In the trail community, it's common for a runner to stop in the middle of a race, without hesitation, to help a fellow runner in need... even as the race clock is ticking. This is trail culture at its best – uniquely welcoming and supportive.
We share these values and have been working hard over the past several months to ensure that UltraSignup is equally welcoming and supportive, including runners of all gender identities. To that end, we are making development changes as quickly as possible to incorporate Non-Binary options that respect and honor the identity of each runner.
In this post, we will outline the first changes to the UltraSignup platform to address Non-Binary options. These changes constitute Phase 1 of a multi-phase plan to incrementally address Non-Binary across our integrated system, from profiles to registration to timing software to race results to runner rankings.
Currently, we have added an option for users to select Non-Binary as their Gender Identity.
If a runner selects Non-Binary, the gender designation of "M" or "F" – which is usually next to the runner's age – will simply be absent from that runner's profile.
At this time, the system still requires a Male or Female selection for Results and Rankings, as well as many unseen functions throughout the database. We acknowledge that this is not ideal and have renamed this field "Category for Results" so that the runner is selecting a category for this data, rather than a gender option with which they might not identify. This additional field appears only if a runner selects Non-Binary for Gender Identity.
We have also provided a link to contact UltraSignup in case a runner would like to have their entire Runner Profile hidden from the platform.
Additionally, a new Gender Identity column will be included in the Race Director's data export for those who plan to accommodate Non-Binary as a category in their race awards or who host race results on their own websites.
For Race Directors who are interested in collecting more expanded gender options, we recommend using the Custom Questions feature.
We would have preferred to roll out a fully complete Non-Binary solution, including Results and Rankings. However, given how many parts of our system are touched by the "M" and "F" designations, we had to decide whether to roll out a partial solution today or wait months until we had addressed the thousands of database fields impacted by gender. We chose the former.
In the coming months, we will keep our racers and race directors updated on the future phases of this project. We are grateful for the open dialogue with this community and, as always, welcome your constructive feedback as we work together to make UltraSignup just as welcoming and supportive as our trails.
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