Running Blind

How guiding helped me see the world around me in more color.

Six years ago, during the Leadville 100 mountain race, I saw a blind runner flanked by guides early in the race. I noticed them again as they passed me heading towards Hope Pass, the highest point in the race. I was in awe of their perseverance, especially since I was struggling with complete vision. While I’ve grown more confident as a guide, I haven't yet braved guiding on trail runs; we stick to gravel or roads. Seeing that team prompted me to sign up for a service to partner with blind athletes seeking running partners. I signed up and waited, but for five years, I never heard a peep.

One day, while at my desk at work, I received a message from a girl (now a friend) asking if I was currently guiding any athletes. She had found me on United in Stride, the service I’d signed up for years earlier, and told me blind runners were actively looking for guides. Nervously, I set up a Zoom meeting with her for the next day. She talked me through my hesitations and encouraged me to join her. She blindfolded me, letting me experience total darkness and the reliance it required. After a brief lesson, she said, “Let’s go.” Despite my trepidation, I took the small tether from a blind 21-year-old eager to run. My job was to keep stride with him, observe, and call out our environment. We had a blast, and I was hooked. Running was no longer just exercise; it was a way to support someone who couldn’t visually see the differences in the surfaces.

A few weeks later, I started meeting up with my friend Jeff, who hadn’t run since losing his vision five years earlier. He quickly became addicted to running. I’ve never seen someone go from not running at all to signing up for longer distances so fast. His enthusiasm is contagious, and he impresses me beyond measure. He’s currently training to run a marathon in Alaska! Then, I received an email from a gentleman in his 70s looking for a guide. At first, I thought it was spam, having had no activity for nearly five years. But suddenly, someone found me and wanted me to guide him right after I’d just learned to guide. What are the odds?

Enter my friend and now basically family, Scott. I’ve been guiding Scott for the last six months, and it’s one of the brightest spots in my week. I pick him up every Monday morning before sunrise, and we head out on our running adventure. He always greets me with a huge smile and a cheerful “Good morning, Miss Kari.” As we run, I describe our environment: the wildflowers carpeting the Trinity hillside, the cotton candy colors of the sunrise, the dogs and their owners, and the shapes and sizes of the birds, bunnies, and squirrels. Scott knows the names of flowers and birds much better than I do, often identifying them based on my descriptions. We talk nearly the entire run. He tells me he still dreams in color and can picture my descriptions in detail. He asks detailed questions and is genuinely invested in my life. We discuss inequality, his college and career experiences, and all the places he’s traveled to. We share stories and jokes at ease. He once told me if he’d had children, he wished they were like me. I nearly cried. We’ve developed a deep kinship, and I feel so lucky and proud to have him in my life. He often shares the hardest parts of being blind, like not seeing visual cues when caring for his wife, Cherry, who has dementia. But he never lets us dwell on those things. Recently, he told me that people think blind people have superhuman hearing, but it’s actually a skill honed through discipline, just like any other skill.

Running used to be my time for me, to work out problems, think through strategies, dream about the future, and let my brain wander. I still protect my training days and my Saturday mornings for long trail training, needing that time in my head to think, but I realized I have more time to give. What I get in return is tenfold. Running with the visually impaired gave me a new purpose. My job is to notice the nuances of our landscape and call out what our feet will encounter, describing cracks, crevices, bumpy surfaces, or potholes, and counting down to big steps or obstacles. At first, it was wildly uncomfortable and nerve-wracking, but the longer we ran, the smoother and more confident I became. What I didn’t expect were the friendships that would follow, the deep relationships I would develop, and the pure joy of running and appreciating the beauty that most of us consider mundane: the color of the flowers, the brilliance of the feathers of birds, the vast shades of greens and yellows and browns in the trees, and all the colors in between of the world around us.

Scott and I at the finish of the Pittsburgh Marathon where he came in 15th out of 54 in his 70-74 age group