I really love watching the gender gap close in ultra running. For somebody who identifies as a woman, any person is easily their competitor just as much as the person who identifies as a man – Annie Hughes who's kind of a breakout 100-200 mile runner, she's podiuming with the men.

It all starts to equal out but there aren't conversations happening about gender in a good way, in a safe way. Something I'm always insecure about as a trans runner is, if someone’s gonna see me go to the bathroom on the side of the trail or something and be like, "What's going on?"

I don't use any kind of device, I haven't had any kind of lower surgery. I very much go in the same way a cisgender woman would. So I was worried about that, but in that community, we're all getting very intimate with each other. We're sharing the gross details – we all have our nasty feet together, we’re in the woods together. So people just don't care.

The places where transphobia comes out in these events is simply because there's a lack of discussion, lack of visibility. So a lot of it is unintentional – like printing names on race bibs without asking because it's the name that that person was registered under. Or requiring IDs to pick up race bibs, where you registered under your preferred name, but it's got your legal name.

Most of these incidents really happen just because people aren't thinking about it, which is generally a nice thing when you're actually in the event, but sometimes it can be a problem, so there does need to be a balance there.

For the most part, the higher up in distance you go, the more unique the people are that you're running with anyways.

The ultra running community is often composed of former addicts and people with mental health and wellness struggles, who are using running as an outlet. We aren't the kind of people who are judging the folks around us.

[As told to @Ragi Gupta — continued]