On a frigid Sunday morning, a typical-looking pack of runners is navigating the atypical snow drifts in Back Bay. But look closer and you see something quite different. The first two runners in this pack have tied themselves together at the wrist with just a shoestring, but it’s one way they communicate.
Rusty Tolliver and Kate Katulak are a team. Tolliver can see but Katulak cannot, so he is her eyes, warning her about the rough, icy patches along the road. Because of Tolliver, Katulak knows when she has to pick up her feet in some places or slow down, and when she can keep a fast pace.
“It’s certainly not as easy as running outside when there is no ice and snow, but I prefer it," Katulak said. " … The treadmill just gets so boring. Also, for me personally, the treadmills don’t have any auditory capability so I don’t have any way of knowing how fast and how far I’ve gone."
So Katulak runs her 9-minute-miles in all the elements, and in a relatively new city. She moved here recently for a teaching job at the Perkins School for the Blind.
“I just moved to Boston in August and at that time everybody else was running around me so I thought maybe it was something I should get into as well,” she said.
Katulak and Tolliver, and other blind runners and guides, are paired up locally through the organizations Achilles International and Massachusetts Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired. They are always looking for volunteer runners.
Katulak has been blind since she was 15, after an illness damaged her nervous system. She was athletic as a child but never was a runner, until now. When a mutual friend set up Katulak and Tolliver on a date, they turned into running buddies. Now they meet on Sunday mornings at Marathon Sports on Boylston Street. They plan their routes and laugh — a lot.
"I met Kate, she was giving me a hard time," Tolliver said. "I didn’t know how it was going to be. I remember the first time we met I actually started walking and I left her behind me, and she was like, 'AHEM. Don’t worry about me!' I was like, oh right, that’s the main reason I’m here."
Tolliver is an ultra-long-distance runner, who’s run from Boston to Austin, Texas, so he’s used to a challenge. But protecting his “teammate” can sometimes be daunting.
"The first time I went out I was scared," he said. "Like, I was horrified. I don’t want her to fall. And I have had her fall already, onto a snow mound, thankfully. But the next mile and a half I was just like kind of dead inside, I was like, 'Oh my God, I made her fall, never again.' And it’s been hard out there on the ice. Because you have to be aware of everything. So I actually have some spikes that I put on her shoes and that kind of helps her — helps me more. I’m more confident guiding her with those spikes on."
Tolliver will describe the snow, trees, even dogs to Katulak on their runs. Together, they experience the fresh air, and say they don’t mind the cold when they’re moving. And in a city currently full of self-pity, these two are downright optimistic.
"This winter that we had, I know everybody’s kind of down about it," Tolliver said. "And Kate makes me think the opposite. You know, she’s out there putting in miles. She can’t see. She can feel the negative-degree temperature. I always tell people it’s like running in a freezer with the lights off. And I get to see this. I get to enjoy the beauty of the snow. The mounds and the frozen lakes. And it just makes you a more grateful for where you are."
Katulak can directly feel what’s under her feet… and through the eyes of her teammates…she gets to imagine what’s around her.
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