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player ready...For months the two men ran in parks around the area. No one seemed to notice the blue nylon strap tethering them together. No one seemed to notice the small miracle taking place.
The strap was Ron Kassen’s eyes, telling him when to veer right or left. When to slow up, or even when to stop.
Blind since birth, Kassen, 32, had always dreamed of running. He had the strap designed to assist him with another runner. But even with the strap, the sport could still be dangerous for him; a crack in the pavement could send him tumbling.
Holding the strap was not a mindless effort either for the sighted runner on the other end. Darold Frezen, 50, had to do “double-think” as they ran. Cracks on the sidewalk, tree branches that leaned too far out, curbs, rocks, anything that could trip a sighted runner, could be a disaster.
“After each session I would be physically and mentally exhausted looking out for Ron,” said Frezen, of Kansas City, Mo. “But without him, I wouldn’t be running a marathon.”
The strap did more than just tether two runners together. It riveted a friendship and spawned two dreams of running a marathon.
The two men’s hard work won them a lifetime goal: they ran 22.6 miles in San Diego’s Rock-N-Roll Marathon earlier this month. It was a goal that Frezen never thought he could reach.
Kassen helped Frezen to see it.
For years, Kassen had imagined what it would feel like to run.
The Raytown, Mo., man dreamed big, too. Not only did he want to run, he’d run a marathon.
But he needed someone to run with him.
Meanwhile, last year, Frezen was moved watching blind children participate in the Trolley Run. The next day, he called a friend working the race and asked to volunteer by running with someone who was blind.
He hooked up with Kassen. First, they entered a few shorter distance races in Kansas City, some 5Ks and 10Ks. A marathon seemed impossible.
But in December, Kassen heard about Team in Training, a fundraiser for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. If he would commit himself to raising $2,800, the society would help him train for a marathon, provide him with a coach and the support environment of a team.
Frezen agreed to chase the dream with him. That meant Frezen also needed to raise the $2,800, in addition to committing to training with Kassen.
“When Ron told me he wanted to run a marathon as part of the Leukemia Team in Training, I thought, `OK, I can try,”‘ said Frezen. “But I was very worried. I didn’t want to fail him. I couldn’t stop at mile 20 and say I’m done, because he couldn’t go on. This was his dream.
“If I quit, he would have to, too. That was quite a motivator for me to keep training.”
For months, the two men ran, with the same pace, the same water stops, the same pounding of the miles.
Every Saturday save one, Frezen left his house at 4:45 a.m. to pick up Kassen so they could run with the team at 6 a.m.
“Running a marathon was a goal that Ron had for a long time,” Frezen said. “I just latched onto his goal and made it mine too. I couldn’t have done it — or even dreamed it — without him.”
The men were part of a group of 82 persons from Kansas City who flew to San Diego last week. Of the 20,000 runners and walkers, 5,000 were from the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Team-in-Training from all over the United States.
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Not all the team members ran the marathon. But Kassen ran. And ran. And ran. And now he can tell you exactly what running feels like.
“Running means dealing with the mental challenge,” he says, with a smile as big as a marathon. “Then your body screams: `Stop it! Stop it!”‘ he says, “and then, after three miles, everything settles in and you think, `This is really OK.’ And in higher distances, you feel pains you never felt before.
“But yeah, it’s fun. I’m glad I did this. Thanks to Darold, I could.”