Why I’m Taking My 6% Vision to an International Marathon — Alone

A guest story by Lowie van Eck, a visually impaired runner from the Netherlands. Voice of the Blind is proud to share stories sent in by our community.

In 2027, I plan to travel to another country and run an international marathon independently.

No guide beside me. No one navigating the course for me. I will have to find my way through an unfamiliar city, locate the correct starting area and then run 42.2 kilometres on a course I have never seen before.

I have around six percent vision.

Living With ADOA

I have ADOA, a hereditary condition that affects the optic nerve. My world is not completely dark. I can see light, colour, movement and shapes, but details disappear. People often look like blurred silhouettes, and I may not recognise someone until they are standing close to me.

That can make my visual impairment surprisingly difficult for other people to understand.

If you saw me travelling by train, going to work or running through a busy city, you might not immediately realise that I am severely visually impaired. I do not always use a white cane, and years of experience have taught me how to use the limited information I still receive.

My independence does not mean that I see well.

It means that I have learned to adapt.

When I move through a crowd, I look for silhouettes, movement and direction rather than faces. I listen carefully to what is happening around me. I remember routes and recognise patterns.

Running works in much the same way.

My First Marathon Without a Guide

On 16 March 2025, I stood at the start of the KPMG Lentemarathon in Amstelveen, the Netherlands. I had decided to run the full marathon without a guide.

Before the race, I studied the course using Google Street View. Once the race started, one of my main strategies was simply to follow the movement of the runners ahead of me.

For large parts of the marathon, it worked.

The hardest sections were the long stretches through the Dutch polder. There were fewer visual reference points, the runners became more spread out and my world increasingly turned into a mixture of grey and blue shapes. Looking itself became exhausting.

After four hours and twelve minutes, I crossed the finish line.

I had already run a marathon with guides before, but this felt different.

I had done this one independently.

That experience left me with a question: how far could I take that independence?

Running Solo

That question eventually became Running Solo.

In 2027, I want to take the experiment outside the Netherlands. I will choose an international marathon, but the location and date will remain secret until after I have crossed the finish line.

The secrecy is part of the idea.

Because my disability is largely invisible, I could potentially stand among thousands of runners without most people around me realising how little I can actually see.

Running Solo is not about proving that visually impaired runners do not need guides. Guides are extremely valuable, and I still run with other people myself.

For me, it is about having a choice.

Beyond the Categories

Disability is often viewed in categories: independent or dependent, sighted or blind, able or unable.

My own experience is much less clear-cut.

I can see, but not the way most people see.

I can navigate independently, but it requires skills and concentration that may be invisible to everyone around me.

And sometimes I can do things that even I once assumed would be impossible.

That is what I want Running Solo to explore.

Not whether support is necessary or unnecessary, but how much autonomy can be possible when someone is given the opportunity to discover their own limits.

In 2027, I intend to find out.

About the Author

Lowie van Eck is a visually impaired runner from the Netherlands with ADOA. He uses running to explore independence and the reality of living with an invisible visual disability. In 2025, he completed a marathon independently without a guide. His Running Solo project will take that experiment to an international marathon in 2027.

Follow Lowie's journey at runningsolo.nl/en.

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