It is 10am on a soggy Sunday and I am groping for excuses to stay at home, cocooned from the cold. Eventually, I put on my trainers and rainproof jacket and head out.
In Battersea Park, south-west London, I find the Runners High Run Club, a new group of slow runners I’ve arranged to meet, who do a monthly 5km together. I approach two young women — both called Rachel, and both here because they are keen to find peers who will not sneer at them for their lack of speed but rather spur them on.
As someone who has only got into a jogging habit since the pandemic, I am keenly aware of my lack of speed. Longtime runners breeze past me (though I did beat a woman who was jogging while taking clippings with a pair of secateurs). I feel embarrassed talking to athletic friends and colleagues who jostle for position on the Strava app and strive for personal bests in marathons.
Ultimately, running makes me feel alive. The solitude clears my mind, and the longer I run, the more I space out. But after doing a half-marathon last year — slowly — I felt a bit aimless, with no urgent desire to commit to a full marathon. This was compounded when I sprained my ankle, tripping over on my way to buy bagels (tragically, I was dispatched to hospital before I made it to the shop). In search of motivation, I found a small community on social media of self-styled slow runners.
Martinus Evans, aka @300poundsandrunning on Instagram and author of the Slow AF Run Club book, advocates “sexy pace”. After a doctor told him to “lose weight, or you are going to die”, he decided to train for a marathon. On his first day, he came off the treadmill. “I felt hellacious,” he says. “It was not enjoyable.”
Nonetheless, he went on to run eight marathons, and has built a virtual community of slow runners. Evans wants anybody and everybody to tap into their running potential, “whatever pace they are”. Typically, he says, the message “is that you have to be fast. And if you’re not fast, you’re not a runner.”
It is this desire for inclusiveness that drove Celina Stephenson to create the Runners High run group in Battersea, despite never taking part in a running club before. The 26-year-old, who works for her family’s wine business, says she was “scared” of judgment and of holding everyone back. In July, she decided on a whim to sign up for the London Marathon and posted videos of her progress on social media as a form of accountability: “I was sick of giving up on myself.”
Stephenson is surprised to have gained more than 56,000 Instagram followers. “There are a lot of people who really struggle with [running]. They are seeing me break through the wall and get there.” Quite a few asked if they could run with her. In October, she posted an open invitation and about 50 people turned up. And thus the Runners High Run Club was born.
I approach another Insta slow runner and group organiser, Emily Shane (76,000 followers), who is dressed in a black anorak and headband for Sunday’s run. “I didn’t think I would find a community,” she says of the group. “I didn’t feel like [running] was a very inclusive space.”
Sometimes strangers criticise Shane online. “I don’t think they really understand that a lot of people don’t do it to be quick. If I was trying to run as fast as I could, I would have given up months ago because it’s just not me.”
It is a struggle to ditch comparisons, even for a plodder like me. As the group begins jogging, vanity pushes me to the front with a young woman who looks to be in her twenties or early thirties, and who started to train for the marathon as a way to carve out some time for herself, away from her infant. Chatting at a companionable pace is extremely pleasant, and the atmosphere of the group run overall is convivial and inclusive. The last to finish the 5k, in 52 minutes, is a woman who had never run before — but combined it with walking and chatting.
Chris Bennett, head coach of Nike Running Global, thinks this is the right approach. “The simple truth is that too many runners, especially new runners, run too fast when they should be running easy,” he says. “Then the run becomes too hard and they end too early and feel like they are not enough.” This explains “why so many people believe they hate running. It’s not running they hate. They hate running the wrong way.”
There are virtues in slowing down, even for the speediest runners. David Roche, a Colorado-based running coach, says that easy running is key to improvement, and should encompass at least 80 per cent of training for most athletes. “Training below aerobic threshold, which is slower for most athletes, enhances mitochondrial function and capillarisation of muscle fibres, which allows the body to process more oxygen at faster paces later.” Or in simpler terms: “Every really fast run is made possible by adaptations that happen on very easy runs.” Often, he runs a mile pace two to four minutes slower than his marathon speed.
According to the running app Strava, the median running pace in the UK is 5.49 min/km, while 25 per cent of runners do 6.39 min/km or slower. Looking at last autumn’s marathons, Strava found that doing training runs slower than race pace helped people reach their goals — of those whose “easy” runs were about 30 per cent slower than goal pace, 27 per cent finished at or very close to their goal time. The success rate declined 31 per cent for those who were 10 per cent slower than goal pace.
The London Marathon organisers are keen to broaden the appeal of running. In 2020 they introduced a “Back of the Pack” initiative to provide support to the stragglers, including a group of guides who do the entire route at an eight-hour pace. In total, almost 49,000 runners took part last year, up from 34,000 a decade ago. The average finish time was four hours, 26 minutes, 58 seconds.
Stephenson is trying to ignore those times. “I want to run the whole marathon. I don’t care how long it takes me. Right now, the goal is to get it done.”
As for me, I’m keen to enjoy the journey this year, rather than only the destination.
Emma Jacobs is an FT features writer
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