Being blind doesn’t stop marathoner
With the help of four-legged pals, spreads message and joy of running
Running a marathon isn’t easy for anyone. But for Thomas Panek, who is blind, getting to the finish line is just a little more challenging.
His journey hasn’t been without a few bumps and bruises, but thanks to a little ingenuity, dogged determination — as well as a few dogs — the 51-yearold runner will be celebrating Wednesday’s Global Running Day by jogging through one of his favorite spots, which include Central Park and Ward Pound Ridge Park in Westchester County. The Guiding Eyes for the Blind CEO is also likely to spend some of his day tending to the runners’ program he runs in Westchester County to pair visually impaired runners with specially trained canines so they, too, can stay active.
“I try to lead by example and help people understand it’s incredibly important for everyone to run,” he said. “At the end of the day, I’m just as fast and sometimes faster that my sighted peers.”
Panek doesn’t keep track of the half-marathons he’s run, but said he’s completed 21 marathons including “five Bostons [and] a bunch of New Yorks.”
His interest in running began when he was growing up in the
Chicagoland area and became a member of his high school’s cross-country team, despite being slowed by a genetic condition eroding his eyes’ photoreceptors.
“I noticed in high school, when it was becoming challenging for me to see colors and sort of see the trail ahead, that I would follow the runner ahead of me,” Panek said. “My cross-country coach could never figure out why I finished second all the time no matter how hard we trained.”
Panek continued to race after high school, but running became increasingly difficult. While participating in the Chicago Marathon as a young man, he suffered an injury as he was passing through a tunnel under the McCormick Place Convention Center.
“I could not see anything at all and there was a post,” he recalled. “I ran right into it and came out the other end kind of injured and said I probably shouldn’t be doing this.”
That experience sidelined Panek for about a decade until a friend got him back into racing. His comeback included another painful incident at Maryland’s Woodrow Wilson Bridge Half-Marathon when he was nearing the finish line.
“At the end of the race this camera man popped out just kind of taking photos,” he said. “Of course, he didn’t know I was blind and I ran right into him.”
Panek said that collision led to broken ribs for him and a busted camera for the surprised photographer.
After joining Guiding Eyes for the Blind in 2014, which has campuses in Yorktown Heights, Patterson and White Plains, the Salem, N.Y., resident began a runner’s guide dog service to make racing safer for the visually impaired. That organization, Panek said, has 450 puppies being trained by volunteers every year for various purposes.
He personally uses a team of three labradors — a stocky male named Westley, a “really fast” smaller female named Waffle and his own dog Gus — to run half-marathons.
The dogs his team works with are taught to navigate obstacles and resist temptation to chase squirrels. But they are first trained to slow down.
“The first thing we teach them to do is ‘heel,’ ” he said. “A dog’s walking pace is our jog, they want to get out and bounce, they want to go, they want to play — their trot is our run.”
As much as anything else, Panek said the dogs that make it into his program have to show they enjoy running.
“We have a long list of people waiting to receive the guide dog,” he said. “I think the program has inspired people who are visually impaired and blind to take it up.”
Panek’s goals for the future include running a marathon with one of his four children and someday completing a 26.2 mile run with no physical assistance. The latter, he hopes, will be made possible by the Project Guideline app he helped develop with Google Research, which he’s already used to complete a 5K race in Central Park.
“That’s an inspiration, a dream of mine, to do it completely unassisted,” he said. “When I’m ready to do it, I’ll do it that way.”
While anyone can come up with an excuse not to exercise, Panek said that’s especially easy for visually impaired people who are more vulnerable to being injured during physical activities..
“You have to break down the stereotype of a blind person tapping a cane and barely able to cross the street,” he said.
Global Running Day began in 2009 and takes place the first Wednesday in June. Former mayor Bill de Blasio formally recognized the fitness-forward event in 2016. According to the event’s website, nearly 3,000 runners in 83 countries plan to participate in various races nationwide Wednesday.