A week ago, I was sick, coming down with a bad cold just a few days before my planned “grand finale” race for the year: my first longer-than-half-marathon trail run in Southern California on December 6th.
All of last week, amidst extremely dark bouts of depression, was spent with the sole focus of getting over my cold or, at least, well enough to fly to California and show up for this race that meant so much to me. And fortunately — or miraculously — I got well enough in time to do my race on Saturday: the sixth race in ten months.
I did it. Still not the full marathon on trail that I’m one day hoping to achieve, but 28km (~17.5 miles) with ~3,600 feet elevation gain. I finally managed to break through the “glass ceiling” of the half marathon. And yet, I still cannot fully believe that I did it. It almost feels underwhelming. The distance wasn’t a problem at all. I had already run a couple of 15-milers and a couple of 16-milers in training and the distance didn’t weight on me. The heat got me on race day. I didn’t hydrate properly and was cramping up from dehydration (& probably also because the course was very steep, much steeper than the description on the race’s webpage) by mile 11. But if it hadn’t been for the dehydration, I could have gone for longer — and if it hadn’t been steeper than planned, I would have made it within my projected time of about 2 hours & 50 minutes.
Still, as it was, I got first place nonbinary. Yet again. Here, actually, I was announced as “the winner for the nonbinary category” because I simply was the only runner in this category.
Six races this calendar year, between February 2nd and December 6th, 2025: six races, four first places & two second places nonbinary. But what value does it have to win first place if I’m the only one showing up or if I’m only one among half a dozen of us trans/nonbinary athletes? Does that mean my victory has less value?
Part of me feels it does have less value, since I could just hike or jog the course, as long as I finish the race within the cut-off time, and still get my award (& sometimes even a trophy).
But part of me stubbornly says “No, my victory has just as much value, maybe even more, than if as many nonbinary and/or trans athletes showed up as male & female runners”. After all, when women first started to be admitted to compete decades ago, there were very few of them surrounded by hundreds of men. Were their victories less valuable? Hell no! They were more valuable precisely due to the effort it had taken them to get to the start line (even before worrying about getting to the finish line)! And it’s the same for trans/nonbinary athletes now: we haven’t been allowed to compete for decades so at first there’s going to be only a few of us. And some of us showing up at these races might not necessarily be the fastest runners but we’ll be the most stubborn, e.g. the ones who write to race organizers to ask for a nonbinary category in the first place and request equal awards and advocate for fair treatment & prizes. Many of the races where I’ve won first place and brought home a prize or trophy have been precisely those where I spent time & effort advocating for myself & all trans/nonbinary runners. And then, realistically, there’s probably always going to be fewer of us in the nonbinary category, simply because a smaller percent of the population is trans or nonbinary compared to cis and also because trans athletes will have much higher barriers to access sports for decades to come.
I need to remind myself of all this, to remind myself that when I stand on those podiums, sometimes all by myself, receiving my first-place-nonbinary-prize wearing my trans-pride shorts & all my trans-nonbinary-pride swag, I am doing something important. Important for myself because it took decades of my own life, of my own efforts and suffering, to get to that achievement, to get to that moment of joy. But also important for others because, hopefully, I am paving the way. Because I am visible. I have the courage or strength or simply the privilege to stand up visibly and openly and ostensibly trans, unapologetically nonbinary, and that visibility might encourage others: because representation matters. (In fact, it is also greatly due to a lack of representation, i.e. of “role models”, in my own life that it took me so long to “get to my own gender identity” so explicitly & openly.)
So, what next? Where do I go from here? What are my next goals, athletically but also in a broader perspective?
Because I need goals: in order to keep the sharp claws of depression from digging too deep into my skin, to keep dark thoughts from devouring my mind wholly, I need goals, to keep me going, literally to keep me alive.
The Little Prince and the Fox 