Goals in Sight

In an earlier time, Marla Runyan might have just had information cards printed. Or maybe passed out educational brochures to every reporter, every fan, every stranger who wanted to know about Macular Degeneration or Stargardt’s Disease or the working definition of “legally blind.”

Today, Runyan uses the Internet. She has her own Web site--www.marlarunyan.com--and that’s where she now directs the curious, providing them all the answers to their FAQs with a quick click of the mouse.

Runyan wrote the text, but in order to read it on screen, she first had to install a special software program. The software enlarges a section of the screen up to 16 times its normal size, enabling Runyan to identify each blurry black character as she types it, and features a voice output system that recites each word aloud as it is written.

“Today,” Runyan writes, “my visual acuity is 20/300 in the left eye and 20/400 in the right eye. This is WITH contact lenses.”

And: “However, my peripheral vision is intact and this enables me to get around very well. I can walk or run without assistance (obviously) and I can even navigate through a crowded room. But, in these instances I wouldn’t be able to recognize the people around me. So, while I can run by myself on the track, roads, and wood chip trails, I may not be able to recognize my coach standing 10 feet away! (He’s used to this).”

And: “I can only read some printed materials with a strong magnifying glass. Other print I place under my Closed Circuit Television so I can read it. The CCTV is about the size of a computer monitor but it is elevated on a frame above a sliding tray. A very small camera ‘looks’ down upon the book or magazine on the tray and displays the print in very large type on the screen.

“I use my CCTV for almost all print related tasks including reading Track and Field News and writing in my training log.”

Runyan had an interesting entry for her log on the date of July 16, 2000.

Sunday, Sacramento. Qualified for U.S. Olympic track and field team.

Despite not being able to see the faces of her competitors or their bib numbers, despite not being able to see the scoreboard or the finish line, despite almost withdrawing from the biggest race of her life because of an excruciating hip injury, Runyan finished third in the women’s 1,500-meter final at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials--making her the first legally blind American athlete to qualify for the Olympics.

Except the 31-year-old Runyan would prefer you not refer to her in those terms.

“I want my performances on the track to be seen for what they are,” Runyan says. “I don’t want it to be seen as an incredible effort despite being legally blind. I want it to be seen as an incredible effort. Period. It was enough to make the Olympic team . . .

“It’s not like I go out to the track before the trials and I say, ‘Aw, gee, I’m legally blind and they’re not and what am I going to do now?’ It’s really not like that at all. It’s more like, ‘OK, how can I get on the team? How fast do I have to run? Where do I have to be in the last 200 meters?’ Those kinds of thoughts.

“So to try to balance it, I want to stress the point that we should all be seen for the abilities and the strengths and the qualities that define us as people and really downplay the things I can’t do because of my vision disability and try to make them disappear or fade away or not be something that’s defining me.”

Runyan prefers the label that follows her everywhere she walks, jogs or runs around her hometown of Eugene, Ore.

“In general, people back home just know me as ‘the runner girl,’ ” Runyan says with a laugh. “Every time I go in the store, they say, ‘Oh, are you that runner girl?’ ”

Yes, she is--and around Eugene, populated as it is with outdoor enthusiasts always on the move, that occasionally can be hazardous.

During a training run in early June, Runyan and her limited field of vision were ambushed by a bicyclist heading in her direction, causing Runyan to leap out of the bike’s path, damaging hip tendons in her left leg.

The injury essentially forced Runyan to stop training for five crucial weeks leading up to the Olympic trials and led her to consider pulling out of the trials more than once.

“I was in the best shape, the best fitness of my life, no doubt, by the end of May,” Runyan says. “I ran my first 5,000 in May and ran very well. So I was getting really confident and maybe a little greedy about the trials. I was actually going to double. I was going to run the 1,500 and the 5,000. And then, this injury sort of came out of nowhere.

“I hadn’t had an injury problem in two years. The injury, it really humbled me in a big hurry and scared me . . . My confidence was definitely put to the test and my attitude put to the test and the people around me were put to the test trying to deal with my frustration.”

Runyan canceled appearances at meets in Eugene and Palo Alto, shut down all media requests, pulled out of town and took refuge for a few weeks of well-insulated isolation in Colorado Springs, Colo. Mentally and emotionally, she felt she needed to regroup. Physically, her hip was refusing to get with the program.

Days before the trials, Runyan still was uncertain if she would be able to race. Finally, on the opening day of the meet, she decided to give the 1,500-meter preliminaries a go, gritting her teeth through 4 minutes 9.68 seconds of pain, the fourth fastest time of the day.

Runyan was in the final. That was the upside.

The downside? Her leg had only one day to recuperate.

The outlook wasn’t brilliant when Runyan showed up at the Cal State Sacramento track to warm up for the final, except Runyan didn’t warm up. Her leg was so sore, Runyan wasn’t sure it had 1,500 meters left in it. At this point, every step she took was precious.

Runyan remembers looking back at her coach and her physical therapist and seeing “the sadness on their faces because of my injury. When I went out to the track, I was finally alone and it actually felt good. It felt like the outcome of this race now was my responsibility.

“I had seen a sports psychologist after I got injured and one of the things that he was trying to tell me was that even though I hadn’t run in five weeks, the outcome of the race was not set. I still had control over it. I had a say in what was going to happen . . .

“I just made a decision that I was going to make this team. I was expecting that from me. I wasn’t going to use an injury or anything else as an excuse. It was my responsibility, and I wanted it so bad, I had to make it happen.”

Runyan conceded first and second places to the favorites, Regina Jacobs and Suzy Favor Hamilton. As she said at the trials, “My strategy basically was third, to let Regina and Suzy do what they want to do.”

The race unfolded to form. Jacobs and Hamilton quickly separated from the pack and Runyan concerned herself with finishing ahead of the Shayne Culpepper, the runner most likely to challenge her for third place. Runyan knew Culpepper as the woman in bright blue--that’s all she could discern as she squinted in Culpepper’s direction, just a bouncing, moving mass of bright blue.

With one lap to go, Runyan was trailing the blue streak, along with four other runners. With 250 meters to go, Runyan began to kick, passing Culpepper and two others and hitting the finish line behind Jacobs and Hamilton in 4:06.44.

Runyan had made the Olympic team.

“When I crossed the finish line, I thought I was going to feel a lot more emotional,” Runyan says. “But, rather, I felt like I had done what I really expected myself to do.

“I also looked up at the sky and I just said, ‘Thank you.’ I know that sounds corny, but I really was doing a lot mental bargaining with a higher power, saying, ‘Just give me this opportunity, I won’t feel so bad.’ And I was able to make it happen.”

In the post-race interview session, Jacobs called Runyan “incredibly courageous.” Runyan might want to downplay her 20-year struggle with Stargardt’s Disease, a degenerative condition that began eroding her eyesight when she was 9, leaving her legally blind by the time she was 12. But Jacobs saluted Runyan and her persistence, saying, “Maybe there’s somebody out there who’s been told she can’t sing, who knows she can. Maybe that person watched Marla today and knows that she can do anything she wants.”

In four years, Runyan had made the unprecedented jump from the Paralympics, where she won gold medals in 1992 and 1996, to the Olympics, where she will compete against the sport’s greatest athletes on the world’s most visible stage.

When she returned to Eugene after the trials, Runyan says she was greeted by “250 e-mails. Much of the response was from the media, and not only in this country but internationally. It seems like people all over the world were really fascinated by my story, and that surprised me.”

The fascination only will intensify in the days leading up to the first 1,500-meter heat. A legally blind runner competing in the Olympics? In the sports media business, that’s known as an irresistible hook.

Runyan, for her part, will be doing her most to block out the commotion. She says she just wants to run, blend in, show well.

As for the rest, well, there’s always her Web site.