Slow AF Run Club

May 1, 2023
Evans, whose Slow AF Run Club blog offers tips for “slow and beginner runners,” debuts with an empathetic guide on how “nontraditional runners” (those “in larger bodies,” with disabilities, or in their later years) can take up the sport. He recounts becoming a runner in 2012 to spite his physician, who told Evans that his interest in running a marathon was the “stupidest thing he had ever heard in all his years of practicing medicine,” and shares how readers with a variety of body types and abilities can get started. Explaining the basics, he covers proper form (back straight, chest out) and breathing technique, advising that runners should breathe from their diaphragm, not their chest. To maximize one’s energy, Evans recommends consuming lots of carbs, which power the “body’s cells, tissues, and organs,” as well as protein, which “builds and repairs your muscles.” Evans brims with positivity, encouraging readers to recite such affirmations as “no struggle, no progress” and to nix negative self-talk. The advice aimed at slower runners will appeal to those who enjoy the activity but don’t aspire to run competitively (“It’s all about the process over the results,” he writes on dealing with the disappointment of not finishing a race). Practical and compassionate in equal measure, this will get readers moving.