When 53-year-old Stevie Romer set out to qualify for the Boston Marathon, the Spring Chance BQ.2 Marathon in Geneva, Illinois, in September seemed like the perfect race. Not only was it near her home in Woodstock, Illinois, the flat, looped course was specifically set up to help runners meet the Boston Athletic Association’s strict standards.

But there was one problem. The race website made clear that, to ensure integrity, runners’ identities would be subject to strict scrutiny. Romer, who is transgender, hadn’t yet changed her ID. So in February of 2017, she took the required paperwork to the Illinois Secretary of State’s Office and walked out with a government-issued document labeled “female.”

The switch allowed Romer to race in Geneva the same way she lives the rest of her life. “I am not male,” she said. “I will never ever run a race again as male. It’s humiliating and painful.”

It also places her in alignment with the Boston Athletic Association’s (B.A.A.) official policy for transgender runners.

After a recent report on the website MarathonInvestigation.com brought attention to the issue, the B.A.A. told Runner’s World that athletes must compete with the same gender identity under which they qualified. A government-issued ID is required to pick up your bib number, and race officials and volunteers compare the gender identity there with what’s on runners’ entries.

In Boston, if a dispute arises over a mismatched ID, a B.A.A. spokesperson said they’d “address it in a manner intended to be fair to all concerned, with a strong emphasis on inclusion.”

If another runner raises a question about gender categorization when prize money or age-group awards are at stake, the B.A.A. follows the guidance of USA Track and Field ( USATF ) . USATF, in turn, adheres to the policy of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), according to spokeswoman Jill Geer.

Those rules, which were updated in 2015, allow transgender women to compete as women provided they have declared themselves so and meet certain standards for testosterone levels, and transgender men to compete as men with no restrictions. (Previously, they’d required sex reassignment surgery and at least two years of hormone therapy.)

The vast majority of Boston runners aren’t aiming for laurel wreaths or dollars; for them, the victory is in qualifying in the first place. People even cheat to get in—in fact, Derek Murphy launched MarathonInvestigation.com to bust those who thwart the rules.

“I will never ever run a race again as male. It’s humiliating and painful.”

While he was prompted to write his post by readers who asked his opinion on whether transgender women were somehow skirting the system, the experiences of runners like Romer demonstrate to Murphy that these women have earned their spots, he said.



Though transgender women have run Boston before, the rules governing their entries weren’t necessarily clear. That led to uncertainty for runners like Grace Fisher (pictured above), 37, an ultrarunner and marathoner in Hancock, Maryland.

She qualified for, and ran, her first Boston Marathon as a man in 2014. The following year, she was living as a woman, and registered that way—with no issues. “Being in a sea of 35,000 runners, I didn’t think I’d be noticed and nobody really cared,” she said.

The next year, in 2016, she ran into problems because she’d changed the gender, but not the name, on her ID. The B.A.A. told her she must run under her legal name. But when she checked the results, she was dismayed to see that her gender was also changed back to “M.”

A conversation with race officials afterward—including sending her driver’s license, which identified her as female—cleared up the issue. Her results were recategorized with her previous name but current gender. Last year, with her name and ID legally changed, she registered and ran as Grace Fisher, female. She’ll do the same on Monday.

Her experience is just one example of how even rules that seem straightforward can pose challenges for transgender athletes. “There’s not just one way to be a transgender athlete, and I think that’s why it becomes so complicated for people to both understand policies and for policymakers to write policies,” said Chris Mosier, a transgender triathlete, duathlete, and activist who helped work to change the IOC policies and operates a website, transathlete.com, that catalogs guidelines and policies across sports.

Some people have surgery, some take hormones, and others, like Romer, transition socially but with no medical intervention. “None of those ways are more valid ways of being transgender than any other ways,” Mosier said. And while some may question whether higher testosterone levels offer an advantage in qualifying, Mosier points out that transgender women are women and have followed the B.A.A.’s rules; Romer notes she hasn’t upended her life just to gain entry into this one race.

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Given all those complications, the B.A.A.’s current policy strikes transgender runner Amelia Gapin, 34, as fair. “Having these rule changes spelled out explicitly helps in that people don’t have to go out of their way to be quiet,” she said. “They can be more transparent about who they are, they can actually just not worry about it. It’s kind of a burden being lifted.”

Gapin, who lives in Jersey City, New Jersey, started thinking about qualifying for Boston soon after she signed up for her first marathon in 2011. Soon, she said, she was “obsessed.” She ran a personal-best time of 3:08 at the 2012 Chicago Marathon as a male—not far from the 3:05 she needed to qualify at the time.

But her transition in 2013 changed all that. The hormones she took slowed her down. She wasn’t sure whether Boston would still be an attainable goal.

Gapin first clicked the “female” box on a race entry for the New Jersey Marathon in 2014. “I was living as a woman—this is who I openly was now, there was nothing to hide,” she said. She’d changed her name, her ID, and even her passport. “The only way I could have even proven a prior identity would have been my birth certificate.”

Her time there—a 3:48:03—was close enough to the 3:35 she needed to qualify for Boston as a woman to encourage her to keep trying. Eventually, she had gender reassignment surgery, which required time off for recovery. After returning to training, she qualified with a 3:28:41 at the Chicago Marathon in 2016. She is registered to run on Monday.

“I’m really looking forward to the community of that race,” she said. “It’s a three-day runner celebration in Boston. I am really excited to be there and be a part of it and finally get to do something I was working really hard to get to do.”

Stevie Romer, center, qualified for the Boston Marathon at last September’s Marquette Marathon and will run her first Boston on Monday. Courtesy of Stevie Romer

As for Romer, she finished the Spring Chance BQ.2 in 3:57:11, two minutes and 50 seconds under the B.A.A.’s qualifying standard for women 50 to 54.

For the 2018 race, runners had to be 3 minutes and 23 seconds faster than their Boston-qualifying times to officially enter. Fortunately for Romer, she bettered her time to a 3:41:19 at the Marquette Marathon in September.

“I tell people [running] saved my life. I have no idea how I would have gotten through without it.”

She’ll also run her first Boston on Monday—a bright spot in a tumultuous time. Since coming out, she’s gotten divorced, struggled to sort out her relationships with her children, and changed jobs. But running has offered relief from depression and anxiety, and a group of friends who accept her for who she is.

“I am a transgender person who happens to love running,” she said. “I tell people it saved my life and it did. I have no idea how I would have gotten through without it.”

Cindy Kuzma Contributing Writer Cindy is a freelance health and fitness writer, author, and podcaster who’s contributed regularly to Runner’s World since 2013.

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