This Chicago Marathon felt different for Cal Calamia. More than a homecoming, it was an opportunity to prove a point about enduring resilience and finding one’s true path.
“When I come back here, I remember what it felt like to grow up in a place where queerness was not talked about even neutrally,” said Calamia, who was raised in a Chicago suburb and ran this race in 2018 and 2019.
“It was spoken about negatively, and this was not very long ago. A big part of being here and running this race is reclaiming this place, which left me with a lot of emotional scars.