{"id":182298,"date":"2026-04-01T16:16:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T16:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/182298\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T16:16:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T16:16:09","slug":"thomas-panek-becomes-first-blind-runner-to-finish-nyc-half-marathon-guided-by-meta-ai-glasses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/182298\/","title":{"rendered":"Thomas Panek becomes first blind runner to finish NYC Half Marathon guided by Meta AI glasses"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.runnersworld.com\/health-injuries\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Blind runner<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/lighthouseguild.org\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Lighthouse Guild<\/a> CEO <a href=\"https:\/\/lighthouseguild.org\/people\/thomas-a-panek\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Thomas Panek<\/a> made history a few weeks ago, completing the NYC Half Marathon wearing specially designed Meta AI glasses.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">The glasses allowed human coach, ultra-marathoner <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scottjurek.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Scott Jurek<\/a>, to watch the race through Panek&#8217;s sight line, allowing him to provide coaching and guidance from his home in Colorado.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Panek, who has long advocated for ways to give blind runners increased autonomy (including creating a program to train <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wbur.org\/hereandnow\/2025\/01\/28\/blind-runners-canines\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">running-specific guide dog<\/a>s), says this new tool could be game changer for blind runners in the coming years.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">He talks to host Robin Young about the half-marathon and about the ins and outs of the glasses. Jurek also joins them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">This segment airs on April 1, 2026. Audio will be available after the broadcast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Blind runner and Lighthouse Guild CEO Thomas Panek made history a few weeks ago, completing the NYC Half&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182299,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9,56,63,65,64],"class_list":{"0":"post-182298","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-ny","10":"tag-nyc","11":"tag-nyc-headlines","12":"tag-nyc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182298\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}