Marla is fit...

but people need to drop the legally blind bullshit...her vision is roughly 20/400...so is mine...i wear contacts and i'm fine

what the hell is the problem?

I think her vision is 20/400 AFTER the contact lenses. Not only that, but her vision is 20/400 as a result of having no vision in the center of her eyes - she relies only on peripheral vision. I can see how road racing could more challenging. I'll bet when she reads an eye chart, she can read the outer letters farther down the chart than the central letters.

read her book and you will realize that no contact lense or any other technology can come close to fully compensating for her condition. It is very well-written and will give you a new respect for her determoination and intelligence (I wasn't a huge fan before, but am now).

I agree with Alberto's assessment is that the amzing thing isn't so much her actual racing (on a course cleared of traffic following other runners, etc.) with the limitation, but the thousands of miles of training with a potentially dangerous limitation.

Her vision can be corrected to 20/400. Without her contacts, it's even worse.

holy shit...that's no fun...good god

GO MARLA! Truly an inspiration!

Sonia will still spank her like the red headed adopted child that she is!

Kick some ass, Marla!

No one should wave away her blindness until you read her book.

you're right, the training must be really difficult, last month she was in NYC and was given the chance to run the last 10 of the course and had to run it with dave monti, for that alone she deserves a good race on sunday

the problem appears to be you can't run as fast as Marla.

sensory deprivation is a powerful way to awaken dormant powers. knowing this, i'd say that those who have 20/20 vision and are unknowingly looking at everything they pass by have a far greater limitation than someone who has 20/400 vision and has to feel running. look at her body, the vertical eye that can be seen in the solar plexus, with the pupil basically being the navel and the ends at the pelvis and sternum, has incredible vision/feel.

Joseph M. Wiley,

I hope that you are serious about your description, because I think you are right. While complete blindness would end her career as an elite runner, it is a given that she has heightened senses due to her impaired vision, and it goes much beyond the physical.

Keep the body strong with the ingestion of soy. Lots of green leafy vegetables and fruit clean the colon like an agur and prevent the formation of cancer-causing polyups. Stir fry your way to better health (tofu is your friend). Adopt twice-daily meditation and spend at least an hour each day navigating with your mind's eye.

Is getting sooooo old. Okay..she's blind. Okay, she compensates. How much mileage can the media get out of this? I wonder if she gets tired of it all...