Episode 199: This week, Lu interviews plus-sized runner Martinus Evans. They talk about the myth of the "runner's body," his journey to body acceptance and self love, what frustrates Martinus most about racing, why he chose to do a naked photoshoot, and where you can go to find a running community that’s not fixated on size or speed.
Martinus Evans is a marathon runner, author, run coach, and award-winning speaker who helps plus-size individuals be active without the pressure of weight loss. He is also the host of the “300 Pounds and Running” podcast and the “Long Run with Martinus and Latoya” podcast on the 300 Pounds and Running Podcast Network available on all podcast platforms. Martinus is also the founder of The Show AF Run Club. His story has been featured in Runner’s World and LiveStrong.
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Lu Uhrich: Welcome to Episode 199 of Real Health Radio. You can find the links talked about as a part of this episode at the show notes, which you can find at seven-health.com/199.
Hi, everyone. I’m your host, Lu Uhrich, and this is Real Health Radio. Real Health Radio is presented by Seven Health. Seven Health works with women who feel obsessed with and defined by their bodies. Using a non-diet, weight-neutral approach that combines science and compassion, we help you to transform your relationship with food, movement, your body, and yourself. We specialize in helping clients overcome disordered eating, regain their periods, balance their hormones, and recover from years of dieting, binging, exercise obsessing, and body hating by learning how to connect with and listen to their bodies.
We’re currently taking on new clients, so if you’re looking for kind and experienced support in healing your relationship with food and your body, please don’t hesitate to contact us. You can head over to seven-health.com/help, and there you can read about how we work with clients and apply for a free initial chat. That address, again, is seven-health.com/help, and you can also find it in the show notes.
As you may know if you’re a regular listener of the show, for the last several months Seven Health has been giving away a book from our Resources list with every episode. It’s our way of saying thank you to you, our Real Health Radio community, while also asking for your support and feedback through rating and reviewing the podcast.
If you’d like a chance to win, all you need to do is leave a review on iTunes, take a screenshot of it, and then email it to info@seven-health.com. Then you’ll be permanently entered into the drawing. Weekly winners have the opportunity to select a book from our resources list, which includes some of our favorite publications on a variety of topics and can be found on our website at seven-health.com/resources.
For the book giveaway this week, the winner is Johanna N. Congrats, Johanna, and thanks for your review. We’ll be in contact soon to send you a book of your choosing.
That’s all for the announcements, so let’s get on with the show. Today’s episode was a long time coming. In fact, when I first joined the Seven Health team and learned that I’d also be co-hosting Real Health Radio monthly, this guest was at the top of my list. I’d been following his running career and learning about the evolution of his relationship with not only racing, but his body. So when he accepted our invite to share his story, his lived experience, and his candid advice on the podcast, I was thrilled – and trust me when I tell you, he did not disappoint.
But before I formally introduce you, a few things. One, we recorded this episode while sheltering in place due to COVID-19, so you’ll hear some references to the pandemic during our discussion and maybe a little background noise too. Depending on where you’re listening and where you’re listening from, the whole pandemic/shelter in place experience might be still quite relatable to you.
Two, I just wanted to note that we do talk a lot about running and race training in this episode, and you’ll hear the evolution of an athlete’s priorities, from body manipulation to joy of movement. Depending on where you’re at with your relationship to exercise, parts of this conversation could be triggering, so proceed with caution and remember that your healing and recovery comes first.
With those two little disclaimers out of the way, it is my honor to introduce you all to Martinus Evans. Martinus Evans is a marathon runner, author, run coach, and award-winning speaker who helps plus size individuals be active without the pressure of weight loss. He’s also the host of 300 Pounds and Running and The Long Run with Martinus and Latoya – both podcasts on the 300 Pounds and Running Podcast Network, available on all your favorite platforms.
Martinus is the founder of the Slow AF Run Club, which isn’t just a thriving community, but also the inspiration behind an emerging apparel brand and smartphone app of the same name. His story has been featured in Runner’s World, Livestrong, and Huff Post, as well as Adidas’s recent Faster Than campaign, and he’s here to share that story with us right now.
Hi, Martinus, and welcome to Real Health Radio.
Martinus Evans: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening to wherever you are. How are you doing, Lu?
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Lu Uhrich: I’m doing great. It’s so good to have you here. Such an honor. I already told you off-air that I’m kind of a fangirl and really appreciate the work that you’re doing in this world that I would love for you to share with our audience and just tell them a little bit about. So if you don’t mind introducing yourself and what you do and who you are to our listeners, I think they’d appreciate it.
Martinus Evans: All righty. How I like to start off is: good morning, good evening, good afternoon to wherever you’re at in the world. Your boy 300 pounds and running. What up, though? How are you doing? My name is Martinus Evans. I am what you call a fat runner. Yes, folks, I am he. He is me, and that’s a fat runner.
I’m a fat runner. I’m an advocate for plus size runners. I’m an advocate for body positivity. I do a lot of things. I love to run, though. I think that’s me in a nutshell. We can definitely dig deep into some other great stories I might have for you, though.
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Lu Uhrich: Yes, I would love to dig deep. What we often do here is start at the beginning. If you don’t mind sharing, what was your relationship like with movement, since running is who you are – you are the 300 pound runner, and that’s something that is your identity right now, and the work that you’re doing in the world is based on this idea that we can be any body size, that there is no “runner’s body,” and that idea. What did that look like growing up? What was your relationship like to exercise and movement as a child and as a young person?
Martinus Evans: I grew up in Detroit, Michigan in the ’90s, which was a very rough spot. Movement during that time was all street games – street basketball, like you had a friend that had a basketball around, they’d bring it out the street and we’d play basketball in the street. Or football, and this was usually when someone had a football and we played football in three or four houses’ yards, and people would yell at us because we were on their grass. But it’s like, hey, would you rather us be on your grass or causing trouble?
I never played any organized sport until high school, and that was because of my weight. I tried to play little league football when I was younger, but I was always over the weight limit. I didn’t know little league had a weight limit, but depending on the age, they had a weight limit. So I never played any organized sport until my junior year in high school. Afterwards, I went on to play collegiate football for a small historically black university called Lane College for about a year.
And then that was it. I didn’t move. [laughs] I didn’t move from there, and I gained a lot of weight, which came back from my habits when playing collegiate football. I just remember leaving high school and going to college and my coach being like, “Evans, you’re small for this position. I need you to do one thing while you’re here.” I’m like, “What’s that, Coach?” He was like, “Eat everything that’s not bolted down to the ground.” After I didn’t play football and I transferred schools, I still had that mentality of just eating everything that wasn’t bolted down to the floor. I gained a lot of weight.
Then after college, that’s when regular life came. More weight gain, more not moving. Occasional pick-up basketball game or occasional flag football game, but nothing substantial.
Lu Uhrich: You said you ended up gaining a lot of weight when you had this position in football, and part of the position was you had to be of a certain size – well, it was suggested that you had to be of a certain size. But because I’ve read a lot of your articles and I try to keep up with you, I know you’ve had experiences even as a child of being a kid in a larger body. When was the first time you noticed “My body is different than other bodies” or “My body is one that is less ‘acceptable’ than other bodies”?
Martinus Evans: Oh man, I remember this like yesterday. It had to be first grade. My teacher had us do this project where we had to come up in front of the class and tell people what we cared about. Everybody went up there and it was their favorite toy or their puppy or their brother and sister, but I’m a ladies’ man, even in first grade. I’m a lover. [laughs] I remember being like, “I’ve got this girl. She’s going to be the one I care for. I’m going to go up there and I’m going to confess my heart, and we’re going to be boyfriend and girlfriend and we’re going to hold hands into the sunlight.”
Well, that didn’t go that way. I went up there, I told the first grade class I liked this girl, she was sitting there, and as soon as I got done she was like, “Eww, I don’t like you. Your titties are bigger than mine.” From that point, the class erupted. People were pointing, they were laughing, and I became Martinus the titty boy. I wore that name from first grade I want to say all the way to middle school. I got into a lot of fights from people calling me titty boy.
Lu Uhrich: I want to get into some of this conversation later too, because there is a technical term for what people would call “man boobs,” gynecomastia. I think I’m pronouncing it right. [laughs] Let’s hope. But there’s a technical term for it, and I know you’ve done some work around accepting that part of your body that was once pointed at and ridiculed, even as a child.
I think that’s going to be an important part of this interview too, because male body image is something we don’t talk about a lot as a culture, and even here on this show, we’ve tried a few times – we have had a few male guests who have shared a little bit, but I think you’re going to do an amazing job at really driving this message home and sharing with people what sort of things are happening with male body image and what barriers you’re up against as a man existing in this culture and in this nation and in the body that you have, with the concerns and feelings that you have.
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But before we get there, I do want to make sure that people understand how this whole running thing came about, because you talked about, “I played games, basketball, street games with my friends growing up. I played collegiate football. But then I really stopped movement.” So when did the movement pick back up? When was it like, “Alright, I’m going to run”?
Martinus Evans: This happened in 2012. During this point, I was pushing nearly 400 pounds. I went to the place where I worked at the time – I used to work at Men’s Wearhouse, which is a suits – like a men’s store that primarily focuses on suits. I was a suit salesman, and I was on my feet all the time. I worked commission sales, so it was always like be there, and if I’m not there, I’m missing out on my income.
One day I walked in there and I felt this sharp pain in my heel. This led me to go to a doctor, which then led me to go to an orthopedic surgeon. I’m thinking this is maybe an injury from football or something like that. I’m like, “What’s going on, Doc? Do I need a hip replacement? Do I need surgery from football?” He’s like, “No. Mr. Evans, I know what’s wrong with you.” I’m like, “What? Tell me. I’m on the edge of my feet.” He was like, “You’re fat.” I was like, “What?” “Mr. Evans, you’re fat. You’ve got two things. You either can lose weight or you can die.”
He just went on this whole rant of like “You’re fat, you’re gonna die, you’ve got breasts like a pregnant woman, you’ve got a stomach like a pregnant woman” – all these insults. I just remember hearing “you’re fat.” I didn’t even hear none of these other warnings, the “lose weight or die.” Only thing I heard was “you’re fat.”
We had a full-blown argument. I remember saying, “You know what, screw all this. Screw what you’re talking. I’m going to run a marathon.” I didn’t know what a marathon was at that time. [laughs] And he laughed at me. He had the biggest belly laugh ever, and he was like, “That was by far the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in all of my years practicing medicine.” I’m fuming, because it’s like, “So you’re calling me stupid? I’m in grad school right now. That doesn’t make sense. That doesn’t equate to what my intelligence is.” So I end up storming out of the doctor’s office and I get in the car and drive off.
As I’m driving off, I see this running shoe store. I make a U-turn and I go in there, and I tell them, “I need running shoes and I need them now.” They give me some shoes, I go home, get on the treadmill, turn this treadmill on 7 or 8, and fail miserably by running less than 30 seconds. That time happened and I just remember feeling very bad for myself, like, “This doctor is right. I am going to die. This is dumb. I’m dumb. This treadmill is stupid. I used to run and play football and now I can’t even do 30 seconds on the treadmill.”
That became the journey of 300 Pounds and Running. I started a blog. From there, I talked to my wife, my girlfriend at the time, and I told her this and she was like, “If you want to do it, you can do it. No struggle, no progress,” which is something I have tattooed on my right wrist. It’s like, “Okay, so you hit me with one of those.” I was like, “I think I’m going to blog about this, because I think this is what people do.” She’s like, “I don’t care. You going to do this or not?”
So I started 300 Pounds and Running and went back out there and just went day in and day out of trying to complete Couch to 5K, the first day, which was literally run for 30 seconds, walk for a minute. Every day, day in and day out, I would go and try and couldn’t make it, and try, and couldn’t make it, and try, and couldn’t make it, until eventually I completed the first day. Then I repeated the next day, Week 1, Day 2 of Couch to 5K, and tried and couldn’t make it and tried and couldn’t make it until I did that.
Then eventually I got some momentum, and about 10 to 12 weeks later I ran my first 5K and I just went on from there.
Lu Uhrich: Just kept training.
Martinus Evans: Yes.
Lu Uhrich: I know a lot about you, but our audience might not; now what’s the longest distance that you’ve run?
Martinus Evans: Oh man. Last year, before all of this corona stuff, I ran five marathons.
Lu Uhrich: So you did run that marathon and you did show that doctor that absolutely, you could do that in your body.
Martinus Evans: Yeah. It took me about a year and a half. I started in July of 2012 and I ran my first marathon in October 2013. The thing that I focused on for that year and a half was running, running, running, like, “I’m going to run this marathon.” And then I ran it, and something tragic happened afterwards.
I spent all this time working and training, ran this marathon in October 2013. January 2014, I get in a very bad car accident, totaled my car, and that put me down from running for a while, maybe about 6-7 months. I was heartbroken, sad, depressed. I remember being like, “I wish I could run. I just want to run,” and not being able to run.
About 7 months later, I get cleared, and then 1 month after being cleared, I get into another car accident. Totaled my car again. So I’m down from running and being on top of the world, being impressed, to just being 300 pounds and on the couch. That took me until maybe 2015 of getting healthy and things of that sort, gaining weight back.
But during that time, the only thing that I really wanted to do was run. That’s more or less where my philosophy changed. Whereas I initially started and it was like “run this marathon, lose some weight,” from there – I remember when I got healthy again, all of my friends and family were like, “Are you going to get back on this weight loss kick? You looked better when you lost the weight,” because I did lose probably close to 100 pounds the first time around, just running and watching what I ate and things of that sort, or trying different diets. I lost nearly 100 pounds.
With the car accident, I gained all that back and more, and family members were like, “Are you going to lose weight again? What are you going to do?” They looked at me gaining all this weight as like the biggest failure, whereas me, my biggest failure was I can’t run anymore. Like, I want to run and I can’t. I remember telling myself over and over again, if I’m able to run again, I’m going to focus on how much running brought me joy versus trying to lose this weight. Because I remember being 100 pounds lighter and not being any happier. I wasn’t any happier than I was when I was running.
So that’s what I focused on. I focused on running and the joys that running did, running in my body, accepting what I had to give to the world, accepting what I had to give to myself, and just went on this rampage of running as many races as I can and filling up my calendar with as many races as I can – to what you see now, where last year I ran five marathons in a year.
Lu Uhrich: And a whole lot of other races in between there, too, right?
Martinus Evans: Oh, absolutely. Last year I probably ran about total 30-40 races.
Lu Uhrich: That’s amazing. I love this story because it’s this idea of the doctor essentially challenged you – and it sounds like a really mean doctor, by the way.
Martinus Evans: He was.
Lu Uhrich: To be so uncaring and also not practicing logical medicine, because some of the things he was saying to you about your body size, we don’t know about weight. Weight isn’t indicative of health conditions. You could’ve had something else going on orthopedically with you, but they weren’t even going to look at that because they were so focused on your weight, which is such a misfortune, but something that happens all the time to people in larger bodies. But it’s so interesting that you had this, “I’m going to run a revenge marathon,” essentially.
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It sounds like there was a time when weight loss was also one of your motivations, and it was these accidents and recognizing that you had simply the joy of running that shifted your motivation. You talked about what your friends and family were saying, but how did it make you feel for people to right away be like, “Are you going to lose weight again? When are you going to get smaller?” What does that feel like for somebody who’s done this amazing thing, taught themselves how to run, from nothing to being able to run marathons, and who then when through an accident where their body was broken and harmed and had to heal itself, only to hear “We need you to take up less space”?
Martinus Evans: It felt like I was the biggest contradiction in the world, and here’s why. I have a Bachelor’s in Exercise Physiology. I have a Master’s in Health Promotion, which is a subset of public health, and I focus primarily in disease prevention, weight loss, and things of that sort. Also during that time, I was working as a clinical research assistant at a medical school in one of their weight loss labs.
So we can talk about this whole thing of self-hate where my whole academic career initially after I graduated high school was really about losing weight and how I was going to take everything that the scientists have to give and use that on myself. But during that time, I felt like crap. I felt worthless, like “Who is this dude? I lost 100 pounds, I work at a weight loss lab, administering people clinical knowledge, and I am slowly inflating like a balloon in front of him.”
The main researcher even asked me, “Hey, is everything all right? When you first came here you were this way, but you’re been slowly gaining weight. Is everything all right with you?” Having to break down and be like, “I got into these car accidents. I can’t move like I want to. All I want to do is run, and running is my thing, it’s my mechanism, and I can’t do it,” and her just being like, “Hmm, interesting” – so none of this really matters to you. I’m just here for like, “Look, Martinus lost this weight. Martinus, tell your story on how you lost your weight.” So now, me being in the forefront of this weight loss study and helping people in this environment to being more in the background, where I’m just data entry.
Lu Uhrich: Hey, I never knew that. I never knew that your work was in weight loss before this too.
Martinus Evans: Yes. My whole life was entangled into this. It really took me years of therapy to even find out that the reason why I did all of this is because I hated what I saw in the mirror.
Lu Uhrich: So you had to work through that body acceptance piece. What does it look like now in terms of you have been working in weight loss, you shifted your motivation to say “No, this is not a weight loss journey. I’m going back for the joy of running. This is something that empowers me and uplifts me personally, and I want to keep doing it”? I’m curious to hear, where do you fall in terms of weight now, and the way people in larger bodies are stigmatized and this idea that everyone has to get smaller? I’m assuming that shifted because your life has shifted, but I’m just curious to hear.
Martinus Evans: I think it’s ridiculous. The blanket thing is like “Since you’re fat, you’re unhealthy” or “Since you’re fat, it’s bad for your heart.” Since I have the knowledge to go with this, it’s like, “Excuse me, skinny sir or ma’am. Please tell me, how is it bad for my heart?” They’re like, “I don’t know, it’s just bad for your heart. All the research says it’s bad for your heart.” It’s like, “Hmm, interesting. Do you know about co-morbidities?” “What’s that?” “Hmm, okay. Do you know about risk factors?” “What’s that?”
Or even the whole thing of like “running’s bad for your knees. All of that pounding, you’ve got to lose weight first to start running.” It’s like, “Hmm, interesting. Can you tell me the functions of osteoblasts, osteoclasts, and osteocytes?” [laughs]
Lu Uhrich: Right. There are so many buzzwords and buzz statements that people are saying about individuals in larger bodies, people with fat bodies, without actually knowing. And like you said, one of the risk factors for poor health outcomes is weight stigma and oppression and the shame that other people perpetuate on people in larger bodies. That’s actually more likely to cause poorer health outcomes than having a larger body itself, the way other people are treating you.
Martinus Evans: Exactly.
Lu Uhrich: I’m so glad that this shifted for you, even though it sounds like it was a pretty tragic series of events that led to this shift.
So now you’re running. You’re running for joy; it’s not a weight loss journey. What has been the reception of that? Are you finding there’s a lot of other people out there who are feeling that same way and are latching onto the message that you’re sending?
Martinus Evans: Absolutely. I think about my online community I have, which is called the Slow AF Run Club. It’s more or less one of the safe places that I created for myself and for other people to come out there and socialize with other runners and it just be about running. It doesn’t have to be about your weight, it doesn’t have to be about how old you are, none of the things. It’s really about running.
I have 2,000 people in there right now, and that just shows that there’s 2,000 people in this world who believe the same thing that I believe, who realize that it’s really about the physical activity and it’s really about finding joy in the things that you want to do. If you lose weight, you lose weight, but if not, we’re not going to punish ourselves and we’re not going to demean ourselves about our fitness.
It’s a lot of mindset switching to say that – even I had to go through this, and I had to say, weight is not going to drive how much and how far I run. The distance is. If I want to run a marathon, I need to train for a marathon. I’m not going to get on a scale and be like, “Ooh, I lost 15 pounds. I ain’t gotta run that 15 miles that I got to do.” No, I still have to run that 15 miles. Regardless of my weight, I still need the time on my feet to run these marathons.
Having that mental switch to be like, me losing weight or me gaining weight doesn’t change the distance I need to run to train for whatever distance I’m training for – period. It doesn’t matter how skinny you are. You could be 100 pounds and try to go out there and never ran a day in your life; you’re not going to go run a marathon that today. It’s just not going to happen. It doesn’t even make sense.
When you start to talk to people in that way, people get it. Like, “Oh, I guess you’re right there. If I need to run a marathon, I need to train for it regardless of what my weight is.” It’s more of that and it’s more of like, how can we build this?
Being a fat person, we’ve always been set up for the disappointment, whether it’s clothes, whether it’s weight, whether it’s food, whether it’s people judging us. I’m going to these people and saying, “You’ve had all of this adversity in your life. Use that adversity as grit to get you through the training to get to the finish line. You’ve already had these adversities. You’ve already had the world beat on you, and you survived it. Use that as the grit and the motivation to get you to the finish line.”
Lu Uhrich: I really like that and the idea that it’s about the training, it’s not about your weight. It’s something that we tell clients all the time, this idea that we’re going to work on healing your relationship with food and with movement and with your body, and then whatever happens to your weight is really more like a side effect. Whether you gain weight, whether you lose weight, whether your weight stays the same is really just a side effect of you doing the thing – and in this case, the thing is running the race, running the marathon. In our case, it’s healing your relationship with food and body, but in general that same idea is true.
The weight is going to do what it wants to do, and the body is so smart and so complicated, and it makes a lot of decisions that we cannot control, even though we think that we can. What we can control, like you said, is the grit to run this race, or if you’re working with Seven Health and us here at Real Health Radio, it’s the grit to heal your disordered eating behaviors, to heal the yo-yo dieting and the negative body image. That grit has nothing to do with the size of your body or how much space you take up in the world. The same with what you’re saying, the grit to run a race. I love that. I think that that’s such an exciting way to view running.
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I’m just wondering now, wanting to know a little bit more about you personally, what’s your motivation? Well, “now” is kind of weird, because I don’t even know if I announced this, but we’re in the midst of COVID-19 lockdown, so lots of things are changing in terms of training. But what is your motivation right now? Is there a specific race that you’re feeling really excited to train for? Is it a specific mileage or pace that you want to get? Where are you at right now?
Martinus Evans: Oh man, with COVID-19, that threw a monkey wrench into everything I had planned. One of the reasons I said that – I just had a campaign with Adidas come out recently, and they asked me if I wanted to run the Boston Marathon. So I was invited to run Boston Marathon. Training for that, I was super excited and ready to go, and then bam, COVID-19 punches the world in the throat. Just throat-punches everybody. Boston Marathon is now postponed until September, but I also have Berlin Marathon, so it kind of worked out in a way. I’m trying to flip the mental switch to say, “I thought I was going to have these big marathons” – and I still do, potentially.
So that’s what my focus is on now. One of the things I’ve been telling my community is, stay ready so you don’t have to get ready. COVID-19 is not going to be here forever, and we still have opportunities to get outside. We still have opportunities to run. We still have opportunities to be active. Eventually, the world will get back to normal, or what the new normal is, and if you’re just sitting around and feeling the panic, running is a great way to help you release some of that steam.
Then the other thing is that most of us still have races on our calendar. I know they’re getting cancelled or they’re getting pushed back, but we still have races – so why not stay ready so you don’t have to get ready later on down the line?
Lu Uhrich: That makes a lot of sense.
Martinus Evans: That’s more or less the hashtag we’ve got in our community, #stayready. One of these days, COVID is not going to be what it is now, and races are going to continue to come back up. It just makes more sense to stay ready for that race. If you had a half marathon last week and it got cancelled, you’re still half marathon ready. Still train as if you’re training for a half marathon, because eventually it’s going to keep coming back up.
Lu Uhrich: This leads to my next question, which is: a lot of people are still feeling a lot of disappointment right now with plans being cancelled, and in this case we’re talking about running and races – some big races like the Boston Marathon – getting cancelled or postponed. How are you dealing with the disappointment? I hear you’re staying ready, which I think is great, and continuing training if that’s going to be a stress reliever.
But how do you help people deal with the disappointments that come with training and planning for races? Because sometimes there’s injuries or cancellations, or the weather isn’t what we’d like it to be in those situations. How do you stay positive?
Martinus Evans: I don’t know if staying positive is the thing. It’s more practicing pragmatism. What I mean by that is there’s always going to be a race. There’s always going to be another race, and if you had a bad race, guess what? You can sign up for another one and run a better race.
I’ll go into some of my own personal experience. Even for me, last year I ran the Berlin Marathon, and it was a tough race. It was humid. The sky opened up and rained, and then it got breezy and cold, and I was still out there. I remember talking to some of the volunteers and some of the people who were driving the SAG vehicle and saying, “Hey, I’m not giving up, but I want to know, am I going to be able to finish the race?” They tell me yes.
I get to the last 200 meters, the 0.2. I can see the finish line. I see the numbers, and it’s barricaded. They wouldn’t let me finish the race. They made me go through the exit of the finish because there was no more racers. I remember just feeling so helpless and hopeless. I told them, “Hey, I’m a runner. I need to finish the race.” And he, in his very thick German accent, was like, “No, no more, no more. Race over.” It’s like, “No, but I’m still running in the race,” pointing to my bib and everything. He’s like, “No, race village.” I felt so defeated.
But it was during that time that I used that for the races I had the following week. I had another race, I had a half marathon, and that disappointment that I had, where I was like, “I don’t even know if running is it, I’m going to be done, but I’ve still got races on my calendar.” Then, the next race – PR. PR of my half marathon time, my 5K time, all that, because I was still ready. I stayed ready for the race. I was already trained up. I had run Berlin the week before, so I was ready.
That’s what I tell the individuals in my community as well as the people that I coach. We’re all going to have a bad race. We’re all going to have a bad run. But what makes it better is when you can go back out there the next day and say, “In spite of this bad run, I’m still going to give it a go,” and have your performance be the best performance that you’ve had in a long time.
Lu Uhrich: That reminds me – and we’ll link to it for the listeners here, but there’s a video circulating somewhere out there of you running the Big Sur Marathon.
Martinus Evans: Yes.
Lu Uhrich: I don’t think you got to finish that, but your response made me smile because you were like, “I got to be here. I got to see all these beautiful sights. I got to be with all of these people, and I still ran. Did I get to finish the race? I didn’t. But I still got to run, I gave it my all, I got to be with this group of people who all have the same passion, and we’re running in this beautiful place, and I got to witness all of that.”
I thought that was just such a beautiful way to respond to something that is disappointing, which is exactly why I asked you this question, because I knew you’d have great advice, which is to keep going and see what positive can come out of it, and knowing that you have that next race to run – which I think is this really simple but deeply profound message for all of us in any place in life, this idea that life’s going to keep going on, so take what we’ve learned and use it for the next moment or the next day or whatever we have. That’s really great advice.
Martinus Evans: It’s like, why quit? I’m getting so riled up. Why quit? You’ve already trained. You’ve already run the race, you’ve had a bad race, okay. But don’t you know how many races go on every weekend? Out of all the races in the world – what it really means to myself, it’s ego. Like, so you think that your race was the end all, be all race? You thought this was going to be it? No. This is just the beginning.
You know how many messed-up races I’ve been a part of? You really think that’s going to stop me? I enjoy running. I enjoy the race environment. I enjoy getting my medal afterwards. I enjoy the conversations that I have with people. You think I’m really going to stop because of one bad experience? No. And to prove that, I’m going to go sign up for another race next weekend to prove how this race, in the scheme of things, doesn’t affect me. It’s a blip.
Of all the things that we have on in our life – I just think about all the bad times, because growing up in Detroit, there was a lot of bad times. But in comparison to now, it’s a blip. These are just stories that we can have with other runner friends. I don’t want to say oppression Olympics, but like war stories. Like, “Ooh, I remember that one time I was running Berlin.”
Or I was running Big Sur, and woo, that mountain was huge, but I remember seeing Big Sur up close and personal. There’s this one spot where you can’t even park, but you can walk or bike, and I did it during a race of like 50,000 other people there. Okay, I didn’t finish, but I have memories that are greater than the medal because of running that race. Once you get past a certain amount of races, like I do, and you have all these medals hanging up, and each medal has its own story –
Lu Uhrich: Or if you’re Martinus, you just stand naked in a photo, holding all your medals, and post it on Instagram. Everyone go look. [laughs]
Martinus Evans: [laughs] Or that.
Lu Uhrich: But you’re right, you have all these medals, and the ones that you don’t happen to get…
Martinus Evans: You have a story behind. Even for Berlin, I didn’t finish Berlin. I was heartbroken. I trained for 152 days just for Berlin. I know the day. 152 days, I trained for Berlin, and I didn’t make it.
Sometimes what we don’t understand or we fail to get is that sometimes it’s that failure that takes us on to the next level. Like, maybe this is my Beyoncé in Star Search moment. Beyoncé was on Star Search. She lost to Skeleton Crew. You don’t even know who the hell Skeleton Crew is anymore, but you know who Beyoncé is. Or Floyd Mayweather and him losing at the Olympics and not getting an Olympic medal, but he’d go on to be 50:0.
Sometimes those losses and failures are what drive us to be like, “All right, forget this. This is it. I feel this feeling. I understand it, but I don’t want to feel this no more. I’m going to train so I don’t have to feel this feeling anymore.” That’s the grit. That’s that thing that keeps us going versus being like, “Running’s not for me. I’m going to quit.” Like, no, it is for you. But sometimes we have messed-up situations, no matter how hard you try.
Think about it. Beyoncé lost to a group that we’ve never heard of anymore. But she’s Beyoncé. Maybe it was because of that loss that she had that turned her to Beyoncé.
00:42:30
Lu Uhrich: Yeah, totally. I love this because you’re talking about running, but you’re talking all of life – the keep going, the grit, the “yeah, maybe we failed, but what are we going to do tomorrow and the next day and the next race?” Such good advice.
What’s also coming up is these conversations around these barriers that are in the races against people who are slow runners or in larger bodies. One of the barriers, obviously, is they’ll shut down the race, apparently, before all the runners are done. What else have you experienced that are these barriers, outside of what you can do or how you’re training or how you’re running or how you’re doing the race?
There’s these other things that can get in the way – again, which is totally indicative of life in general as well. In the race setting, besides early closures before everyone finished, what other things do the people at the back of the race have to deal with and endure?
Martinus Evans: Oh man, we’re going to need another two more hours. [laughs] I think the most impactful one is running out of water or running out of cups for water – so much so that I’ve had this happen to me too many times. Most races, I carry a 3-liter backpack CamelBak full of water. 3 liters is heavy, but I carry that because I’m always nervous of whether or not races are going to run out of water or run out of cups.
It’s one of the disappointing things to get there and think, “I paid my money, they’ve got me,” and they don’t have cups and they just have these big gallon jugs and you’re trying to pour water in your mouth and it goes all over your face and body. I think that’s one of the most impactful things other than races shutting down.
Or the other thing is how insensitive some of the crowds can be, where they’re like, “Keep at it, big man” or “Keep at it, tubby” or “Ooh, you’re gonna be out here forever.” It’s those things that replay in our head over and over again. “Ooh, you’re gonna be out here forever. Your fat ass is gonna take forever to get here. You’re gonna be here till next week.” It’s those things that keep replaying over and over in your head that, if you let it, becomes like an infection. It becomes a virus.
I’ve had a lot of things happen. I think the most important one – and I keep going back to it – is water. It bothers me so much to be running, and you can hear somebody tell the volunteers, “Pack it up.” They’ll just flip the table of all these waters and these cups that they had and just flip it. Like literally, flip the table over. It’s like, dang, can’t y’all take the water off, put it on the side, leave something for us? But instead you flip all the tables over and flip all the water on the ground? (A) How wasteful that is, but (B) how insensitive that is.
I think other experiences are with the SAG vehicle. Every race has either a group of people or this vehicle that picks up people, whether they’re injured or things of that sort. Sometimes the drivers can be very inconsiderate as well. I remember from my first marathon, I had this guy pretty much taunt me, like, “Hey big man, you need a ride? You’re gonna be out here forever. I’m just gonna leave you here,” and all these other things that can beat you down if you don’t know it’s coming.
Or for example, New York City Marathon. They have the police speakers. They’ll be pretty much like “The race is over. Get on the sidewalk or get on the bus,” and a lot of people don’t understand you can still go. You can still continue to run the race. But to be running and hear this loud, blaring thing of “The race is over. Move to the side or get on the bus” can be disheartening. I think I have a video for that. I think it was my first New York City Marathon. I might have that video on YouTube of how obnoxious it is. It’s very obnoxious. It’s literally like “The race is over. Move to the side or get on the bus.”
If you know anything about New York City Marathon, they stay open. The finish line stays open until the last person has finished the race. But it’s very contradictory when you have all of these buses and vans with blow horns telling you the race is over.
Lu Uhrich: Yeah, that would be discouraging to me, hearing someone in my ear, whether it’s on the loudspeakers or just somebody riding beside me, being like, “This is going to be forever. Just get in the car. You’re never going to finish.” You’re already sometimes telling yourself that in your head when you’re running long distance. You don’t need other people saying that.
Martinus Evans: Exactly. So I think even being mindful of that. Races have this whole gray area when it comes to start and stop times and when they officially stop. I think one of the things is having the order to do one of two things: either support all your runners from start to finish, or really shut down the race when the “course time” is over. Most races have a course limit, and I get it. You’ve got a 6-hour course limit from the last person who starts the race.
Even that is a hard thing to think about. The course limit is 6 hours from the last person that starts the race. Even that, where am I at in terms of people starting the race, where’s the person who’s the last person to start the race, and what time does their clock start? And then some races give this gray area, like “Oh, 6 hours, but we’re going to give you 6:45 or we’ll give you 7 hours.” That puts a lot of stress on people.
If you’re going to open it up for 7 hours, say it’s a 7-hour course limit versus being a 6-hour course limit. Or vice versa. If you say it’s a 6-hour course limit but at 5 hours and 30 minutes you’re flipping over tables and not providing water, say it’s a 5-hour and 30-minute course limit rather than it being a 6-hour course limit.
That’s one of the things about being impeccable with your word. Say what you’re going to do and do what you’re going to say, and I’ll figure out if it’s for me or not. But if you say one thing and you do another, it really leaves us up for a very upsetting moment. Because I pick races based off race limit. I pick races based off race time, other people’s experience. I even sometimes go check the previous race’s finish times and see, “All right, they said they have a 7-hour course limit, but this person finished in 10 hours. They’re on the books as official finisher for 10 hours. What happened? Were they in the last crowd? Did they get an early start? What did they do?”
I have to be pretty much an investigator to really think about these things. [laughs] I’m like, I’m going to run these races; I’m trying to minimize the bad experiences that I have, even though I know they’re going to come and I’m going to still be prepared for it anyway. But how can I use this historical data for my benefit to say, “This is my pace time, this is where I usually run, and historically, this is how far they let runners go.” It’s a lot.
Lu Uhrich: It is a lot, and that’s why I’m sure it’s so beneficial to have a group like yours, your Slow AF Runners Club, where people can all come together and share this information of what races were more friendly to the people in the back, what races were harsher, what things you need to look out for if you’re running in the New York City Marathon – like, hey, tip: you can keep running even if they tell you to get on the bus.
Those are the things that probably people don’t know unless there is – well, now you have an app, too, right? You have a group and an app that can help to inform and connect people so that you can all share this information together, because you’re looking out for each other. It doesn’t really sound like the race community at large is looking out for you.
Martinus Evans: No, they’re not. As much as most races – I would say it’s the 20% that affects everybody else. We’ve had bad experiences. I have a person that I interviewed on my podcast who got lost at her first race ever. She was running a half marathon and ended up running 18 miles because they picked up the mile markers and the little barricades or whatever, and she made a wrong turn. She ended up in a bad part of the neighborhood, and people tried to sell her things, tried to get her bus fare, all of these things. She ran 18 miles instead of 13.
That was a heartbreaking and defeating thing for that person, and it happens every day for most races. I just don’t understand why they can’t support the people that they want to support.
To be fair – here’s the thing – the elites are what brings the coverage to the race. But the people in the back of the pack, the people in the middle of the pack, paying for race entries by raising money for charity and things of that sort, that’s where the money comes in. Because if that was the case, they’d just have races where it’s just the elites out there.
Lu Uhrich: Right. Also, you’re in the back, and you’ve got this gig with Adidas now – I saw the video; loved it – and you’re going to get to run the Boston Marathon, whenever it happens. So it really isn’t just the people in the front. But I understand what you’re saying. Economically, I think they go where the money is. But humanity is everywhere.
Martinus Evans: Exactly.
00:53:15
Lu Uhrich: That’s the tough thing. You said something else about taunters or people on the sidelines, talking to you and saying, “This is going to take forever” and making comments about your body, and it made me think about this topic that I brought up in the beginning a little bit, which is this idea of a runner’s body. Do you come up against that at all in your experiences? Are people expecting “if you can run a marathon, your body must look like this”?
Martinus Evans: Absolutely. It’s one of the reasons why I don’t read the comments on most things that I post or most things that are posted about me, because if I did, literally my life work would be arguing with people in the comments that say, “If he ran all of these marathons, why is he still fat?”
Lu Uhrich: Because body diversity is a thing, people.
Martinus Evans: It happens so many times, and they’ll just invalidate you because of that. The way the internet works is that I’m just a figure. I’m not even a person anymore. I’m just a guy in an Adidas commercial. I’m not even Martinus Evans, a living, breathing human being anymore. I’m just this fat guy, and people are like, “Ugh, there goes Adidas, pandering to this whole fat movement” or “I can’t believe this guy is running all these races. I need to go look this up. He has to be lying. He’s not finishing these things” and all these other things that people have about how I look and what I look like. They’ll have these preconceived notions.
And trust me, I’ve had them too. When I first started running, one of the things I kept telling myself is that I’ve never seen a fat marathoner. Like, “Yeah, that fat marathoner is going to start running and he’s going to run a marathon, he’s probably going to lose some weight. By the third or fourth marathon, he’s not going to be fat anymore.” That was a connotation I had for myself.
It really took me these years and all of these life experiences and the car accidents and things of that sort to be like, no, I can do a lot of things in this body. I can run marathons. I can jump and do heel clicks, and most people can’t even do that. I can do things with my body that most people can’t. It’s hard for the internet, off of one 30-second video or a minute video or whatever, to realize that. Like, “Oh, this guy can really do it.”
Lu Uhrich: What do you recommend – and I want your advice here because we have a lot of clients who find themselves trying to heal their relationships with their bodies and food, so they’re eating more, they’re gaining weight, people with eating disorders or who are experiencing disordered eating. One of the things, if they’re runners, that’s really, really hard for them is this concept of “Then I’m going to lose my runner’s body, so I’ve got to continue to control” or “I’ve got to continue to overwork and underfeed myself because I want this runner’s body.”
What advice do you have? Because obviously you know, just like so many others, your co-host on your podcast and so many people that you’re running with and that are a part of your community, there is no such thing as a runner’s body.
Martinus Evans: A runner’s body is a fallacy that the diet industry created to make you feel like you need to be this way. It’s a hard thing. It’s really just having this conversation of like, “Yo, are you an elite athlete who practices in the mountains and runs?” It’s really about those genetics, right? What the world puts out there is this “runner’s body.” It’s simply if you run, you are a runner, and whatever body you have, that’s your runner’s body. Point blank, period.
That might even be oversimplification, but it’s really that simple. If you run, you’re a runner. The body that you’re in is your runner’s body, period. If you are in the back of the pack or if you are running these races, you’ll see so many people of different backgrounds, diversity, and things of that sort. You’ll really realize this whole runner’s body thing is truly something that they use as propaganda. [laughs]
The reason why I say that is because I’m in the back. My first race, I lined up as the last person, because it was like a community 5K. I lined up behind the moms with strollers with dogs tied to them because I thought a mom with a double stroller with a dog tied to it was going to run faster than me, and I’d been training for a 5K for 10 weeks.
Then it really hit me, when that gun goes off and you’re passing people and you see all the different people that you’re passing, you see, “Oh, I can do this. It’s really about what I can do physically.”
Lu Uhrich: Do you get a lot this idea of like, “Oh, good for you, you’re running! You’re going to lose some weight”? Do you get a lot of people patting you on the back for motivations you don’t even have?
Martinus Evans: Absolutely. All the time. Like, “Oh, you’re running? Good for you.” It’s to the point now where it’s noise because it happens so much. I initially said, “Oh yeah, thank you,” and I’d have the conversation. But it’s really like “Oh, good for you, you’re trying to lose weight.” Or the other thing is like, “Oh, this is your first marathon?” I’ll be like, “No, this is my fifth one this year.” “What?” I’m like, “Yeah, it’s my fifth.”
Lu Uhrich: So still, those preconceived ideas of if you’re out there running in a larger body, it must be unto getting a smaller one or because this is your first one. But really, that’s not the case. There’s all different types of bodies and physical abilities out there, moving for the sake of moving.
Martinus Evans: Exactly. That’s the thing that I’m trying to practice. This whole notion of being physically active. We already know by the science, the data, that being physically active is one of the best things that you can do for your body. Even if you don’t lose weight, period, moving is one of those things that can help with your depression, anxiety, it helps with your blood, it helps with blood pressure, cholesterol – all of those things. Moving, getting your body up to a certain temperature, when you start to sweat like dust, your body good.
A lot of people will be like, “You’re just promoting obesity.” It’s like, you’re wrong. I’m trying to promote physical activity here – the fact that regardless of what you weigh, what size you are, you need to be moving, period. Move your body. That’s what I’m promoting.
Lu Uhrich: I love that. You’re not promoting a specific body type; you’re promoting that all bodies can move in ways that they find joyful or exciting or interesting, and that’s the point. That’s the whole idea of health-enhancing behaviors have nothing to do with what happens to our weight but have to do with what it does to our whole person in terms of health, like you shared.
Martinus Evans: Right.
01:00:50
Lu Uhrich: Personally, what are some barriers you see with people when they want to start running? We’ve talked about the barriers that happen in races and we’ve talked about all of that, but there’s these personal barriers too. You may have encountered them. I mean, you had some revenge behind you when you started running. But I think it’s hard for people to go, “I’ve never run; this is really scary.” What sort of barriers or fears are there that are stopping people form taking that first lap around the block?
Martinus Evans: I think the number one barrier is the social support they have at either home or in their regular circle. A lot of people that I run into are like, “I’m glad I found you because I can show my wife or my husband or my partner and say, ‘See? He’s 300 pounds and running. He’s running. I can do it, too.’”
A lot of people, when they think about running, are starting and their family members put those preconceived notions like, “Don’t you need to lose weight first? I heard running is bad for your knees” and all these other things, like, “You might hurt yourself if you start running,” versus flipping that and being like, “Give it a shot. Try it out.” So I would say that’s the biggest one, or the starters that people have, those preconceived notions that their inner circle have, that the people they know, like, and trust – or think they know, like, and trust – have put in their head that running is bad for them and they can’t do it until they lose 30 or 40 pounds first.
The other thing that they run into is that they’ve had some trauma around physical activity and they’re working through that. Like, “Last time I ran, it was in high school” – I don’t know if you remember the Presidential Physical Activity Test where you had to run a mile, stretch, and all that stuff.
Lu Uhrich: I was born in the ’80s, so I remember that, yeah.
Martinus Evans: [laughs] So people would experience that and be like, “I failed miserably during this thing, and I just haven’t been the same since.” So talking to them in a way of, “Yo, you can do this. What you’re doing is a great thing,” and just providing that positive reinforcement, because they have so many negative reinforcements around physical activity.
A lot of people think, “You’re moving, you’re being physically active; you must be trying to lose weight.” And then when they don’t see that scale move, they get it in their head like “What is all this for? I’m breathing hard, I’m uncomfortable, I’m in spandex, and I’m doing all of this and the scale is not moving.” To even have that conversation with them and say, “Hey, even though the scale is not moving, you’re still doing your body good. Don’t let people think that if you’re smaller, you’re healthier.”
You don’t know what they’ve got going on. You don’t know if they’re a smoker, you don’t know if they’ve got high cholesterol. There’s a lot of things that are silent killers that a lot of people just don’t realize. They see a fat person or a larger person and think, “They’ve got all these things.”
Lu Uhrich: Oh yeah, totally.
Martinus Evans: So I would say those are the top three. Their family and friends telling them they can’t do it because they can’t lose weight, the previous trauma they might have, or the thing of “I’m active, I’m trying to lose weight, and I’m not losing weight, so why should I?”
And I think the last one is the whole mental thing of what they read, what they see about running, and them thinking, “Oh, I’m not a real runner because I run intervals.” This is one of the biggest things that I have in my community. It’s like, “But I have to stop. I run for a minute and then I stop, and then I walk for 30 seconds, and then I run again, but I don’t feel like I’m a runner anymore. I’m not a runner.” It’s like, “But you ran for a minute. People do that.” “But when I see Shalane Flannigan or Meb do it, they run straight through. I want to be like them because they’re real runners.” It’s like, “No, you don’t get it. You’re out here with them. You’re on the same course as them. That makes you a runner too.”
Lu Uhrich: A lot of what I hear you saying is about shifting perspectives and shifting even maybe the motivators behind it. That’s good advice.
Martinus Evans: Thank you.
01:05:30
Lu Uhrich: I’d love to talk about male body image now. It’s something that I think you have a unique perspective on because you are a man, you are a Black man, and you are a fat Black man, so you have a lot of these different experiences to speak on.
I know in your Huff Post article – and I might just read this part of it because I loved it so much – you shared: “Traditional American masculinity does not permit men to admit their physiques are less than ideal. I wondered what would happen if men felt safe enough to be open about their insecurities without fear of violating the unspoken rules of masculinity. Would we be better at accepting our body’s flaws, and by doing so, could we get closer to acknowledging many ways to be healthy?”
I just love that whole paragraph there, and it leads to a lot of questions, like what are the unspoken rules of masculinity, and what are the flaws and experiences maybe that you’ve come up against personally that you could speak to this?
Martinus Evans: Oh man, when you read it, it just made me feel so poetic. [laughs]
Lu Uhrich: You are so poetic. You wrote that.
Martinus Evans: Context: I’m a Black man who grew up in Detroit, Michigan, which is a very urban area. Everything about that – growing up in Detroit, being in an urban setting, listening to hip-hop, which is already an oversexualized, over-masculine form of music – when you have all of those influences, you feel like you have to be extra hard, super hard, like no fear, no crying, all this stuff.
I remember even growing up, say I stubbed my toe, and my mom would be like, “Don’t cry. Boys don’t cry.” It’s those types of things that you grow up hearing over and over again, like “Boy’s don’t cry. You’re soft,” or crying and a family member would be like, “Oh, that boy’s soft, that boy’s spoiled” and all these other things. Even talking as of lately, being soft was by far the worst thing that you can be growing up in Detroit. You did not want to be soft. If somebody characterized you as soft, you might as well just be dead.
I had those things happen. When I found out I had these man boobs and every other boy didn’t have it, it was one of those things that would take off to like “Martinus is soft.” When you think of the scale of softness, when you have the sliders, that’s one thing that adds softness to the slider. Everything about being a man is not to be soft, to be masculine, and you want to do everything possible to not be that way. Like, “You’ve got man boobs, so what are you going to do to balance that out?” So I’ve got to fight more or I’ve got to do other high-risk things to prove to the world or my friend group or people in that area, “I might have man boobs, but that boy ain’t soft.”
I think that’s what it really comes down to. Everything that we do, or everything that’s masculine, is to not be soft or to be feminine. If you even think about the commercials that you see now – I just saw one that was like, “Eat like a man. Real men eat meat” and all these other things. There’s a lot of these things that they do to – I won’t say propaganda, but it’s all these things that they do to promote these things of what masculinity is.
I think it’s also hard because I didn’t grow up with a father in my household for most of my life, so male figures or the people that you learn how to be a man from, most boys, that first person is your father. With me not having that, it’s gangs, it’s drug dealers, it’s everybody else, and it’s the world around me who are teaching me these things or are these things that I’m learning from. I don’t know if I answered your question. [laughs]
Lu Uhrich: Actually, you did great. I was really trying to lean into what are some of those rules of masculinity, and the one that you said over and over again was this idea of “don’t be soft,” whether it’s in how you look or the way your body is shaped, or whether it’s in the way that you’re behaving or showing emotions (or not showing emotions) – this idea of not being soft. And then I wanted to know your personal experience, which you shared in there as well.
01:10:15
I’m wondering, when did this shift happen? Because there came a time, and I would love for you to talk to the listeners about it, where you fully owned your man boobs, and you did it in a super cool way. If you want to share that with the audience – because then I want to ask, what shifted for you and how did you allow yourself to be soft and to be seen? What happened?
Martinus Evans: One of the things that I did is I was like, “Forget it. I need to do this. I am the person that I am, I have the body that I have, and I need to celebrate this regardless. I’ve run these marathons. I just need to do it.”
It first started off as I did a nude photoshoot with this queer photograph. Her name is Shoog, and she specializes in fat art and fat photography. Her social media handle is @shooglet. If you look at Shoog’s stuff, you’ll see all of these images and this art – it’s beautiful – of all of these fat bodies and how Shoog takes these pictures and really captures the beauty of a fat body.
Shoog happened to be in my area, so I was like, “I’m going to do this.” I remember talking to my wife and being like, “Hey, I’m about to do a nude photoshoot.” [laughs]
Lu Uhrich: She’s like, “Yes!”
Martinus Evans: [laughs] At first she was a little skeptical. “Okay, so what are you going to do with these nude pictures? Are you doing porn?” It’s like, “No, no.” I showed her Shoog’s photos and she’s like, “Oh, okay.”
I remember doing this nude photoshoot and just feeling so liberated and really feeling powerful to be like, “I’m out here, I’m going to let this photographer put flowers under my man boobs, and we’re going to take pictures, which is going to be a great thing.” And it was a great thing.
That then led me to work with other artists who also specialize in body positivity. I worked with Trina Merry, and she does a lot of camouflage painting where she literally paints a person into the background and the forefront and things of that sort. Having this conversation with her and also getting body painted in the nude, in a forest by a waterfall, and random people just come by and talk to a naked Black man being painted – [laughs] It’s one of those experiences that you’ll never forget. But it’s those types of experiences that also made me feel like I’m creating art. I’m an artist, I’m creating art. I feel powerful, and my body is beautiful. Those are the things that I did.
Lu Uhrich: Do you feel like making the decision to have those photoshoots and show up in your body and let it be what it was, was what shifted your view of self and the way that you’ve allowed yourself to be soft and show up in the world? Or was that already happening before you took the step of the photography?
Martinus Evans: It was an inkling. I first started off with me taking pictures of myself topless, and maybe I’d post a couple on social media and talk about how my man boobs affected me. But I think doing the first nude photoshoot was like, “All right, I’m all-in. I’m going to be in to the utmost ability.” There was some toe-dipping and some dabbling, but you can still toe the line of like “I don’t know.” But once I did the nude photoshoot, I was like, “Oh yeah, I’m in. This is it. There’s no going back.”
Lu Uhrich: I think photography is a really beautiful way to practice body acceptance. Like you said – I love that you offered this – you were taking pictures of yourself. Whether you’re taking a selfie or you’re seeing what a photographer has captured in their lens of you, it allows you to step back from being in your body and actually step away from it and look at it and go, “That’s me, and this is how I’m taking up space,” and practice that acceptance of it. I think it’s really hard to do when we’re in our bodies and in our heads, living our lives. So I love that you used photography as a tool to do that.
I’m wondering, what’s next? How are you continuing to practice body acceptance? You mentioned somewhere else this idea of escaping toxic masculinity. I’m assuming that’s something that’s still important to you, and I guess I’m just wondering, what does that look like in your life now?
Martinus Evans: Before I get there, one of the things I also wanted to add was during this whole photoshoot with me talking to Shoog, so many things that we talked about, it’s like, “I want to show the softness of you as well as still having this masculine side.”
Even though I took it, I felt good, some of my family members and friends still crack jokes on me. I remember there was this group chat thread going around of my friends sharing it through them, like, “Look at Martinus, big ass, naked on the tree. What the hell is he doing?” and everybody’s laughing. Then I’m like, “Yo, all y’all got insecurities too, so what is this?” That’s how masculinity shows up, too. When you have insecurities, you try to laugh about it and joke about it so your insecurities don’t show.
Moving forward, how do I promote this non-toxic masculinity? It’s still doing the same things that I do now. Have these podcasts, go up to people, talk to people. I’m also working on something – I don’t know if I can talk about it yet, but I’m working on a project that will also dig deeper and further into that as well.
But one of the things I do is just get groups of men together and have these conversations with them about their insecurities, masculinity, what they think manhood is, and things of that sort.
Lu Uhrich: I think that’s great, and it’s such a powerful force because it’s not something culturally – even gatherings of men talking about their feelings, and what’s working for them and what isn’t, isn’t something that’s applauded, really. It’s overlooked. So the fact that you’re doing it and you’re showing up in that way is really cool, and I’m excited to find out whatever the project is when you’re able to announce it. We’ll be looking. I’ll keep a lookout on your socials and see when you can share that. For all the listeners, we’ll try to link to some of these articles and photos that you’ve talked about.
How do you feel about your body right now? If someone asked you to introduce them to your body and share a bit about your body, what would you say?
Martinus Evans: Oh my God, I think you asked the first question that has ever stumped me. [laughs]
Lu Uhrich: I’m sorry, but not. [laughs]
Martinus Evans: I would say look at this body. It’s a 300+ pound body who has ran tons of marathons, who is strong, who is really on the forefront of being a man and really showing the wide variety of masculinity, especially on social media.
The reason I say this – on social media, you see a lot of gay men being able to practice this, with makeup artists and things of that sort, and they still can practice their things and be okay. As a straight man, it almost feels like sometimes you really can’t even dig deep into your feminine side – or not even the feminine side, but your less masculine side – because that’s another thing of not wanting to be characterized as being gay.
When I did these photoshoots and things of that sort, I was hit on by a lot of gay men, and it was interesting and funny because I was telling my wife and she’s like, “You made it, then. If the gay men are hitting on you, you’re hotness.” But even now, having that battle within myself like, did I do the right thing? But even with that happening, I still have to be confident in myself like, you know what? I did it. I feel proud about the things that I’m doing, but now, how do I move in this life after the nude photoshoots?
Lu Uhrich: I think it’s this idea that anything that goes outside of the gender norms or anything that is outside of even the sexuality norms as we’ve seen them culturally at large – it’s almost like this invisibility. Like it doesn’t count on its own, it can’t stand alone. It has to conform with one of these norms that we’ve already established or that are maybe more prominent than others.
But it doesn’t mean that it’s still not who you are. You get to be a straight man who also is embracing both the harder and the softer sides of who you are emotionally and physically, and you get to do that and then you get to show up in any way you want. But there’s not really space for you to do that yet, so you’re one of the forerunners making this space.
Martinus Evans: Right.
01:19:40
Lu Uhrich: Yeah, I get that. Do you feel invisible in other ways? Do you feel acknowledged as an athlete? Do you feel acknowledged in general as a man and a community leader at this point, or are you still coming up against some of those other norms and cultural ideals?
Martinus Evans: Sometimes I do feel invisible. I think with this new commercialization of body positivity and different brands trying to capitalize on that, I feel like plus size men are sometimes ignored.
What I mean by that is – let’s use Target, for example. There was this whole revolution with plus size women saying, “Target, we want clothes to fit us” and Target being like, “Okay, we agree. Let’s do it.” If you look at all the stores in Target, there’s at least one plus size mannequin. Even if it’s a small Target, they still have a small section for plus size women with their plus size mannequin and things of that sort. Even the panels and the pictures on the wall, you’ll still see at least one plus size model.
You go over to the men’s section and you still see the typical mannequins, ripped, buff – and sometimes, even though Target offers plus size men’s clothes, most of that stuff can only be found online. So even the disparity of like I want to go to Target and buy toilet paper and see a nice shirt and buy it for myself, but instead, I see that nice shirt and I ask the associate, “Hey, you got this in my size?” and they’re like, “Oh, no, you’ve got to buy plus size men’s stuff online.” How that makes me feel as a consumer – it shouldn’t be a “but,” like y’all got plus size women’s stuff but y’all don’t have men’s plus size stuff. It should be y’all have plus size women’s stuff and you have plus size men’s stuff.
I just feel like some of the places and some of these brands don’t necessarily see it like that. I feel like they’re pandering to plus size women, and that’s cool – more clothes and options for them, because women have been through a lot, especially with being oversexualized. We could go through all the list and litany of oppressions women have had, especially when it comes to clothing. I get it. More clothes to them, great. I’m with it.
And we need clothes too. [laughs] It’s no “but.” Plus size women need clothes and plus size men need clothes. I feel like sometimes brands don’t necessarily see it that way.
I remember when the Nike mannequin came out and that was a whole thing, where “plus size women shouldn’t be working out” and things of that sort. I was celebrating, like, great, plus size mannequin with Nike clothes on. Great. Where’s the plus size men’s stuff?
It’s interesting with all these sports brands that most of them sponsor athletic teams – football, basketball, things of that sort – and they have it for the athletic side, but they don’t have it for the leisure side. Or you can only find it for that specialty thing whenever a particular sport is in season. Basketball was in season, so I might be able to find some basketball shorts, but guess what? I can never find any running shorts in my size. So even that. And who wants to run marathons in extra long basketball shorts? It just doesn’t make sense.
So I think there’s also that disparity as well, sport to sport. They may have shorts for basketball in a 3X, but they don’t have running shorts, shorter shorts with the brief already in there for men at my size.
Lu Uhrich: I should’ve known better – and I’ll say my clientele is mainly women and those who identify as women, so I’m always thinking women in larger bodies need more access to clothes, all of this stuff, but you’re exactly right; you do too.
Not to mention this idea – as you were talking, I couldn’t help but think how many people scrutinize individuals in larger bodies and go, “Just go on a run or go work out or hit the gym!” and yet we don’t even provide clothing for people to be able to comfortably do that in. You, somebody who’s running marathons and still struggling to find running shorts in your size, just seems ridiculous because it’s literally what you do regularly.
Martinus Evans: Exactly. I think that’s why I’m grateful to have partnered with Adidas, with their latest campaign, but to also have the ear of the board and other decision-makers to say the same thing that I just said: I love what y’all are doing with plus size women, but plus size men need some attention as well.
01:24:55
Lu Uhrich: Thanks for sharing that. We’re wrapping up. We’re getting close to the end of our interview time, and I want to ask you one more question before we get into more of the “how can people find you and how can they stay in touch with you?” details.
I guess that question would be, in thinking about you and your story and following you now for months and knowing who you are – or at least, what you share publicly and online, and having our conversation today – you’re somebody who really, I can tell, makes it his mission to be your authentic self and own your truth, run your truth, live your truth as often as you can. I know this is going to be maybe another trick question, but how would you advise people who are listening to start doing that for themselves, too? Do you have any tools or tips or just sentiments to say “Hey, show up, be you, take up space”?
Martinus Evans: Therapy. [laughs]
Lu Uhrich: Listen, it’s real. Therapists are great.
Martinus Evans: Therapists are great. Probably the greatest thing to ever happen to my life.
I would say showing up and being yourself is by far one of the hardest things that you can do, but also one of the greatest political movements that you can make for your own self. It’s really seeing who you are, what you believe in, and looking deep and hard to figure out, “Why do I do this? Why do I believe it this way?” Or “This is my general preconceived notion; where did that come from?” to really get a grasp of who you are, what you think you are, and where you want to be.
One of these practices that I learned from my therapist – shout out to her – is this thing of like, what do you value in life versus the things you want to do? Make a list of things that you value. Is it being a good father, being a good mother, being a great steward of your time, being a good steward of your money, being physically active in spite of whatever your weight is? Make that list and use that as your compass for your movements in life. Use your values as a compass for your actions in life.
I think that’s one of the biggest. It’s the greatest thing that you can do, but it’s also hard because there’s a lot of things in life that you’re like, “I just want to move this way,” but it’s not in line with your compass. It’s not in line with your values. That’s where real growth happens, where you can understand, “I want to do this. It does not align with my values. What’s going on? Why do I still want to do this thing anyway, even though I know it does not align with my values?”
I would say that’s probably the simplest and hardest thing that you can do.
Lu Uhrich: Yeah. Anyone who’s my client who’s listening is going to probably be rolling their eyes a little bit at me because I share something similar all the time, which is this idea of – you said it beautifully; it’s like we talked about this beforehand, but we didn’t – the idea of knowing who you are and who you want to be and making those decisions, and you brought in the values as well.
But I always tell people, just ask yourself – with every decision, you have the opportunity to say, “Does this get me closer or further from the direction that I want to go, from who I want to be in this life?” Being able to ask that question “Is this getting me closer or further?” is like that compass that you shared about.
So yeah, great advice. Couldn’t agree more, and I think it’s a really helpful, useful tool for people whether they’re thinking about being runners or showing up more as who they are, a male who’s listening saying, “I want to show up more in all of me, not just the masculine sides of me or the sides that are more socially acceptable,” people in larger bodies embracing themselves and what they want to do and accomplish in the world.
I’ve so appreciated everything you’ve shared, Martinus, and so grateful that you could be here speaking with me and our Real Health Radio listeners. Would you let us know where people can find you? If they want more Martinus in their lives, where can they go?
Martinus Evans: All things 300 Pounds and Running. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @300poundsandrunning. Also 300poundsandrunning.com. For more information for the Slow AF Run Club, you can go to slowafrunclub.com as well as @runslowAF on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Lu Uhrich: Perfect. You have an app to download, and you’ve got a podcast.
Martinus Evans: 300 Pounds and Running Podcast Network. It’s actually two podcasts on there. You’ve got the 300 Pounds and Running podcast where I interview other runners, and then you also have The Long Run with Martinus & Latoya where it’s my good friend Latoya, and we just talk about all the things that get us about running, or just life and running. Just two friends having great conversations about running. As well as the Slow AF Run Club app – you can find that on iOS and Android at the Slow AF Run Club app.
Lu Uhrich: Thank you so much. All of those links we’ll include in our show notes so the listeners can get in touch with you and keep learning more, and even participate in your community and run club, listen to your podcast. I appreciate you, Martinus. I’m so grateful that you’re here. Thank you for being on Real Health Radio today.
Martinus Evans: No problem. Take care.
01:30:25
Lu Uhrich: That’s it for this week’s episode. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Now, before I say goodbye, as we’ve been doing at the end of every episode, I want to leave you with a recommendation.
You may remember that I mentioned during the intro that I’m currently recording during the pandemic, months into shelter in place orders in my hometown, and as you might be experiencing yourself, I am feeling all the feels. Something that tends to soothe me when I’m deep in my emotions is writing – both my own and also the words of others. So today, my recommendation is a book of poetry.
It’s called All Along You Were Blooming: Thoughts for Boundless Living by the incredible Morgan Harper Nichols. She shares words for the heart, for the mind, for the body, and for the soul in this book, which I have sitting right in front of me now, and I thought I would read for you one of my favorite passages. (It’s short, don’t worry.)
“Being yourself does not mean you have yourself all figured out. It just means you’re allowed to show up without the expectation of who someone else said you should be.”
Again, those are words from Morgan Harper Nichols. Lucky for you, if you can’t get your hands on the book or you’d just rather not but you’re still interested in what she might have to say, you can check out @MorganHarperNichols on Instagram, where she shares her words and her art regularly.
As I tend to say about most things, not every word of hers will resonate with you, not every poem, so when it comes to her work and just about anything else in life, take what you connect with and leave the rest. Then meet us back here next week for another great episode of Real Health Radio.
Until then, you can find us at seven-health.com, and the show notes to this specific episode can be found at seven-health.com/199. Finally, as I mentioned at the start of the episode, Seven Health is here for you and continuing to take on new clients, so if you’re interested in working together to heal your relationship with movement or with food, body, and self, or if you simply want to find out more, head over to seven-health.com/help and apply for a free initial chat with us there. That’s seven-health.com/help.
Thanks so much for joining this week. Have some feedback you’d like to share? Leave a note in the comment section below!
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