Lifestyle Health Runner Body Shamed During New York City Marathon Says She Now Feels 'Powerful' and 'Phenomenal' Latoya Shauntay Snell wrote about a man who heckled her for her weight during the New York City Marathon By Julie Mazziotta Julie Mazziotta Twitter Julie Mazziotta is the Sports Editor at PEOPLE, covering everything from the NFL to tennis to Simone Biles and Tom Brady. She was previously an Associate Editor for the Health vertical for six years, and prior to joining PEOPLE worked at Health Magazine. When not covering professional athletes, Julie spends her time as a (very) amateur athlete, training for marathons, long bike trips and hikes. People Editorial Guidelines Published on December 1, 2017 01:02 PM Share Tweet Pin Email Photo: Courtesy Latoya Shauntay Snell Ultramarathoner Latoya Shauntay Snell was fiercely pushing her way through the last four miles of the New York City Marathon, looking forward to finishing her eighth marathon in four years, when a man started heckling her for being a curvy runner. Snell’s intense focus and joy was suddenly gone after a “tall, balding white man felt it appropriate to shout, ‘It’s gonna take your fat ass forever, huh?’ ” the fitness and food blogger writes in an essay for The Root. “Shocked and angry, I stopped and retorted expletives and insults,” Snell says. “Two other female runners witnessed our confrontation and told me he wasn’t worth it. They were right, of course, but the damage was already done. By that point, I’d lost minutes and much-needed energy to a man who took pride in poking fun at my size.” Snell writes that there was so much the man didn’t know when he made such a snide comment; for example, running was her way of getting through miscarrying twins in August, having emergency endometriosis surgery and dealing with racist comments on her blog. He also didn’t know that just four years ago, when Snell was 265 lbs., she discovered a love of running and lost 50 lbs. She then went on to complete — in addition to the eight marathons — two 37.2-mile ultramarathons. “As a mere spectator, he saw my 5-foot-3-inch, 218-pound body as a joke. And I — an exhausted runner who was so close but still so far from the finish line — fell for the bait, as he lured me with insults,” she writes. RELATED VIDEO: Shalane Flanagan Becomes First American Woman to Win the New York City Marathon in Four Decades As Snell approached the finish line, she decided to push the man’s words out of her head. “I felt content,” she says. “I didn’t need to harbor anger or aggression; that man wasn’t the first, and likely won’t be the last, to toss off a callous comment about my weight.” “I’m fat. Full-figured. Thick. Plus-size. Powerful. Capable. Empowering. Phenomenal. And in the end, my real clapback that day came from the power of my thick legs shuffling me from New York’s Staten Island, across five boroughs and ending in the drizzling rain in Manhattan,” she writes.