On Young People, Sports, and "Fairness"

when I write about running, I'm never writing about running

Jun 23, 2023

Hello from eighth-grade MaryAnn!

We’ll come back to this photo, but I want to talk about running for a minute.

I signed up for Couch to 5K in the spring of 2011 when James was a preschooler. Before that, I’d never been an athlete of any kind. Running was a convenient way to get in better shape for an upcoming hike, but the habit stuck. I’ve taken time off on occasion, and been waylaid by injuries, and set aside running in favor of walking and hiking before last year’s Scotland pilgrimage, but in general, when I’m running regularly I feel better in every way—physically and emotionally. (While the nurse was checking my vitals before a recent colonoscopy, she remarked on my resting heart rate and said, “Wow, you must be a runner.” Given my long history as a non-athletic brainiac, this was a proud moment indeed.)

I ran my first 5K race the December after that first Couch to 5K experience. Since then I’ve done upwards of 80 races, including about ten Ragnar Relays, half a dozen marathons, and a handful of ultras. Races are fun ways to find accountability, community, and joy.

I don’t race much anymore, but in my heyday, I loved chasing PRs (personal records). 2017 and 2018 were my high water mark, when I hit PRs in the half marathon and marathon. A running coach helped me train intensely and strategically in that season of my life. As a trained running coach myself, I know what it takes to get better. I won’t bore you with the specifics, because this post isn’t really about running.

It’s about the fact that no matter what I do, no matter how much I run or how strategically I train, no matter how lean I may be, or not, I am a bona fide middle of the pack runner. Sometimes, I finish north of the 50% point in race results, and when everything hits right, maybe even crack the top third of finishers. More often, I’m right at the median, or even south of it. I am remarkably consistent. And after almost a decade in various online running groups, seeing people post their stats year after year, the fact is, most of us are pretty consistent, with only small to moderate fluctuations here and there.

This used to really bother me. I mean look at this image from my Garmin app:

So-called “time on your feet” is a substantial ingredient for success, and only 2% of Garmin users run more miles than I do. You would think that level of devotion would lead to dramatic results. I’m working about as hard as most recreational runners would ever want to, but my fundamentals haven’t changed all that much. Why? Because our bodies are our bodies, and some of us have baked-in physiological factors that no amount of training will completely overcome.

I firmly believe that if you run, you’re a runner, and if you’re a runner, you have a runner’s body, regardless of what it looks like. But I don’t have a Runner’s Body. I mean… this is me:

Michael Phelps is blessed with a freakishly long torso and huge hands—advantages for swimming he was simply born with. He didn’t earn those features, and they aren’t going to win him gold medals on their own. But if my normally-proportioned husband had started at the same age as Michael Phelps and trained with equal intensity, Phelps would win. If my husband trained a little harder than Michael Phelps, Phelps would probably still win. That’s just a fact of biology.

It feels downright un-American to acknowledge this. It’s borderline offensive to those of us who grew up with the narrative of meritocracy: You work hard, you get ahead. You put in the time, you see the results. That’s right to some extent; any persistent myth has a grain of truth in it. But the playing field has never been even. There are a million factors both within and outside our control that make that the case. (We’ve been focusing on the physical here, but the idea is easily extrapolated to economic, class, and racial privileges as well.)

What this biological reality invites me to do—what it invites any recreational athlete to do—is to find other ways of bringing meaning and satisfaction to the pursuit of sport. I compete against myself. I set non-performance-based goals. I find joy in crossing the finish line, no matter how many people cross it before I do. I hope to run safely and sustainably until I die. (My plan is to place in my age group via sheer attrition–80 and up podium, here I come!)

So. Why am I telling you this? I’m telling you this because this is the lens I apply to the discussion of transgender athletes in children’s and youth sports, which has gotten a huge amount of media attention lately, to say nothing of the various state laws being passed across the U.S. (despite the number of trans athletes still being quite small).

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There are a number of people who are bothered by the idea of trans girls competing in girls’ categories because their male physiology could give them an unfair advantage. The most extreme of these folks hold the insulting position that boys are “pretending to be girls” just so they can compete and win in the girls’ categories. That is simply not happening. What is happening is that trans girls want to compete in the category and among peers who correspond with their gender identity. Yes, in some cases, that might confer a physical advantage. But guess what? Hidden advantages have always been with us.

Given the high rate of stigma and even suicide among LGBTQ+ populations, especially queer youth my bias is toward giving these folks a place to experience the psychosocial benefits of athletics and team participation. But hey. I understand what it’s like to work really really hard and have other people (who may also work hard) come in and outperform you due to factors outside of your control. But let’s not sacrifice our trans girls on some altar of “fairness” when it’s never been completely fair.

Yes, if there are ways to make sports more equitable and inclusive so that everyone can feel at home and also compete to their utmost, let’s be creative about how to do that. But in the meantime, let’s make sure to teach our kids to find other meaning in athletics besides just winning: the sheer joy of teamwork, the chance to improve, the satisfaction of a job well done. Those attributes will last way longer than any trophies or ribbons they win.

And for the love of Pistol Pete, can we just let kids be themselves?

A 9-year-old girl was left sobbing after she was falsely accused of being transgender just because she has short hair, in a clear sign of how transphobia harms everyone.
The girl was competing in a shot put event at her elementary school in British Columbia, Canada, last week, when the grandfather of another girl demanded to know why a boy was competing in a girls’ event.
The girl’s two mothers allege that the man, who has been identified as a 68-year-old named Josef Tesar, shouted, “Hey, this is supposed to be a girls’ event, and why are you letting boys compete?”
One of the mothers, Heidi Starr, said Tesar insisted, “If she is not a boy, then she is obviously trans,” and repeatedly shouted for people to “get that boy off the field.” Starr said her daughter is female, identifies as a girl, and wears a pixie haircut.
Starr said that Tesar demanded to see proof her daughter was born female. “I said … ‘Are you asking for a certificate proving that my daughter was born with a vagina [and] you need a proof of her genitals?’” Starr told the CBC.
She also said his wife called her a “genital mutilator, a groomer, and a pedophile.”

Look. You may not agree with my framing of the issue as I’ve laid it out. That’s cool. I’d like to hear how you think about all this. The point is, the scapegoating of trans kids has impacts on all kinds of people. This poor girl was harassed simply because she had a short haircut.

Which brings me back to that eighth grade picture of me with, well, a short haircut. I was also tall for my age, frequently loud, sometimes bossy. I got mistaken for a boy on occasion, sometimes cruelly.

The kid in that photo knows how painful it is not to fit in. I suspect deep down, everyone reading this remembers what that was like. What do we owe our former selves? What do I owe that awkward, non-conforming eighth grade girl? A better world, where kids can be themselves no matter how they identify. And a culture that cares about equity, which is a higher value than “fairness.”

I admire children who are fighting for that—for their lives, really—and wish they didn’t have to. How can we have their backs?

The Blue Room with MaryAnn McKibben Dana

On Young People, Sports, and "Fairness"

when I write about running, I'm never writing about running

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