IDENTITY
ANDIE TAYLOR IS A NEW WOMAN BY SARAH BARKER
A
ndie Taylor is terrified. She fights back tears,
tucking her hair behind her ears, checking her shoelaces. What will people think? Should she really compete? Taylor, 46, has been running since the age of ten, lining up for races since 1984. But this is her first race as a woman. “I was afraid that people wouldn’t like me. I didn’t want to cause controversy or take anything away from runners who were born female,” Taylor said. “The running community means a lot to me—I don’t want to be an embarrassment to them.” The cacophony of thoughts fall away with the starting gun, and it’s quiet—just breath and footfalls, stretching out, simply running, fast. Officially, Andrea Taylor finishes the 2019 TC Mile in 5:37, a race she ran as Andrew Taylor in 2017, in 5:01. *********************************** Andy (now, Andie) Taylor grew up in south Minneapolis (except 1980 - 1984, in suburban Chicago), in the middle of two brothers. Pretty average childhood, sometimes jumping rope with the girls, sometimes playing with the boys. Hindsight, she admitted, can be tricky but she remembers covering up her genitals at age six or seven. When kids innocently got naked together, she looked at girls’ bodies and thought, that’s what I’m supposed to look like. This was the 1970s—homosexuality was barely on the radar. Body dysmorphia, the idea of being in the wrong body, didn’t exist outside the medical community. All Taylor knew is that something wasn’t right. “My dad jogged two to four miles every night. I was a super anxious kid, so when I was about 10, he said, ‘Come run with me.’ I ran two miles without stopping and said, ‘That was the most fun I’ve ever had.’’ Taylor went out for cross country in sixth grade (in Chicago) and was the team’s second runner. “I didn’t see it as stress relief—I really liked competition. I thought, I’ve got some talent. When you discover that in junior high, that’s what you do.” She ran year round on her own, and when the family moved back to the Twin Cities, joined track at Metcalf Junior High. She’d already cemented her self identity, and her reputation with other kids, as a good athlete, which provided some protection from bullying. But no one survives junior high unscathed
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SUMMER 2019
Andy (now andie) taylor poses for a photo after earning the 2016 rookie of the year award from usa track&field Minnesota.
