A lot of the joy and euphoria I experience through running has been secondhand – seeing the young people I work with achieve even basic goals of just starting to run and hearing their feedback, has made me really proud.

I used to hate running and had such a negative attachment to sport and physical education, especially growing up as a Black person, my mom had always been like, "Don't do sports, don't be running for the school, don't be getting into that."

Because that's something they like to push Black people into doing and it's something that isn't necessarily as challenging, I think for Black folks, sometimes.

I was very able to do sports but didn't have access to it, and then gender kind of took over and it became such a negative thing. It's really nice now, to have a positive understanding and a positive connection with sports in a way that not all trans people do.

Even accessing a gym is very gendered. You have to find somewhere that's safe and somewhere that's trans-friendly, where you're not going to get weird looks, or someone saying something funny, or asking you if you're in the right bathroom, or whatever.

This stuff can really just knock your confidence and make those spaces inaccessible. So it’s cool now, to be able to do this on my own at home and to feel confident in myself about following a routine, coming up with a routine, and achieving things on my own.

There are certain things for trans people that we put on the backburner, and a lot of those are really fundamental – getting married or having children is not on the list for most of us; having diagnoses of mental health is often on the backburner; fitness and body mobility is another one that gets sidelined because we have so much other everyday stuff.

I'm really grateful that I've had an opportunity and chance to practise and learn these skills. I hope to be able to pass on to other people.

[As told to @Ragi Gupta — continued]