Races are really tricky for trans and non binary people in general. When I enter races, I enter in the male category, although I am very aware that I think I can't compete with the cis men.

I think there are some trans men who probably could, but I started my transition quite late. So I'm just not quite able to compete with them. But that just might be me not being particularly confident, I don't know. But that's my feeling.

One of the reasons I find races is difficult is because I don't really know who the hell I'm running against. I definitely can't compete in the female category. I used to think that I didn't need a nonbinary category. I always thought that a nonbinary category needs to exist for people that identify as nonbinary.

But now I feel like a nonbinary category would be helpful.

I do worry that the nonbinary category could potentially be used to push trans women into these categories. Because if a trans man or a trans woman wants to enter into the nonbinary category, that's great. But if a trans man wants to compete with men who are cis, and a trans woman wants to compete with the women who are cis, then they absolutely should be able to.

I also don't like races because they are just stressful places. Particularly trail races, which are the ones I like, are really cis-men heavy. There's a lot of cis men on the trail, and really not very many women at all.

When I would go to races, I would just feel like I'm the only queer person there. That's not right.

We're currently working on putting together a survey to gather some data from queer people who are running and we want to be able to use that data to push for races to have nonbinary categories and to generally be more welcoming for queer people.

[As told to @Ragi Gupta — continued]