How can we make OUTrun more inclusive next time?

One week on from GlasgowFrontRunners’ first-ever race, OUTrun, its organisers’ are reflecting on the event with the help of participants and volunteers.

OUTrun achieved its aim of making connections with the wider running community and, we hope, helped to raise awareness of issues facing LGBTI+ people’s participation in sport. However, even as we were organising the event, the OUTrun team realised that our event could and should be more inclusive. Our entry and prize categories were restricted to the binary of men and women, as is the case in running, athletics and sport more generally – with the exception of equestrianism, it seems – thus excluding a considerable portion of the LGBTI+ population.

While much discussion within the organising team ensued during the planning of OUTrun and there were very helpful, initial conversations with the Scottish Transgender Alliance (STA), the team concluded that OUTrun 2015 would be about awareness raising; participants’ goody bags contained information about the work of STA. To alter the way OUTrun was organised in order to be fully inclusive and welcoming for every LGBTI+ person would have required much more time, consultation, and, crucially, the input of the communities we wish to reach out to and include in future.

With the first OUTrun completed and in the knowledge that there will most likely be an OUTrun in 2016, we look forward to building relationships with and receiving advice from organisations, groups and individuals from the trans*, non-binary and genderqueer communities, as well as consulting with Jog Scotland/Scottish Athletics, LEAP Sport Scotland, Pride Sports, and our fellow FrontRunner clubs, among many others. We look forward to creating an OUTrun, and a running club, which are more inclusive.