Meet Martinus Evans, the 300-pound marathon runner leading the 'slow AF' club

About a decade ago, Martinus Evans went to see his doctor, and was given an ultimatum.

"I'm sitting there and my doctor is like, 'Mr. Evans, you're fat. You need to lose weight or die,'" he told The Current's Matt Galloway. 

Evans was there because of hip pain, but said the doctor seemed to ignore that problem to focus on his weight (he was approximately 360 pounds at the time). As the physician recommended buying trainers and taking up slow walking at an athletics track, Evans became frustrated. 

"I said, 'Screw that, screw you. I'm going to run a marathon,'" he recalled.

"And he laughed at me, told me that was the most dumbest thing he has heard in all his years of practising medicine."

The doctor warned Evans that a marathon might actually kill him, but he did go on to run one — in fact in the years that followed he ran eight marathons. 

He charted that journey on a popular Instagram account, @300poundsandrunning, and founded the Slow AF Run Club, an online community for others who wanted to join him, especially if they've felt their size or speed excluded from running in the past.

Now 36, he lives in New York and is a certified running coach, and has just published a book: Slow AF Run Club: The Ultimate Guide for Anyone Who Wants to Run.

A slang term, the suffix "AF" is often used as a superlative that means "as f--k," but Evans said it's open for interpretation in his club.

"It can mean Slow and Fat Run Club. It can mean Slow and Fabulous. I think AF is for anybody to decide what they want it to mean," he said.

Evans's path to a marathon wasn't an easy one, particularly as he didn't initially know how long a marathon was. 

"I was saying to my friends, 'Yo, I'm gonna do this 5K marathon,'" he told Galloway.

"And they