There's a question a lot of slow runners ask themselves, usually quietly: am I even a real runner? You finish at the back. You take walk breaks. Your times wouldn't impress anyone. So you wonder whether you've earned the word.
You have. You can be a serious runner and be slow, and the two have far less to do with each other than running culture pretends.
Pace is the wrong measure
Somewhere along the way, "serious" got tangled up with "fast." But think about what the word actually means. Serious is the early alarm and the long run done anyway. It's the consistency across months and years. It's the distance covered, the training respected, the showing-up in the cold and the dark. None of that is measured in minutes per kilometre.
A runner who trains carefully, fuels well, looks after their body, and finishes a marathon in six hours has done something serious — by any honest definition of the word. The clock simply isn't the part that makes it so.
Slow isn't a stage you're trying to leave
Here's a freeing idea: being a slow runner doesn't have to be a phase on the way to becoming a fast one. Plenty of people run for decades and never chase a personal best, and they are no less runners for it. They run because they like being out there, because it keeps them well, because finishing the distance is its own reward. "Getting faster" is one goal among many, and it's perfectly fine for it not to be yours.
When you stop treating your pace as a problem to fix, something changes. The comparison falls away. You're not behind anyone — you're just running your own race, which is the only one that was ever yours to run.
The back of the pack is full of the real thing
If you want to see serious runners, look at the back of the field late in a long race. The people still out there at hour six, walk-running through the quiet stretches, are working harder for longer than most of the runners who finished and went home. They've been on their feet for an entire morning. That's not a lesser version of the sport. In some ways it's the truest version of it — running stripped of the speed, leaving only the distance and the will to cover it.
If that's the run you're training for, our 6–7 hour training approach is built around it.
You don't need permission
Nobody hands out a certificate that says you count. You decide it, by lacing up and going. If you run — slowly, with walk breaks, finishing last sometimes — you're a runner. Full stop. No asterisk, no qualifier, no apology owed to anyone.
So drop the question. You're not trying to become a real runner someday. You already are one, every time you go out the door.
If that's the kind of running you're here for — serious, slow, and completely without apology — join the list below. We write for exactly this. For the full picture of the slow marathon, see the pillar guide.
Never first. Never fast. Never quit.
Made in New Zealand.