12 years ago Martinus Evans went on his first run. Despite the initial struggle, he went on to complete his first marathon just 18 months later. Today, Martinus is a marathon runner, author, speaker, and the founder of the Slow AF Run Club, a community of over 40,000 members that motivates runners of all speeds to go after their big goals.
12 years ago Martinus Evans went on his first run. Despite the initial struggle, he went on to complete his first marathon just 18 months later. Today, Martinus is a marathon runner, author, speaker, and the founder of the Slow AF Run Club, a community of over 40,000 members that motivates runners of all speeds to go after their big goals.
Connect with Martinus:
Thank you to our sponsors:
Martinus Evans:
The sport of running has challenged me. It has made me a better person and has really helped me to see that I can accomplish any goal that I have. If I can go through 20, 30 weeks of training and do this hard race, then I can do anything that I want to.
Shelby Stanger:
12 years ago, Martinus Evans went on his first run. It was not fun, and it definitely wasn't easy, but it turned out to be the first day of an entirely new life for him. 18 months after that first jog, Martinus ran his first marathon. Fast-forward to today, and Martinus is a prominent voice in the running community. He's an author, a speaker, and the founder of the Slow AF Run Club, a community with over 40,000 members that encourages runners of all speeds to go after their big goals.
I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living, an REI Co-op Studios production, brought to you by Capital One. Most races and training plans assume that participants run a 10-minute mile. Martinus runs slower than that, usually closer to 15 minutes. He knew that he wasn't the only back of the pack runner. So in 2019, he decided to start the Slow AF Run Club. Since starting the community, Martinus has gone on to write a book for slow runners and he's built a career as a running entrepreneur. Martinus Evans, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living. I'm so excited to chat with you.
Martinus Evans:
Thank you for having me.
Shelby Stanger:
Let's just start with running. How did you get into running?
Martinus Evans:
Oh, man. So how did I get into running? I'm going to bring you back to 2012. I was working a commission sales job. I was on my feet eight to 10 hours a day. I found myself at a doctor's office. The doctor was like, "Oh, I know why you're in pain." I was like, "Why?" He was like, "You fat. Ha ha ha." And long story, less long, I told him I was going to run a marathon. He laughed at me and told me that's the most dumbest thing he heard in all his years of practicing medicine. Really wanted to lay hands on him. Wanted to bless him. Praise, worship.
Shelby Stanger:
You wanted to bless him?
Martinus Evans:
Yes.
Shelby Stanger:
I wanted to strangle him as you're telling me this story.
Martinus Evans:
But instead, I bought running shoes that day and started running. That was, what was that? 10, 11, 12 years ago.
Shelby Stanger:
I love it. Okay, so what was that first run like?
Martinus Evans:
Hellacious. It was the worst thing ever. Imagine walking into a fitness center. There's three treadmills in this fitness center, but there's only one available. It's inconveniently and sandwiched between two gazelles and you sizing them up. You haven't been on a treadmill in years, and you think to yourself, "These guys are going nine and 10 on the treadmill. I'ma go seven." And let's just say the sound my body made when I fell off the treadmill? Deafening.
Shelby Stanger:
A seven is a good clip on a treadmill. That's solid pace.
Martinus Evans:
It is.
Shelby Stanger:
How old were you in 2012?
Martinus Evans:
24, 25.
Shelby Stanger:
Okay, so you have this job. You go to the doctor, he's a schmuck. You're like, "Whatever. I'm going to get running shoes anyway." You buy some running shoes, you go to a treadmill for your first run, which is pretty bold in itself. I would probably have just ran outside and then you fall. That sounds painful. What happened next?
Martinus Evans:
I got the h up out of there. That's what happened. I was mortified. I got up out of there. I got up. You would imagine how fast I got up and made a beeline to the door. I think I ran faster to the door than have I ever in life. I was mortified. I thought to myself, "Maybe this doctor is right, maybe I can't be a marathoner," so on and so forth.
And as I'm going home, fighting back tears of what the hell just happened. I have this tattoo on my right wrist and I remember reaching out to the door and seeing my tattoo. And the tattoo says, "No struggle, no progress." And it is four words, but it is probably the biggest thing to my life when it comes to going through the journey, resilience, so on and so forth. Also, who said it? It's a famous Frederick Douglass speech. So looking at those four words, that's when it kind of clicked for me to say, "Okay, I got to prove this doctor wrong. Not only I got to prove this doctor wrong, I got to prove myself right."
Shelby Stanger:
No struggle, no progress. So you leave the gym, you're mortified, but somehow you keep going.
Martinus Evans:
Yes.
Shelby Stanger:
What does that look like?
Martinus Evans:
What does it look like? For me it's sheer determination. I wake up the next day, got up super early, peeked in the gym to make sure nobody was there and ran on a treadmill for 30 seconds. And then the day after that ran for a minute and the day after that ran for 90 seconds. So I would just come back to the gym every day and just repeat it over and over and over until I was able to do it.
Shelby Stanger:
For his training plans, Martinus used an app called Couch to 5K. You may have heard of it before. It's an exercise plan for new or returning runners that slowly progresses from mostly walking to running a full five kilometers or 3.1 miles. Throughout his training program, Martinus was writing about his experience on a blog he called 300 Pounds and Running. After a few months, Martinus ran a 5K, then another and another. Then he ran a few 10K's and a couple of half-marathons. A year and a half after that first doctor's visit, Martinus came to the starting line of his first full marathon.
All right, take me to this day. You run your first marathon and I imagine this doctor's voice is still in your head. When is this? Where are you? What's the marathon?
Martinus Evans:
October 2013, Detroit, Michigan, my hometown. I'm at the starting line of Detroit Marathon and I remember picking this race because I was like, "Oh, this is home for me." But also Detroit has, it's like an international race. So you run part of it in Detroit and then you go over the Ambassador Bridge and now you're in Windsor Ontario, and then you come back through the tunnel.
I was like, "All right, my first race is going to be an international race. I like this." I actually had my passport because I'm like, "I don't know if they're really going to stop us and take our passport and check us in, but I got my passport just in case." And I remember just being nervous because yes, I've ran all these other races, but when you train for a marathon, you don't necessarily run 26.2 miles. Most of the time, most training plans stop at 18 or 20 or probably even 22 miles. But most programs don't do the full 26 when it comes to training, especially a beginners program. So I remember being like, "Okay, the farthest I've ever ran was 20 miles. I don't know how in the hell I'm going to make these last six miles. What am I going to do?"
Shelby Stanger:
So then what happened?
Martinus Evans:
I get to mile 18, I hit the wall and I remember thinking to myself, "I don't know how the hell I'm going to finish this race." And I remember this lady giving me a handful of Jolly Ranchers and was like, "Thank you for running the race." And I remember like, "thank you for these damn Jolly Ranchers because I don't know how I'm going to make it."
Then I finally, I finished the race, cried like a baby. My girlfriend, now my wife, cried like a baby. My mama cried like a baby, and I was more or less upset because I had prepaid for race photos, like finisher photos. So while my mom and my girlfriend slash wife now is trying to take pictures of me running the race or finishing the race, I thought to myself, "No, where's this photographer? I want my professional finisher medal photo. I paid for it. Where is it?" And they was like, "Oh, he left 20 minutes ago." Actually, I never got a refund from that. Detroit Marathon, if you listen to this, y'all got to pay me what y'all owe, because y'all owe me.
Shelby Stanger:
I think they'll let you probably run the marathon for free if you ask them. Wow, I got a little teary-eyed when you told me that your wife now and your mom were crying and you were crying. I mean, what went through your head?
Martinus Evans:
A mixture of things, right? It is one thing... I'll pause for a second just because I'm laughing because I think about all the other races I ran and how many I've actually cried after of them.
Shelby Stanger:
I love it. You're a crier. It's kind of awesome.
Martinus Evans:
Quite a few. Look, I don't know what it is about running 26.2 miles, but afterwards I'll be waterworks. So what was going through my mind? Dang, this is over. Dang, I really did it. While I'm in pain. I did not know my teeth can hurt while running the race. Dang, my teeth hurt more than my feet. All this other stuff that was in my head.
Shelby Stanger:
After that first marathon, Martinus felt like a legit runner. But he also realized how different he was because he was slow. As he blogged about his running journey and accomplishments, Martinus wondered what else he was capable of. At the time he was working as a suit salesman, but running opened his eyes to new possibilities. Martinus decided to go for something, even more ambitious grad school.
In his master's program, he continued to work on his blog, 300 Pounds and Running. He also wrote a thesis about the efficacy of weight loss bloggers, which was later published by the National Institute of Health. He considered going on to get a PhD, but instead Martinus started working in digital marketing for tech companies and startups in Silicon Valley. It wasn't a direct connection to the sport he'd fallen in love with, but it did lead him down a winding path of entrepreneurship. When we come back, we'll talk about Martinus' journey to become a coach, an author and the founder of the Slow AF Run Club.
Martinus Evans is an author, speaker, and the founder of the Slow AF Run Club. He's become a well-known voice in the running community, showing people of all sizes and paces that running can be fun and rewarding. When he first started training, Martinus created a blog called 300 Pounds and Running, where he wrote about his experiences and shared race photos and gear recommendations. Six years after he started running, Martinus was working in digital marketing, but his blog started gaining popularity and attracted attention from some major sports brands.
Martinus Evans:
I worked for Yelp, I worked for a few other startups in Silicon Valley. And while doing all that, I was still blogging. I still had my own Instagram account. I was occasionally getting brand deals here and there, but the biggest driver was when I started working with Adidas.
So I was training for New York City Marathon at that time, and I remember telling my boss like, "All right, I'm going to be going for a week because I'm running a marathon. Go, go visit friends." And somewhere in that week, Adidas reached out to me and was like, "Hey, can you come to Portugal? We will fly you out there. We want you to be a part of this commercial. Can you come to Portugal?" And I was like, "Yes." Call my boss. I was like, "Hey, it's going to be two weeks I'm off." But she's like, "Okay, don't worry about it." So on and so forth.
Get there and we get some rain delays. We shoot the first day. I was only supposed to be there for two days and then they reached back out to me and was like, "Hey, they really like you. Yes, we know this is supposed to be a cameo." So I ended up with a cameo and then it was like, "Hey, we want to turn this cameo to a full-on hero scene, so can you stay?" Call the boss again. "Hey, it's going to be a little bit longer, but I promise I'm going to get back. I'm going to work, yada, yada yada."
We finished that whole shoot. As we are ramping up, we having dinner. They was like, "Oh, Martinus, we sent some of this footage to another crew that's in Athens Greece, so it'll just be a quick little flight over. Can you go to Athens?" And I'm like, this is crazy. Call the boss again. I'm like, "Sorry, don't fire me. I'm serious. I'm in these Adidas commercials." Go to Athens. It rained again. I was there for a whole nother week. So now I'm off of work. Something else would've been one week type of thing. Now it's starting to become three weeks that I'm gone. And then it went from that to, "Oh, well since you're in Athens, we would love for you just to come and see the headquarters." So I'm literally gone from my new job for four weeks, so much so that people have forgot that I even worked there because I was such a new employee.
And the day I came back, my boss was like, "All right, this is not going to work. I see there's bigger things for you, so this is what we're going to do. We're going to put you on part-time basis, yada, yada, yada." And then as I became more bigger, we ended up having another larger conversation of, "All right, we see that your focus is not here." It's like, my boss is super cool. She was like, "Hey, I'm going to be straight up with you. You're not a good employee. You're amazing person, you're amazing person to be around, but you're starting to get notoriety and you're just not a good employee. So here's what I'm going to do. Don't come to work for a month, consider that your severance pay, but don't come to work for a month. I'm still going to pay you, but we're going to cancel all your meetings. Go figure this stuff out."
And I remember being like, "Oh, I was just doing this blogging stuff part-time" and things of that sort like, "Oh, what am I doing?" And then Adidas was like, "Oh, we want to work with you full time." And I don't know, they kept dragging their feet. And I remember the last day of the month of me not working at that other job and I was like, "All right, this is not going to work. I am going to email this boss and let her know I quit. I'm not going to be an influencer. I'm not doing this entrepreneurial stuff. I'm going to come back and be the greatest employee ever." And as soon as I open the email, my contract for Adidas was sitting there.
Shelby Stanger:
With Adidas, Martinus hosted a podcast, did coaching, and participated in a few commercials. Outside of his work with the brand, he wrote a book and started an online running community called the Slow AF Run Club. This platform, which includes an app, makes running accessible for runners of all sizes and paces. Through Slow AF members can access training plans, weekly distance challenges, and group coaching. I want to talk about the Slow AF Run club. When did you start this? And yes, I love the name.
Martinus Evans:
So I started Slow AF back in 2019. During that time I had just moved to California, didn't have any running friends. I tried a few meetups with a few running clubs and really just had a bad taste in my mouth. From there, I remember being like A, I'm tired of running by myself. B, I'm tired of going to these races and trying to figure out if there's another slow person like me that I can build a relationship with. What would it look like for me just to gather all of my slow running friends and just put them in this group and start from there. And that's what I did.
Then oh, Miss Rona, the pandemic came through and halted everything in the sport of running. And from there, me and my friends were sad because all our races was canceled. So I decided to launch a virtual race series. And that first race that I did, I was scared shitless because I bought a hundred medals because that was the minimum thinking that I don't know how I'm going to sell a hundred medals and 6,000 people signed up for that race.
Shelby Stanger:
That is so amazing. What'd you do? You didn't have enough medals.
Martinus Evans:
So I bought some more medals. I bought some more medals, I bought those medals and I hand stuffed every single medal, gave them a little card and everything like that. And from there most people would just stick around in the run club and from there we just continued to grow.
Shelby Stanger:
I love that. Tell me a little bit about this education you provide these runners. You said it's different. Many of these runners are really, they're slower, they're back of the pack runners. So how is this different than a training plan you'd find somewhere else? And how do you cater it to them and keep them motivated?
Martinus Evans:
Yes. First things first, most training plans out there assumes a person runs a ten-minute mile. I even remember running Couch to 5K and everything assumed that you ran a ten-minute mile. That was the slowest thing ever. And I remember being like, "This is not cool. I run a fifteen-minute mile. There's nothing out here that supports me."
So with the coaching, with all the training plans that we have and that we've written, A, I personally wrote those and I assume somebody runs at eighteen-minute mile. Now if you run faster than eighteen-minute mile, cool. But you can assume that anybody who runs an eighteen-minute mile can do my training program and be able to accomplish their running goals. So that's the first thing.
The second thing is that just even how we talk about A, running B, mindset, C, nutrition, we really think about this stuff about we are fueling our running journey and running is just a part of our journey, but it's not the end all, be all.
Shelby Stanger:
Tell me about vibes. You seem like a pretty positive person, but you also, you ain't going to take any BS from anybody.
Martinus Evans:
Well, that's the type of vibe that I like to provide, especially in the Slow AF Run Club app. This is my party and if you come to my house and you come to my party, I'm going to go make sure that you feel comfortable and that you have somebody else to talk to and you going to know where the drinks are at and you're going to know where the food is at. You ain't going to never have a want inside of my party. That's my philosophy when it comes to running the Slow AF Run Club. And truthfully, that's my philosophy when it comes to anything that I do, is that this is my party and I want you to have fun with it, and I'm going to make sure that I'm the greatest host that you've ever had because I want you to come back A, to my party and I want you to bring other friends along.
Shelby Stanger:
The Slow AF Run Club helps participants build community, stay accountable, and have fun. Even though Martinus took up running as a way to get in shape and lose weight, he makes a point for the Slow AF Run Club to not be about weight loss. The app does offer advice for fueling long races, but one thing remains clear. They do not do diets.
Martinus Evans:
I tell people say, "Hell, I've lost a hundred pounds, I've gained it back. I've lost it again." One of the things that I can tell people straight off the bat is that the skinnier you is not necessarily a better you because now you got to actually deal with the bullshit.
That you were hiding behind when you was actually fat. And when you tell that to a lot of people, they'd be like, what? Yeah, I've had people tell me, "Oh, I like the fat Martinus better than the skinny Martinus." So you can focus on weight loss, you can do all that stuff, but I'm telling you, even after you do that stuff, there's still going to be some type of psychological work that's going to have to happen in order for you to actually make it to the other end and or to make it stick. And like I said, I've lost weight, I've gained weight, I've lost it again.
You then have this connotation with you with people to say like, "Oh, you must have fallen off the weight loss kick. Or, oh, you must have fell off the health journey." Or when you're back on it's like, "Oh, so you're back on the journey," so on and so forth. And to me, it just became like, I don't want to necessarily be tied to that. So you only interact with me if I'm on a weight loss journey versus if I have so many other things to say? And I think that's where I started to make this switch from, this is not a weight loss journey. This is a betterment journey. And if weight loss just happens to happen, that's cool, but I'm still me. I still am a living, breathing human being when it's all said and done.
Shelby Stanger:
What's the best thing someone can do if they just want to start? I talk about starting lines in my book. Starting lines I think are harder than finish lines. I think getting there is way harder.
Martinus Evans:
Yes, absolutely. They say that the heaviest weight at a gym is the doorknob.
Shelby Stanger:
I like that. It's a good one.
Martinus Evans:
The heaviest weight at the gym is a doorknob and it's just getting started. So what I tell people is, yes, can say just start, but sometimes that's not good enough. What does that look like? What that looks like is A, The night before setting your clothes up, B, when your alarm go off, you count down from five to 0. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and you put your feet on the ground. C, you get your butt off the bed and you go put on the workout clothes that you put out the night before. You put on your shoes and you just go run for 30 seconds. And then from there you can say, "Yep, I did it. I'm going back home." Or you can decide to keep going. Simple as that.
Shelby Stanger:
Running was a catalyst for Martinus. It changed every aspect of his life. He wants others to see the positivity that this sport can bring no matter their age, size, or athletic ability. All you have to do is start.
Last year, Martinus came out with a book called The Slow AF Run Club: The Ultimate Guide for Anyone Who Wants to Run. In it, he gives lots of techniques for getting started and making running a part of your life. It's available wherever you buy your books. If you want to learn more about Martinus and stay in touch with them, check them out on Instagram @MartinusEvans. That's M-A-R-T-I-N-U-S E-V-A-N-S.
You can also learn more about the Slow AF Run Club @SlowAFRunClub on Instagram or SlowAFRunClub.com. We'll put those links in the show notes. Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI Podcast network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger, produced by Annie Fassler, Sylvia Thomas, and Sam Piers-Nitzberg of Puddle Creative. Our senior producers are Jenny Barber and Hannah Boyd. Our executive producers are Paolo Motila and Joe Crosby. As always, we love it when you follow the show, take time to rate it, and write a review wherever you listen. And remember, some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas.