Cal Calamia remembers stepping into his power at the Los Angeles Marathon two years ago.

It was a cool and especially windy March morning, and Calamia had run through a succession of L.A. neighborhoods — Chinatown, Echo Park, Silver Lake and Los Feliz, to start. He cruised by some of his favorite L.A. landmarks, including the Hollywood Walk of Fame, which he’d romanticized as a glittering oasis while growing up in the Midwest in a conservative Republican family. Here in California, “a sanctuary for transgender people” like him, and ensconced by the cheering L.A. Marathon crowds, he felt not only safe, but celebrated.

During one section of the race in Westwood, with about eight miles left to the finish line, energetic spectators on Santa Monica Boulevard huddled onto a concrete median shrieking and waving signs — one read, “You’re running better than our government,” he recalls. Toddlers sat perched on adults’ shoulders, seniors wielded cardboard posters. He says the crush of rippling flags is an image he’ll cherish forever — more pink-blue-and-white-striped trans flags than he’d ever seen in one place.

“Being in this particular race environment knowing there was genuine love and support for me, for people like me, just felt like being held,” Calamia says. “It was really beautiful.”

Calamia would go on to win first place in the L.A. Marathon’s nonbinary division that year, clocking in at 2:53:02 — one of myriad victories in his career. Based in San Francisco, Calamia (whose pronouns are they/he and who asked that both be used in this article) is the only nonbinary marathoner ever to podium (finish in a top-three spot) in six of the Abbott World Marathon Majors. They’re also a leading transgender advocate, helping to educate marathon organizers around the world about equity and inclusion — and a poet, a collection of poems inspired by their gender transition, published in 2021.

Calamia hasn’t participated in the L.A. Marathon since that memorable 2024 race, but they hope to reclaim the top spot in the nonbinary division on Sunday. The race, from Dodger Stadium to Century City, is 26.2 miles long; but the fight for equity for trans and nonbinary marathoners across the sport, Calamia says, is a far longer road.

“It’s changing, but we’re not there yet. So, so much more needs to be done in the realm of education,” they say.

Runners start the 39th Los Angeles Marathon at Dodger Stadium on March 17, 2024.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Calamia is competing in a moment when transgender athletes are a topic of national political debate.

The Trump administration has been trying to ban transgender athletes from participating in youth sports competitions throughout the country, a battle that is playing out in court. The Supreme Court is considering whether to uphold state bans on transgender athletes competing in girls’ sports in Idaho and West Virginia. In 2025 alone, hundreds of bills were introduced at the state and federal levels to restrict the rights of transgender people — not only targeting their participation in sports, but their medical care and their identity documents.

Within the marathoning world, the introduction of a nonbinary division is relatively new and has been a quickly evolving issue. Trans and nonbinary marathoners, historically, have run in either the category in which they were assigned at birth — in which they didn’t identify personally — or, depending on the marathon, in the category aligned with their self-identified gender. In the latter case, some might be at a disadvantage, others an advantage (trans men, for example, might be physically smaller and weaker, with regard to muscular strength and lung capacity, than the cis men they’re competing against.

Trans marathoner Cal Calamia started running in fifth grade. “It was the first time I felt like I had autonomy over my body,” they say.

(Josh Edelson / For The Times)

The Los Angeles and New York City marathons were the first to introduce nonbinary divisions in 2021. Now all seven Abbott World Marathon Majors — in New York, Boston, Chicago, Tokyo, Berlin, London and Sydney — include a nonbinary division for mass participation runners.

But non-binary runners typically aren’t awarded prize money because there isn’t a category for them in elite divisions (in which where prize money is typically awarded) as there is for cis runners. (The New York City Marathon does offer prize money to nonbinary runners within its New York Road Runners-member general division, as do some local races.)

One reason: Most marathons take their cues from the Monaco-based World Athletics, the international governing body for the World Marathon Majors as well as large-scale road races such as the L.A. Marathon. And in the elite field, “our categorisation of either male or female for entry purposes and results are based on an athlete’s biological sex,” spokesperson Maggie Durand said in an email, adding that the dispersion of prize money is ultimately up to the races.

Another issue is that the nonbinary category is smaller and therefore less competitive, the L.A. Marathon says. In 2021, zero nonbinary runners crossed the finish line at the L.A. Marathon; 38 runners did in 2024 and 267 did in 2025. This year, the marathon is expecting 150 participants in the category. That represents just 0.54% of registration for the race, which has about 27,000 participants in all. (A portion of registration fees goes toward prize money.)

While the L.A. Marathon doesn’t have a professional nonbinary division with prize money, it does award the top three nonbinary finishers a trophy or a medal as well as inclusion in post-race publicity.

“World Athletics and USA Track & Field set our industry standards and we look to their regulations,” L.A. Marathon spokesperson Meg Treat said. “But at the end of the day, the category is small. And while some of the runners will clock fast times, many of them are going to be finishing alongside our everyday athletes as part of the general field. We’re watching how the competitiveness of that category develops and we’ll evaluate potential changes.”

Calamia, calls it a “chicken and egg issue.” “There’s a lot of, ‘Oh, it’s not competitive enough and too small,’ but how could it be competitive enough if it’s not recognized?”

Calamia, who was assigned female at birth, grew up in a suburb of Chicago in a “loud, conservative household,” as he describes it, the second oldest of four siblings. “There were a lot of people with strong opinions,” he says, and not much tolerance for “anything different,” which he felt inside. He started running cross-country in fifth grade and it brought him a sense of freedom — from the dissonance inside his mind as well as from the house.

Calamia recently became a vegan. “There’s an intersection between transness and veganism,” they say.

(Josh Edelson / For The Times)

“It was the first time I felt like I had autonomy over my body,” he says.

They moved to San Francisco in 2018 and began their gender transition, having top surgery in 2019. Later that year while training, they ran shirtless through the streets of San Francisco as a nonbinary transmasculine athlete and felt more themself than ever, embracing “the in-between.”

“Early in my transition, my goal was, ‘I don’t want to be perceived as a woman. But I’m not quite like these cisgender men, either.’ It took me a lot of work to understand how beautiful occupying that liminal space is instead. Having the nonbinary division in marathons is an extension of that.”

His family has “come a long way,” but relations remain strained, he says. “They’re not just, ‘We voted for Trump;’ they’re Blue Lives Matter flag up in the yard and Trump bumper stickers and ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ flag and tattoos,” he says. “To try to have a relationship with them is challenging. Because they’re actively voting against not just my rights, but human rights.”

Calamia backed into an activism career when in 2022 he led a campaign pressuring San Francisco’s Bay to Breakers race to let nonbinary participants win awards. (The race was letting the runners register, but not place.) Calamia won that battle — and then took first place in the race days later.

“I was like: ‘Wow, look what we just did. What else can we do?’” he says.

The answer: The San Francisco, Chicago and Boston marathons all introduced nonbinary categories within a year, partly due to Calamia’s efforts. Calamia, would become the San Francisco Marathon’s inaugural nonbinary division winner as well.

Post-victory elation, however, was short-lived: In mid-2023, Calamia had to tirelessly defend their right to use testosterone, which they’d been taking since 2019 as part of their gender transition, to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. It ultimately granted them a 10-year therapeutic use exemption so they can continue to compete.

Now the four pillars of Calamia’s career — marathoning, activism/education, writing and community building (they founded a nonbinary run club that meets weekly in the Bay Area) — are working together with the gusto of an elite athlete. But Calamia feels added pressure to win races because it amplifies their advocacy voice.

“None of it works if the sports performance isn’t up to par, because then no one is paying attention,” they say. “But also, I’m putting pressure on myself to try and beat all the women or compete with at least some of the fastest men. Because I don’t want to feel like a charity entry. I’m a fast runner. I want to be recognized as a strong athlete — not as someone who got the chance to be here because ‘we’re so inclusive.’”

Calamia says he feels a sense of freedom and calm when running. “It’s a flow state.”

(Josh Edelson / For The Times)

With the L.A. Marathon just days away, Calamia is feeling positive about the race. His personal record is 2:41:59 from the Berlin Marathon in 2024 and he hopes to best that. Toward that end, Calamia will do what he always does the day before a race: visit a spa for contrast therapy (between a hot tub and cold plunge) while visualizing every stage of the imminent marathon, its hurdles and eventual successes. On race morning, he’ll eat his usual: a bagel with peanut butter and a banana.

Next up: Calamia will compete in the open division of the Athletic Brewing Ironman 70.3 Oceanside on March 28, with two other trans athletes as his teammates, Schuyler Bailar and Chella Man. And after competing in the Sydney Marathon this August, he’ll run a 100-mile ultramarathon in Arizona in October.

Marathoning, says Abbott World Marathon Majors Chief Operating Officer Danny Coyle, is “one of the most inclusive movements” in sports globally. “If you’re lucky enough to stand on the side of the street on any given race day in the WMM — and some of the big races like Los Angeles — it’s just this melting pot and stream of humanity of all shapes and sizes, all creeds and colors, with one shared objective: to get to the finish line.”

Calamia, however, says there are still miles ahead until the sport is truly inclusive for trans and nonbinary runners.

“But I love the sport,” they say. “The fact that it’s still evolving is a beautiful thing and I’ve learned so much about myself, and grown so much, because of my relationship with running.”

The L.A. Marathon, they add, plays a central role in the sport’s own evolution.

“L.A. is this place where all these different people from all over the place come together to pursue their dreams, which is inspiring,” they say. “Having nonbinary representation on the course, as well as support from spectators, sets a precedent for other cities around the globe: that no one should have to choose between being who you are and doing what you love.”

Transgender athlete-activist-poet Calamia shows off a tattoo reading, “Eyes up. Look ahead.”

(Josh Edelson / For The Times)

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