You’ve been Nudged
*PING* I’m reaching out today to confirm that during the registration process you intended to check the box indicating you’re a non-binary athlete. With so much information gathered during the registration process, we always want to double check prior to race weekend. Please respond to this email confirming whether you identify as non-binary and should be included in that category for this year’s race.
My heart rate sky rockets in a second. Why did I open my email? I saw the marathon in my inbox and jumped with excitement, opening it promptly. I have a race in 50 days, I got to know all the updates.
I try to keep composed and put my phone away. It takes everything in me to not throw it across the room. Sure, am I over reacting? Maybe. But why do you need to verify that I’m nonbinary personally when I know you aren’t sending a personal email to every male and female participant also.
I look up from my iPhone as I am looking at a dinosaur from 1 bazillion years ago. It’s my husbands belated birthday celebration. We decided to go to the Museum of Natural History. Unfortunately, the world continues to move no matter what plans you decide to make. A moment goes by and I walk ahead of my husband, trying to keep a calm mind.
A piece of me is feeling overwhelmed. A piece of me is upset. A piece of me is angry. Not all of me.
I open my iPhone again, opening up the Gmail app and reread the email. Yep, I read that right. A marathon that I’ve been training six weeks for already is emailing me to confirm I didn’t register as non-binary on accident.
So, what’s the issue?
At first, I thought I was over reacting. Let’s take a minute. Breathe.
I write the following in response, trying to be professional and collected with my thoughts. I write the following,
I know this email comes with good intent, but it is the opposite of inclusive. Are you also emailing every participant confirming if they are male or female and registered in the right category, or just nonbinary athletes?
Going forward, I believe the best approach would be high level sending an email to participants reminding them to verify their gender and age rather than specifically reach out to a community of individuals that already feel marginalized. I share this as someone that has worked with NYC Road Runners and has never received an email as such, and has not ran races just due to a nonbinary category being available.
I put my phone away and continue through the museum with my husband. I have to remind myself that the email I received was sent with good intent. I also have to remind myself that just because someone has good intent doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be held accountable and informed on what isn’t a good practice.
Two hours go by. I receive the following response from the marathon team:
We will be sending a high-level email tomorrow to all participants that asks to verify several areas of personal information, but we also have made a practice the past several years of reaching out directly to our non-binary participants.
Out of 60 or so registered non-binary participants across our 2025 events, I’ve already heard today from 10 or so that made a mistake during registration and asked to be moved to another division. Whether we would have captured the same if we had just sent tomorrow’s email is good conversation, and one that we’ve had with an outside consultant in this space who made the same point that you did in your message.
Yours and that of our consultant are the only objections we’ve received – only pointing that out to indicate the differing opinions and emotions on the matter, something we will try to continue to navigate as well as we can.
Yeah, forget about therapy; now every piece of me is mad.
I sent my original email communicating that I believe there are better practices to utilize. I wasn’t asking for an apology. I wasn’t requesting a response. I was just vocalizing that I felt uncomfortable with the practices that were being utilized.
Instead - I got a rebuttal justifying why the email was sent in the first place. Here are a couple things wrong with the above response:
Admitting this practice is something that has continuously happened for years after someone vocalizes it’s problematic
Sharing that 10 or more people responded to you saying they made a mistake in registering as nonbinary - showing their is a problem with your UX registration platform high level
Communicating that a following email will be sent to everyone tomorrow asking participants to verify all their registration information and still thinking siniling out a marginalized community to verify their gender is approrpriate
Admitting your brand asked for a consultation’s opinion since they want to market themselves as having a DEI portion to their race and then not goign with the guidance of that consultant
Undermining my concerns by sharing “the overwhelmign response has been positive” and admiting that myself and the consultant are the only two people that had “differing opinions and emotions on the matter” - showing that your brand values cisgendered racing participants more than nonbinary ones.
Of course you have “overwhemling positive response” because those that are cisgendered that made a “mistake” would be happy to have it fixed this way versus those that have fought hard to have a race category and are more scared to speak up and lose the category so they stay silent.
My husband and I get ready to go out for his Birthday Dinner.
I breathe for a moment and promptly send the following back to this PR and Marketing Director, adding the Program Director (who leads the DEI portion and did not send this email inititally).
To hear that the person that you hired to assist in consulting the DEI portion of the race informed you of the same point I brought to your attention wasn't listened to is of concern. I respect you sharing "yours and that of our consultant are the only objection's we've received", but would like to note that I may just have been the person comfortable sharing them. To continue to send a direct email to nonbinary participants after a DEI consultant communicated this wasn't appropriate shows that the DEI portion of this race is not a priority.
To note that "10 or so made the mistake during registration" shows that there is a bias that it is more important for this marathon marathon to cater to the general majority of cisgendered athletes and not value the voices of those that are nonbinary.
As I can not differ my bib to a different participant since it was part of the DEI portion, please let me know who to formally contact at this time for a refund.
I shut my computer. Try not to cry. Breathe. I start walking with my husband to dinner.
“Am I over reacting?”
”How would you feel if you got this email?”
”I don’t think other races have sent me this, right?”
”I don’t like to be angry, but this is a valid response, right?”
It’s impossible to not gaslight yourself when the world likes to consistently portray the LGBTQ+ community as angry if you “don’t get it right.”
We enjoy our dinner. We breathe. We hold hands. We remind ourselves that tomorrow is a new day - which brings us to today.
*PING, ANOTHER Email* I’m sorry this experience put a bad taste in your mouth for BLANK Marathon. We are continuously trying to improve our practices, and I’d love to continue the conversation with you about ways we can make our event a more inclusive environment.
I will get your refund started today. Hopefully, we can see you in 2026. I’d love to find a time to chat more either before this year’s event or ahead of registration opening in October. Let me know what works best for you.
Thanks for advocating for inclusivity at events. It is something we are continuously trying to improve on and sometimes just need a nudge in the right direction. I can imagine that it can get pretty exhausting to constantly have to be the “nudge” that is need, especially in the current state of the world. The running world is better with your advocacy in it. Thanks for taking the time to share experiences and push for change.
My brain: Whoever this is should have emailed me first.
Why write about this? They eventually apologized. They gave you a refund.
But look at how long it took to get here - for someone to go “hey, I hear you.”
I’m exhausted that I feel like I am constantly nudging people.
When I look back on the past 24 hours, I don’t have any regrets. Advocacy can be small actions from your perspective that have high impact. When I look at the first emailed response I received, it was from someone that I am assuming is male since he doesn’t have his pronouns in his email signature. When I look at the second email, I know it was from a race director who takes pride in improving the DEI world, and she has pronouns in her email signature. A little action of pronouns has high impact.
I’m reminded constantly that many places don’t want to make space for us. My husband phrased it perfectly, “when other major organizations aren’t doing this, why would someone differentiate and claim it isn’t a bad practice?” When I run NYC or Chicago Marathon - no one dreams of sending this type of communication. People mess up their registration all the time. That isn’t on nonbinary people. That’s on excitement levels when you make it through the waiting platform or user error.
So here I am, feeling like I nudged to the point it made me sick. I’m used to nudging. I nudge brands all the time and see many counterparts with “less social following” receive HIGH payouts when I don’t get responses back. It’s easy to feel as though it is because I’m nonbinary, so I always nudge, even to get a thanks but no thanks. But now, I nudged to the point I dropped out of a marathon I have invested weeks of training towards already for June. Guess what though - I am not going to stop nudging.
PS: If anyone has any race recommendations or bibs for June, send them my way.
