I’ll never forget the first time I ran in a women’s only race. It was a 10k through Central Park that started on the streets at Columbus Circle. While I’d run larger races before, I was unprepared for what it would look and feel like to have 9,000-plus women all gathered in one place, crowding the streets, standing on lampposts to try to spot friends, doing warm-up stretches along the sidewalk. Walking out from the subway, I was immediately overwhelmed. But there was no denying the energy at that starting line; it was electric.

I love running races. I love hearing the racers around me map out their goals and overhearing the folks who are just there to support a friend or can’t believe they actually got themselves out of bed for this. It’s a very a specific type of community.

Women’s only races have this community too, of course, but there’s also something extra. It’s hard to pin down, but the closest I’ve come to identifying it is as a sort of familiarity that makes it easier to relax, to let the craziness in your mind melt away and become your most honest self.

This concept fully gelled for me after I joined a women’s-only running group earlier this year. It has that same feeling of familiarity, and I get to hear my fellow runners talk openly about who they are and what they want, without the same hesitation I’ve seen in mixed-group settings.

These women are unabashed about their goals and what it takes to get there. For instance, a pal recently told me that she’s informed her partner he’s on his own for meals until race day, she’ll be making exactly what she wants/needs to get the right amounts of carbs and protein and he can figure himself out. And I found myself literally laughing out loud—and actually relating—when one member of our group gave a very detailed breakdown of her morning coffee and bathroom routine to ensure she’d have a caffeinated but incident-free morning run.

In a world where we’re often told these kinds of comments are “unladylike” or “brash,” it’s fabulous to have a place where this thinking is encouraged. It lets us relish in indulging our “worst selves”—the part of me that wants to shoulder-check my competitor so I can get to the ball faster, or the part of me that gets to say, “I won because I’m better,” without adding any humbling qualifiers to the end.

Sports allow us to be our truest, most unapologetic selves. It’s a way to force yourself to carve out time just for you, to focus on you and your needs, goals, body and mind. That may not feel revelatory, but when you think about how little time women have to do this, it kinda is!

So here’s what I suggest, from one fellow athlete to another: Be competitive, be friendly, be contemplative, be aggressive, be confident, be loud, be Zen, be focused, zone out, be you. Because as much as it may feel “selfish” to throw yourself into sport without consideration for others, in my opinion it’s really just self-care.