One Man’s Mission to Make Running Everyone’s Sport

But after making his high school’s football team, he began to develop confidence in his physical abilities. He attended Lane College in Tennessee on a football scholarship, before transferring to Central Michigan University, where he majored in exercise science. “I was like, maybe I’ll finally learn how to work out and lose this weight,” he said. “And then I can finally be accepted.”

In 2012, Mr. Evans and his then girlfriend (now wife) moved to Connecticut, where she had gotten into graduate school. He took a job selling suits at Men’s Wearhouse while he figured out his next move. The job, which required him to dress men of all ages and body types, would provide an unlikely path to becoming a fitness influencer.

After months on the storeroom floor wearing stiff dress shoes, he began to feel an ache in his hip. The pain brought him to an orthopedic surgeon, who, he writes in his book, took one look at him and told him: “Mr. Evans, you’re fat. You have two options: Lose weight or die.”

Mr. Evans remembered holding back tears while, “with a half-cocked smile,” defiantly telling the doctor, “I’m going to run a marathon.” He said the doctor laughed and told him running a marathon would also kill him.

He left the appointment angry and still in pain (another physician later diagnosed him with hip bursitis) and drove directly to a running store to buy a pair of trainers, determined to prove the doctor wrong. For extra motivation, Mr. Evans started a blog he called 300 Pounds and Running, where he began to chart both his running progress and weight loss. After a few months, he was surprised to discover strangers were reading and cheering him on.

He found that he enjoyed running, despite the passers-by who would occasionally hurl insults at him. More than once, Mr. Evans said he has also been stopped and questioned by police while jogging. When he felt defeated, he’d glance at a tattoo on his right wrist that reads “no struggle, no progress.”