The Chicago Marathon happened recently and in a viral post a young woman who finished the race with a (respectable) four-thirty something was blasted in her comments for taking walk breaks during the race. The commenters told her (apparently) that her race didn’t count because she didn’t run the whole thing.

Let me be perfectly clear to those commenters: stop being fucking gatekeepers.

Seriously.

That’s just poor sportsmanship, be you a runner or a spectator, elite or the last fucking person across the line. The rules are set by the race, not by a handful of people who draw an imaginary line—close a gate—at some arbitrary point that they alone have passed.

I take walk breaks, and fuck you if you think that means I’m not running.

Am I going to win a race? Hell, no. Not like that. And every ableist, elitist, rule-making asshole who crosses ahead of me can remind me that I’ll never place that way. But to suggest that an athlete who traverses the distance of their own motivation and power is lesser for their method? They’ve missed the point.