Falling Out with Aria Rey: Birth of a Drag Queen

(CNN) -- Running in the quiet, in those spaces between footsteps when both feet are in mid-air and flying for a millisecond, Nikki Hiltz figured out their gender identity.Ever since Hiltz ran on the beach barefoot as a child taking part in lifeguard training, running has seeped into almost every part of their life, becoming a career that took them to the world championships.So when all their races were canceled in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Hiltz organized their own, naming it Pride 5k to create a space for LGBTQ people and to raise money for The Trevor Project — a nonprofit organization providing 24/7 crisis counseling to LGBTQ youth."I was open about my sexuality at that point, but not my gender identity," Hiltz tells CNN Sport."And so I think, deep down, I was just a closeted queer person, trying to make a safe space for people to show up as [themselves] and kind of subconsciously making that space for me to show up as myself."Hiltz says nearly 2,000 people participated from a variety of locations in the first edition of Pride 5k and at least four people used the day to publicly come out as queer, later recording podcasts with Hiltz to share their stories."Something about hearing coming out stories, or just connecting with someone who was hiding something and then got to share it — it just really was the last push I needed to be like: 'OK, I think I'm ready to now come out,'" Hiltz says.And, in what Hiltz calls a "full circle moment," they also publicly came out as transgender on March 31, 2021 — Transgender Day of Visibility — a little less than nine months after that first Pride 5k race."That means I don't identify with the gender I was assigned at birth," they wrote in an Instagram post explaining that they