In a New Nonbinary Category, One Marathoner Finally Feels at Home
nytimes.comThis Chicago Marathon felt different for Cal Calamia. More than a homecoming, it was an opportunity to prove a point about enduring resilience and finding one’s true path. “When I come back here, I remember what it felt like to grow up in a place where queerness was not talked about even neutrally,” said Calamia, who was raised in a Chicago suburb and ran this race in 2018 and 2019. “It was spoken about negatively, and this was not very long ago.
A big part of being here and running this race is reclaiming this place, which left me with a lot of emotional scars.” On Sunday morning, Calamia, 26, a former college cross-country runner who finished the San Francisco Marathon in July in three hours flat, ran Chicago’s fast, flat course surrounded by thousands of runners.
Down Michigan Avenue and Lake Shore Drive. Through Chinatown and Lincoln Park. Everything felt achingly familiar. There was a major difference this year, though.
Calamia competed in a newly created category for nonbinary runners. After spending years sorting out the deepest questions of their identity, Calamia, in 2019, began hormone therapy and had chest masculinization surgery.
