By Danielle Smith

Leader Staff Writer

Have you seen them? Two runners, navigating the various trails and paths of Oxford? What about their vests, or the cord that connects the two of them together at all times? Surely you have and if you look close enough, you can see what is written on their vests.

Justin Willcock is an Oxford resident that was looking to become more healthy based on his doctor’s recommendation. While he used to run back in his teenage years, Willcock hadn’t participated in the activity in decades, but he was ready to give it another shot.

There was just one problem: Willcock is legally blind.

“I was diagnosed when I was 21 and I was legally blind by age 30 and I am 40 now. I’ve been legally blind for 10 years,” Willcock said.

He decided to start running on the treadmill in January of this year but by March, Willcock started to get bored.

“I wanted to go outside in the real world, so I reached out to the public,” he said. “I had heard of a lot of people doing guide running.”

Willcock decided to reach out to community members through a Facebook Forum, looking to see if anyone would be

willing to run alongside him and be his guide.

“I happened to see (the post) and I’m like ‘I’m a runner, but I’m no guide,’” said Gayle Bailey. “So I answered it and it took off from there. I just reached out to him and said that I never guided but…I can YouTube it…and we’ll figure this out.”

By April, Willcock and Bailey started running together. One of the YouTube videos that Bailey watched on learning how to be a guide runner recommended taking a parachute cord and tying both ends in a circle to be placed on each person’s finger, roughly 18 to 24-inches long.

“YouTube says I’m going to have someone strung to my finger, he’s going to have it on his other finger and we’re going to run, but I didn’t know there were so many different factors,” Bailey said.

Aside from having someone run next to you in that close of a proximity, there were a few other challenges that the pair wasn’t aware of. “He is 6-foot 1-(inch), and I’m 5-foot 4-(inches) so our strides were different…I didn’t know that, but after stumbling and figuring it out a couple of times, I lengthened my gait, he shortened his up and there’s this happy medium,” she said.

The cord became known as their “friendship bracelet.” The pair started running three times a week and conversations naturally started flowing. One such conversation centered around Willcock’s interest in participating in the Detroit Free Press Half Marathon some day.

“I was thinking maybe next year (for the marathon). I just started running, this is so early, I can’t do 13 miles,” Willcock thought. Next thing he knew, the pair started training for the half marathon.

“We run side by side and if there is an obstacle in our way, she will guide me around it and say ‘lift your feet up’ because it might be uneven ground or if there is a tree branch, she will tell me to duck or go around it,” Willcock said “So basically she’s looking out for the path but she is also looking out for me.”

“I wasn’t just relying on my senses, I had to be completely aware of what his senses were and I had to make that be a part of mine as well because I was seeing for the both of us,” Bailey said. “I’ve tried to close my eyes and run and it’s a really scary, vulnerable place to be and so the fact that he trusts me with that, I hold that title in the highest regard so I try to do a good job.”

As the pair continued to run together, they started to fall into a rhythm and learn each other’s cues. “We’ve become really good friends. Anytime you run and you log so many miles, and we’ve logged well over 160 miles together since April, you become friends,” Bailey said. “You can’t help (it) because a lot of minutes and hours have passed and talking about the weather gets old.”

“(As) someone who is blind, I have to trust that person to guide me and not run me into a tree, so when you have trust in somebody, the friendship just kind of falls in naturally,” Willcock said.

Once Willcock and Bailey started to master the friendship cord, Bailey decided to start looking for something that would make them even more identifiable: vests.

“I told (my husband) that I’ve got to start looking for guide vests because running races, you are basically elbow to elbow in the first couple of miles,” Bailey said. “It’s really like you’re packed in like sardines.”

The vests would be used in the hopes of being more visible to other runners, that way, no one would try to run through Willcock and Bailey and could do their best to keep their distance. However, guide vests were more expensive than what Bailey had thought.

“Like two days later, my daughter and a couple of her friends came home with a Ziploc bag of money,” she said. “During the summer, they’d always have little lemonade stands here and there but unbeknownst to me, they had put up a sign…and were saving money for these vests.”

The girls – Tara Swanson, Brenna Mirovsky, Vivian Bailey and Jaylen Jacobsen – raised over $250 through their lemonade stand and by collecting returnable bottles and cans in their neighborhood. This was enough to cover the cost of both vests and Willcock’s registration fee.

“They are total sweethearts,” Willcock said.

“I couldn’t be more proud of my daughter and her friends,” Bailey said. “These girls are not of this earth because they are special, compassionate and just very aware.”

With the half marathon being this weekend, Willcock and Bailey have had time to reflect over their months of training and what they have learned during that time.

“I try not to let the whole blind thing bring me down. I try to find things I can do and when I want to do something, I try and figure out how to do it,” Willcock said. “I am a parent too and any parent has to be a good role model, so I have to find a way to find what I want to do and do it.”

“I’ve done a lot of races and I’ve run through many finish lines, but this will be the finish line of all finish lines to be able to witness this and just be tied to a friendship bracelet is pretty amazing,” Bailey said. “I think God works in the most mysterious ways and I just don’t think this was a fluke.”

As for what they are looking forward to, Willcock said, “We’re going to the international side…so we’re going over the bridge through Canada, through the (Detroit/Windsor) tunnel and then back to wherever it ends, so it’s going to be an experience. When we get to the top of the bridge, we’re going to stop, we’re going to take pictures, we’re going to enjoy it because not often are you in (a) position to do that.”

However, Bailey is looking forward to the finish line.

“I’ve always loved the spirit of competition. There’s nothing like running through a finish line and even though he can’t see, he will feel how electrifying that finish line is and that will bring me to tears for sure . . . It’s really like nothing else,” she said.