why I've taken a pause racing
This could be the shortest post about why I’ve taken a step back, or paused as you would, from competitive racing.
The anti-trans harassment and hate just got reeeeally fucking annoying.
The end.
Joking aside, but it’s the truth. I always try to keep a balance of the amount of harassment and hate I’m willing to put up with to fight for myself and my community and the toll of putting up with all of it on my mental health and everyday life. Then you add to everything that happened after the presidential election to the mix, well, I just didn’t want to deal with it and moved the fight off the race course.
I don’t hide who I am when I’m racing and more so that last season when female trans athletes were getting banned left and right. I have the flag in my nameplate on my bike’s top tube. I’m never going to hide who I am.
Specifically in my state, most races are kind of out in the middle of nowhere, which are traditionally very conservative areas. It tends to be more difficult hosting races in major areas that would be more liberal. Just the nature of the beast with this sport.
The last season I raced before stepping back wasn’t easy and I dealt with a lot. Let’s go through the highlight reel:
Slurs and your basic level of harassment.
Kicked out of locker rooms even when the gym had policies that state trans women are allowed in the women’s locker room.
Side note: I’m the one that forced every 24 Hour Fitness on the West Coast to be retrained.
Being misgendered. Whatever, I’m used to that.
Volunteers purposefully putting the wrong gender for my body markings. I’m now happy they no longer put gender on body markings.
Deflated tires on my bike when coming into T1. It’s happened enough times I just hid a pump in my transition bag.
Here’s a good one. I competed in a race that for some reason had a 5th place (age group) podium. In my 7 years of racing, I’ve never encountered one where 5th place was a podium. Anyway, I got my first “podium” ever. As I was standing up there with my 5th place beer glass, a guy ran up, took a photo of me, and told me he was going to spam it across all conservative social media groups; have fun, I guess. After the podium stuff, I had a few old, white, cis men come up to me saying that I stole that podium from a real woman. It boggled my mind. All that bullshit just because I got 5th place, haha. Luckily, at this race, the other women were actually super supportive and didn’t even care, because you know, we’re just age groupers.
When racing out of state:
I was threatened with physical violence a number of times.
A death threat at one race. Funny story, I obviously reported it to the police because it happened in a parking lot, and the officer just told me not to come to the state. Reminds me of how the police in my city handled a death threat I received at home, and I’m in the most liberal state in the country, and they did nothing.
Pushed by a spectator.
Like I said, I don’t hide who I am, and I shouldn’t have to. I’m sure many folks who read this are probably saying in their head, “if you weren’t showing it, you probably wouldn’t have any issues”. To those people, sure, showing it definitely opens me up to it. But I’ve competed in more races not showing my colors and still had to deal with harassment. Also, it shouldn’t matter.
So yeah, after all that, the felon taking office, and the massive increase in trans hate… I just didn’t want to deal with it. I’ll fight the battle at the city, state, and federal level, and that’s been my focus. I’ve had the incredible opportunities volunteering my time with marginalized members of the community, environmental clean-up, and various LGBTQ+ non-profits to help provide a voice for the voiceless. Oh, and I’ve recently taken up paddleboarding, which has been way more fun.
This summer has been very mild and very windy, which makes paddleboarding less enjoyable, and with that, I check my triathlon bike on the rack and started riding my road race bike again, and the itch has slowly been coming back. I’ve been wanting to go out on that bike more often than paddleboarding or running. So I’ve slowly been enjoying cycling again, which was surprising to me as towards the end, I was really hating the bike.
Does that mean I’ll be getting back into racing? I don’t know. A tiny bit wants to do something, but some of it just wants to wait until the stupid orange-faced dictator leaves office. Who knows. I’m just trying to enjoy cycling again and go from there.