Marla Lee Runyan is an American track and field athlete, road runner and marathon runner who is legally blind. She is a three-time national champion in the women's 5000 metres. Runyan was born in Santa Maria, California. After graduating from Camarillo High School in 1987, she went on to study at San Diego State University, where she began competing in several sporting events: the heptathlon, 200-meter dash, high jump, shot put, 100-meter hurdles, long jump, javelin throw and the 800-meter run. In 1994 she received her master's degree in Education of Deafblind Children. Runyan won four gold medals at the 1992 Summer Paralympics in the long jump and the 100, 200, and 400 meter races. She also competed in cycling at those games. She attempted to qualify for the "Able Bodied" Olympics at the 1996 U. S. Olympic Trials, finishing 10th in the Heptathlon. While failing to qualify, she ran the 800 meters in 2:04.60, a heptathlon-800m American record. This success convinced her to try distance running. At the 1996 Paralympics in Atlanta, she took silver in the shot put and gold in the pentathlon. Her career as a world-class runner in able-bodied events began in 1999 at the Pan American Games in Winnipeg, where she won Gold in the 1,500-meter race and was ranked second in the United States in that event in 1999 by Track and Field News. The next year, she placed eighth in the 1,500-meter in the 2000 Sydney Olympics, making Runyan the first legally blind athlete to compete in the Olympics and the highest finish by an American woman in that event. By 2001 she won her first of three consecutive 5000 metre National Championships. She also released her autobiography "No Finish Line: My Life As I See It" In 2002, she added the road 5K and 10K National Championships, and married her coach, Matt Lonergan. She finished as the top American at the 2002 New York Marathon with a time of 2 hours, 27 minutes and 10 seconds to post the second-fastest debut time ever by an American woman. Being an international medalist at 1500 metres and a top major marathon runner is an accomplishment over a wide variety of distances rivaled only by Rod Dixon on the men's side. Medaling at distances as short as 100 metres and diversely explosive events like Shot Put and Long Jump is remarkable versatility. She won the road 5K again in 2003 and qualified for the 2004 Summer Olympic Games by finishing second in the United States Olympic Trials. She took 2005 off to give birth to her first child, Anna Lee on September 1, but returned to the roads in 2006 winning her second National Championship at 20 km. She was the USATF "Runner of the Year" in 2002 and 2006. Arguably Runyan's greatest success came at the Paralympic Games, where she has been a five times gold medallist. , Runyan holds IPC World Records in the T13 classification for the 400 m, 800 m, 1500 m, 5000 m, High Jump, Long Jump and Pentathlon. However, her personal bests at 3000m, 10,000m, and the marathon were also World Records, but were never ratified by the IPC. See marlarunyan.net, the .
