavier runners tended to have better form that way because they just couldn’t actually move as easily to do things like overstride or have their trailing leg way behind them and then catching up. So she was seeing they were often having better form than runners half their size, because they didn’t have much of a choice at that point.
That was a long tail after my compliment for loving your get your feet underneath you and lean a little bit. There’s something that I do with people when I’m teaching them about barefoot running, but the barefoot part is actually not relevant, but that’s why they come is we’ll go out into a park and I go take a look at those 2-year-old kids. Their heads are just ginormous, and when they run they basically, their head leans forward and then they try to catch up to their head and they can’t. So do that. And then just when you think you’re going to catch up, tilt your head in a different direction and then just like don’t have to go in straight line, go in circles and zigzags, but let your head be the thing that moves you and try to catch up to your head.
And trust me, people will think you’re an idiot, but they’re far enough away, they’re not going to recognize you. And if they do, they’re going to want to come over and play because we’re going to look like we’re having a blast in about 30 seconds. And then slowly I get them to not lean their head so much, not fall over so much and they’re getting their feet underneath them. So I just adore that that’s the foundation that you’re starting from because without that, people are going to be screwed.
Martinus Evans:
Yeah. It’s as simple as that. I’m a no nonsense type of guy. I try to keep things as simple as possible.
Steven Sashen:
I like it. Well, I need to back up way, way back to your story, which is the simple thing. How did it occur to you to say, I think I’m going to become a Slow AF marathoner?
Martinus Evans:
I don’t think it occurred to me.
Steven Sashen:
Well, it happened one day. You didn’t find yourself at the end of 26 miles going, where the heck did I just go?
Martinus Evans:
Didn’t necessarily occurred to me. So it started more or less like this. I’m working a commission sales job at Men’s Warehouse. I was on my feet eight to 10 hours a day. I developed some hip pain because I was wearing hard bottom dress shoes, on my feet, went to go see a doctor. I sat down, told the doctor I was having some hip pain and he was like, “Oh, I know why you in pain. You fat. You need to lose weight or die.”
Steven Sashen:
Great bedside manner.
Martinus Evans:
So we had this huge argument. He’s like, “Oh, you need to start walking to lose weight and all this other stuff.” And I’m like, “So you didn’t even hear that I said, I’m on my feet for eight to 10 hours a day.” I’m literally in a suit in dress shoes walking around. So since you’re calling me fat and telling me I’m going to die, well, I’m going to run a marathon. And he laughed at me, told me, “Dumbest thing he heard in all his years of practicing medicine.” And he also went on to say, “If I did attempt to run that marathon, I was going to die on the course.” So now you didn’t tell me I was going to die at least three times during this doctor’s appointment. And I just left. And on the way home, I remember driving past a running shoe store, and I made a legal U-turn and went inside and told them I need running shoes, and the rest of was history.
Steven Sashen:
So is saying, “Screw you to authority,” something that shows up in other parts of your life?
Martinus Evans:
Absolutely. I have a huge problem with authority.
Steven Sashen:
Yes, you are preaching to the choir. I’ve never had a, what’s it called? Job. Yeah, because that wouldn’t end. My dad actually said to me one day when I was asking him for some money for something I was starting, he said, “Why don’t you just get a job?” I said, “That wouldn’t end well for anybody.” And so what was the experience of both training for and then doing that first marathon? How did it compare to what you were imagining?
Martinus Evans:
So it was hellacious, hellacious. I even think about my first run. My first run was literally 15 seconds and I fell off the treadmill because I was inconveniently sandwiched in between two gazelles who were running like eight and nine on the treadmill. And I thought to myself, you know what? I’m going to do seven. And that did not end well. So after I bruised my ego and stuffing myself up, I said, “All right, I need to figure out how this stuff works.” And bought every single running book and just tried to teach myself how to run. And I would say it took me about 18 months from the time that I met that doctor to me running my first marathon. And during that period I was running, I trained house to 5K, did a 5K, and then trained for a 10K, and then did a 10K and then run a bunch of 10Ks. And then trained for a half-marathon, and then ran a couple of half-marathons. And then I was like, “Okay, I think I’m ready for this full marathon.”
Steven Sashen:
So at what point did you send a picture back to the doctor?
Martinus Evans:
Can you repeat that?
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, I said, at what point did you send a picture back to the doctor showing you crossing the finish line?
Martinus Evans:
Never, because I never went.
Steven Sashen:
Come on. You didn’t get the pleasure of demonstrating that he was…
Martinus Evans:
I never went back to the doctor again.
Steven Sashen:
But you at least could send him an email and say, “Hey, take a look.”
Martinus Evans:
The thing is it’s been 10 years, or actually 11 years now. I don’t even live in the same place that I even went to the doctor’s at. It’s been so long that I don’t even know the doctor’s name. I don’t even know where his office is at. He’s not even in my lexicon anymore. So I really don’t think much about the doc.
Steven Sashen:
No, I can appreciate that one. Well then from there, so you’re starting…
Martinus Evans:
He don’t think about me. I think I’m just another fat man that the doctors called fat for that day. Probably don’t think about me either.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, no, I’m sure that’s true. I hope that someday that doctor hears what you’re up to and publicly apologizes. That would be a fun bookend to a chapter. Bookend to a chapter. That’s a horrible mixed metaphor. So you were starting to run marathons. And how did Slow AF Running Club happen?
Martinus Evans:
So Slow AF Running Club happened when I got heckled running New York City Marathon.
Steven Sashen:
What did someone say?
Martinus Evans:
Somebody called me Slow as fuck and told me to go home.
Steven Sashen:
And what did you say in response, knowing that you don’t handle things like that with the aplomb of the late Queen of England?
Martinus Evans:
I gave him the middle finger and I kept running. And then after I finished the race, I was like, “You know what? I’m going to put Slow AF on the front of my shirt because I’m proud of being slow.”
Steven Sashen:
Love it.
Martinus Evans:
I could not be out here, but I’m out here and I’m getting criticized from somebody who’s on the sideline drinking a beer, and I’m the one who’s actually running.
Steven Sashen:
That’s brilliant. When I was living in New York City, they had a five borough bicycle race and they put all the weird bicycles up front along with whoever they thought was going to win the race. I had one of those weird bicycles. I think they need to get whatever that front pack in any marathon where it’s always the elite whatevers. I think they need a pack of slow AF runners.
Martinus Evans:
They do.
Steven Sashen:
Starting the race, front of the race?
Martinus Evans:
I think so.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. It really is, how do I want to put it? Yeah, I get really angry just about how companies have manipulated the messages about athletics and about physical activity, not even athletics, let’s just say physical activity in ways that make it seem inaccessible to the people for whom it would be the most beneficial. Not even for, again, competing just for their lives and enjoyment, and do something like put the slow AF runners up with the everyone else runners, I think would be a really nice step to start a conversation.
Martinus Evans:
Yeah, that is a good question, man. And I think another thing to add to that is that you think about the notion or the stat they always like to put up, 80% of the US population is overweight or obese, and I look at these larger brands and being like, “But do y’all not like money, because y’all are always targeting the 20% versus the 80%?”
Steven Sashen:
That’s really interesting. I’m having a flashback though to when Dove did their campaign and it was all overweight women. I mean, whatever that term means. And the conversation was fascinating. I mean, part of it was like, “Hey, good for you.” And the other part was, “You’re exploiting these people.” And I can’t argue with both of those because yeah, it’s a good thing. And B, it was exploitative. It came out of nowhere in a way. I don’t know if you’ve seen this.
One of my favorite things about being a sprinter is that when I’m on the track, most of my friends and most people I’m hanging out with are black. So we get to have conversations that I don’t to get to have in Boulder, Colorado where it’s very diverse. There’s every different kind of white person. And so when the outdoor industry started saying there’s not enough representation of black people, suddenly the cover of every magazine was black athletes. And I was saying to my sprinter friends, “Does that feel like you’re starting to get attention or that it’s just pandering?” And they all went that one.
Martinus Evans:
Pandering. Big facts.
Steven Sashen:
So in a similar vein, I mean for one of the big companies to address bigger runners, athletes, whatever their people are doing, I think that one of the challenges is to do it in a way that still feels authentic and not exploitative. And I have no idea how they would do that.
Martinus Evans:
Well, they got billions and trillions of dollars. I’m pretty sure they can get creative, or hire the people who can get creative so it can be that way. I think that’s another thing about equity. They got the resources.
Steven Sashen:
Well then let me ask you the ballsy question. Why aren’t you applying for that job?
Martinus Evans:
Because it’s not available.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, come on, get your own job, dude.
Martinus Evans:
Seriously.
Steven Sashen:
I’m totally serious. Look, so I’m going to talk about my company. If we had the resources and you came to me and said, “I want to build out this piece of the puzzle because your product can and does work for athletes of all sizes, all shapes, all whatever, and this is an underserved population.” I can’t tell you how much I would be jumping at the chance to find a way to make that work. And we’re a small company. We do not have billions of dollars floating around. We are not on a hundreds of millions of dollars campus with more money spent on the fountain outside of the front door than they actually spend developing a product. So I’m not saying that we have that job open. I’m saying, “Hey, that’d be an interesting conversation.” But I’m also saying for places that have bigger resources where it could make a bigger difference. Hell, where’s the downside? I mean, I’m not saying you should take the job or if you would want it, but I’m saying this is an opportunity. I agree with you, someone should try and make that move.
Martinus Evans:
I agree. Someone should try to make that move. And I think the other thing is that I’ve had partnerships with very large companies and things of that sort. And what it really comes down to is that they don’t really care.
Steven Sashen:
Then I’m going to back up a minute or so. I don’t know what resources it would take. I’m not making a job offer. I can’t legally do that. But we need to have this conversation offline. And here’s how it’s going to start. I’m going to send you some shoes both for performance and for casual/recovery. Actually, all of our shoes are recovery shoes because they’re all let your toes spread, nice and flexible, let your feet move, great for circulation, great for keeping the muscles moving. And this is no pressure, even though we’re saying this publicly. If you like things and you think, “Huh, there may be a there there,” then we’ll talk and we’ll see if there’s a way to make it happen. It might not happen today given the resource that we have or more accurately the resources we don’t have as a company our size. But I want to be part of that conversation.
Martinus Evans:
Yeah, let’s continue to have these conversations.
Steven Sashen:
All right, that’s simple. Let me say this, anything that I missed that we need to talk about?
Martinus Evans:
That was simple. That was easy.
Steven Sashen:
I can’t think of anything. I mean this has been a total, total blast. This is going to sound funny. How do I put this? If somebody shows up for a Slow AF Running Club and they are not 300 pounds plus or whatever. I’m making up numbers. Can just, I don’t want to use the word “normal,” so horrible. Are people who are not what we’ve talked about of being bigger, slower, are they showing up and what happens when and if they do?
Martinus Evans:
Yeah, some of them do show up and I think some of them show up because we don’t have the, I don’t want to say that some of them running industry have, but we are a low, low to no pressure type of group. So they show up because they know that we’re not competing.
Steven Sashen:
I love it. The competing side, my favorite thing about that is no one’s ever honest about it. So when I show up at the starting line and there’s a whole bunch of guys who are really, really intense and they’re like, “Have a good race, man, good luck.” And I go, “Hey, hey, look, look, there’s no prize money involved. We’re all old. We just want to get to the finish line and be healthy and have fun and I totally want to kick your ass.” And if you’re honest about both sides of the equation, then it gets really, really enjoyable. So yeah, coming out because it’s no pressure, I think that is dreamy.
Martinus Evans:
So one of the things I usually tell people is one of the things I learned the hard way or just learned in general is that most races are permitted as a parade. So if you think about nothing, we’re all just participating in a running parade. And if you’re not an elite athlete, none of this stuff matters. We paid to get a stale bagel, a half a banana and a medal that costs $3 in China. We paid for all of it. So let’s just all go through the finish line safely and have fun along the way so that we can do it again in a couple months.
Steven Sashen:
I love that. And if I were a better man, I would end it on that, but I’m not. My thing is as a 61-year-old sprinter, I’m in this horrible, horrible age bracket. So the guys up to 35 are still rocket fast and everybody pays attention. The guys over 75 are crazy slow, but the fact they’re doing it, everybody pays attention. In my age group, they’re going out to get a beer. So Martinus, people want to find out more about you let alone Slow AF Running Club. Tell them the ways they can do that.
Martinus Evans:
Yeah, the best way to do it is go to slowafrunclub.com. That’s slowafrunclub.com, or you can find me on all socials. I’m @300poundsandrunning, on all things social media.
Steven Sashen:
Oops, wait, you cut out for the last second. So @300poundsandrunning on all social media. What’d you say after that one? It’s our technical glitches.
Martinus Evans:
Or @slowafrunclub.
Steven Sashen:
There we go. That’s what I imagined you said, but got to have you say it. Beautiful. Well, once again, Martinus, total, total pleasure. I’m thrilled that we were able to make this happen. I am going to get you some shoes to play with. Do with that what you will. But more importantly for everybody else, thank you. I want to hear your comments about this. I want to hear you going out and checking out Slow AF Run Club, seeing what you discover, and reminder to go back to www.jointhemovementmovement.com to find our previous episodes, to find all the places you can engage with us in social media, all the places you can get this as a podcast or on video if you’re not getting it where you want to get it right now.
And of course, like I said, give us a review and a thumbs up and like. If you want to be part of the tribe, just subscribe. That’s sort of the gist of that. And last but not least, if you have any requests, any suggestions, anyone you think should be on the show, any other recommendations. If you think I have a case of cranial rectal reorientation syndrome, doesn’t matter to me, you can drop me an email. That’s move, M-O-V-E @jointhemovementmovement.com. And until then, just go out and have fun and live life feet first.
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