By Logan Harle
Intern
As more than 4,000 runners prepare to run in the seventh annual Wrightsville Beach Marathon on Mach 20, one participant is also hoping to raise money for the Foundation Fighting Blindness.
Tyler Millard, 31, lost much of his vision due to retinitis pigmentosa. Millard will cover the full marathon with the help of guide runners and is hoping to raise $1,000 for the foundation.
Millard currently lives outside of Greensboro but is familiar to the Wilmington area, graduating from UNCW with a graduate degree in 2011. This is Millard’s third time running in the marathon and he said that the familiarity with the course helps with his lack of vision.
Millard said that he is able to run by carrying his cane while one guide runner holds the front end of his cane and another guide runner holds the back end, and he follows.
“I use my cane and I can usually see the white line on the black road,” Millard said. “My girlfriend is going to do about the first four and last four and then I’ll have another two or three guide runners running eight to nine miles.”
Millard said he took on his passion of running after losing vision.
“I played soccer and swam in high school and in college I played some Frisbee,” Millard said. “After losing vision I couldn’t really do those things anymore so I needed to find something that I was able to do, so I took up running and started to play the guitar.”
The marathon begins in Wrightsville Beach Park and continues into Wilmington along Eastwood Road and Military Cutoff Road. The full marathon is a 26.2-mile course and the half marathon is a 13.1-mile course.
This year organizers added a section because of construction work on the Gary Shell Cross-City Trail, said race director Tom Clifford. Instead of running through Landfall a second time, participants will run through the cross-city trail toward UNCW which will lead them to run on Chancellors Walk.
The races participants consist of 60 percent being from out of town and 40 percent locals. Because marathon races are in a saturated market and each city has its own half and full marathon, Clifford said that they strive to keep the full marathon growing with participants from around the region and even nationally.
Clifford said that as Wilmington continues to grow so will the incentive for participants to race here, instead of in another city.
“Over the years we have developed a good reputation with what we do, what we give, amenities that are here, the beach and the land being flat,” Clifford said. “As people continue to see what we offer here they’ll continue to come back.”
