Runyan Chasing a Vision

Through her striking green eyes, Marla Runyan sees a hazy world devoid of clarity. Faces have no expression. Leaves have no shape. Books and newspapers are strictly for others to enjoy.

Yet, because of a sharp inner focus, Runyan can envision what she cannot see. She’ll prove it again today when she competes in the 100-meter hurdles, the first event of the heptathlon at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials in Atlanta.

Although Runyan won’t be able to see any of the 10 hurdles placed before her, she’ll bolt out of the starting blocks and attack the barriers with an uncanny sense of rhythm: counting eight steps to the first hurdle and three steps between the other nine.

The hurdles won’t come into view until she is almost to them.

“Just imagine yourself blindfolded and running the hurdles,” said Rahn Sheffield, Runyan’s coach. “I wouldn’t do it.”

Runyan, 27, has been overcoming obstacles most of her life. She was left legally blind by a degenerative eye disease contracted during childhood, but has never allowed the disability--she prefers to call it an inconvenience--to limit her goals and aspirations.

“My attitude is the whole reason I’m here,” Runyan said Monday during a break from her afternoon workout at San Diego State. “It’s how I perceived my vision loss, or maybe I didn’t even perceive it. By ignoring it, or denying it, it allowed me to do everything I wanted.”

The Camarillo High graduate carries that attitude into the Olympic trials.

Runyan is considered a longshot to finish among the top three in the seven-event heptathlon and qualify for the Summer Games in Atlanta. But she won’t be satisfied unless she meets her expectations. Her opponents include Jackie Joyner-Kersee, the two-time Olympic champion.

“It’s not just enough to be there and go through the motions and laugh and say, ‘Oh, wasn’t that fun?’ That’s not me at all,” Runyan said. “I want to be very competitive.

“I’m not saying I have to place in the top three, but there’s always a chance. You never know what will happen.”

Runyan doesn’t need to convince those close to her. They’ve watched her excel at nearly everything she has attempted--from setting the Camarillo high jump record of 5 feet 7 inches; to learning to drive with special magnifying lenses; to earning her Master’s degree at San Diego State in the education of deaf and blind children, her chosen field.

“She’s a hero to a lot of people around here,” said Sheffield, coach of the San Diego State women’s track team.

Jennifer Nanista, an assistant track and cross-country coach at San Diego State who trains with Runyan, says it’s easy to forget that her friend has a disability.

“When you’re around her and spend time with her, she just handles herself so well that you don’t even know that she’s visually impaired,” Nanista said. “It’s only when I point to something--’Oh Marla, look’--that I’ll remember she can’t necessarily see that far.”

A rare condition--Stargardt’s disease--began causing a deterioration of the retina in Runyan’s eyes at age 9.

Her peripheral vision remains intact, but she has blind spots in her central vision that make it impossible for her to see detail. When talking with someone, Runyan directs her eyes to her right in order to see the person.

“I have blind spots that I don’t even notice anymore because my eyes will shift sideways,” Runyan said. “It’s a clear hole.”

Runyan’s father, Gary, said it took nearly two years for doctors to diagnose the condition. Before that, the family was told that Marla would go totally blind.

Gary Runyan said he and his wife Valerie were relieved to learn of a diagnosis but distressed that there was no cure for Stargardt’s disease.

“At the time, we were really devastated,” he said. “Marla coping with it did more to cure our depression than anything. . . . If we ever did anything for Marla, it was not sheltering her or protecting her. Just the opposite. If she wanted to do something, we said, ‘Go for it.’ That way she could find her own barriers.”

Runyan remembers her mother allowing her to ride her bicycle to a local fast food establishment even though she couldn’t see the chalkboard at school.

“I don’t know what she was thinking,” Runyan said with a laugh. “Maybe she followed me in her car. But when I think about it, [my parents] were very courageous not to limit my experiences. I thank them a lot for that.”

Runyan quit playing soccer after her freshman year at Camarillo because she could no longer follow the ball. She warmed slowly to track, concentrating on the high jump but nervously avoiding running events even though she was good at them.

Chuck Stevenson, Runyan’s high school coach, tried to build her confidence before races.

“She would get butterflies and complain, ‘I can’t run. I feel sick,’ ” Stevenson said. “I told her to get out and do her best. She would be so happy after she would win.

“As I recall, she would win three or four events in all of our meets. She was that kind of girl. . . . She’s always been a special one for me.”

Stevenson would sometimes hang a towel over the high-jump bar so Runyan could distinguish it from a chain-link fence in the background.

She reached the Southern Section Masters Meet in the high jump as a senior, failing to qualify for the State meet by one place. She was invited to walk on at San Diego State and competed in her specialty as a freshman.

Her transformation from high jumper to heptathlete began in her sophomore year.

Wearing a pair of borrowed spikes, she beat all the Aztec sprinters in a 300-meter race during an intrasquad meet. The performance grabbed the attention of Sheffield, an assistant coach at the time.

“I don’t like to think about it because it was a great recruiting year for the sprinters, and [Runyan] was not a recruit,” Sheffield said, smiling at the memory. “I kept watching her and the power she had doing her sprints. I began thinking, ‘This girl has a lot more than we think.’ ”

After that, Runyan began training a few days a week with the sprinters and competing in the 400 and 1,600 relays. The next year, as a junior, she started competing in the heptathlon, a two-day event consisting of the 100 hurdles, shot put, high jump, 200, long jump, javelin and 800.

Her progress that first year was slow, but by the end of her senior season Runyan had made huge strides.

The highlight came at the 1991 Western Athletic Conference finals at San Diego State, where Runyan had career-best marks in all her events to finish second in the heptathlon.

She also anchored the winning 1,600 relay, ran on the second-place 400 relay, took second in the the 400 and third in the high jump.

“That was very re-enforcing,” Runyan said. “I had so much success at that meet that I came back the following year in hopes of qualifying for the Olympic trials.”

She failed to qualify for the 1992 trials, but the foundation was laid for her future in the heptathlon.

She finished ninth among 20 competitors at the national track and field championships last year in Sacramento, and in May she scored a career-best 5,760 points at a competition in Santa Barbara.

Looking back, Sheffield said perhaps the biggest obstacle Runyan faced was from skeptics concerned she would incur a serious injury running the hurdles.

“People told me not to teach this young lady how to hurdle because they thought I was going to hurt her,” said Sheffield, a former standout sprinter at Crenshaw High and San Diego State.

“I received calls and heard it behind my back from other coaches. But I don’t believe in putting limitations on myself, so why would I put limitations on Marla? She came out here because she wanted to compete in sports. She didn’t tell me to hold back.”

Of course, an argument could be made that Runyan didn’t know, or couldn’t see, what she was getting into.

On one of the first days she ran the hurdles, she heard a teammate counting them out loud.

“I looked at her and said, ‘You can see all those hurdles?’ ” Runyan recalled. “It never occurred to me that her vision was that much better than mine. I could only see the first one.”

That Runyan has become an accomplished hurdler--her best time is 13.59 seconds--still surprises her father.

“In my mind, I never thought she would overcome the hurdles,” Gary Runyan said. “She struggled with them for a long time, but I have to give Rahn Sheffield a lot of credit, because she not only learned to hurdle but it has become one of her better events. That blows my mind.”

The sinewy muscles on Runyan’s 5-foot-7, 135-pound body are visual proof of her commitment to training, a seven-day-a-week job for Olympic prospects.

She fastidiously plans each day down to the minute, leaving enough time for weightlifting and workouts but little for a social life.

She has no boyfriend and no regrets. Her closest companion these days is her golden retriever Summer, a stray she brought home about two years ago.

Runyan’s commitment and work ethic carry over into all phases of her life. With the help of readers and audio textbooks, she earned good grades in college, graduating cum laude from San Diego State in 1991 before going back for her Master’s. She also is an accomplished water skier and scuba diver, and she plays the violin.

If Runyan has a shortcoming, it is in the two throwing events of the heptathlon--the shot put and javelin. Her inability to master those skills have prevented her from reaching the 6,000-point mark, the line separating elite heptathletes from the rest of the pack.

Joyner-Kersee, 34, set the world record with 7,291 points at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, and has scored more than 7,000 points six times.

“In the shotput, I used to sit there and watch everyone throw 40, 45 feet,” Runyan said. “I would sit there in tears, saying, ‘Why can’t I do that?’ I just decided that’s not productive. I can’t sit there and envy what other people are doing because that’s not making me a better athlete.”

With the help of Pat Thiss, a coach at Mesa College in San Diego, Runyan has added two feet to her shotput in a year and hopes to add another foot at the trials.

“If I throw 38-40 [feet], I’ll be happy,” she said.

Runyan has set goals of achieving career-best marks in all of her heptathlon events and challenging the U.S. heptathlon record for 800 meters of 2 minutes, 6.97 seconds, held by Kym Carter.

Runyan has bettered that time in open 800s, but it remains to be seen if she can do it after six events in the heptathlon. The 800 is the last event Saturday night.

Regardless of what happens this weekend, Runyan will return to Atlanta after the Summer Games to compete in the Paralympics, held for disabled athletes. At the 1992 Paralympics in Barcelona, Spain, Runyan won gold medals in the 100, 200, 400 and long jump.

Although her spirits are high, Runyan enters the trials nursing injuries to her right ankle and left knee. If she fails to make the Olympic team, she is unsure if she will continue to compete in hopes of qualifying for the 2000 Games in Sydney, Australia.

Which leads one to wonder what could Runyan accomplish with perfect vision?

“Yeah, I’ve thought about that,” Sheffield said. “She’d probably be worse because the focus would be off. Right now Marla’s in a world where she has no room for anyone else when it comes to athletics.

“She has no peripheral opponent. She only has herself.”