The modest 42-year-old will be running in the third leg of the four Greatest Race on Earth marathons in order to raise awareness for Seeing is Believing, the nominated beneficiary of GROE 2008-09.

Lai will be running together with his 38-year-old wife Yeh Michelle, who will be navigating him through the course route, holding on to each other with a short bit of cord.

Losing his sight at the age of 17 due to the retinitis pigmentosa disease, which affected his eyes, Lai did not let that tragedy stop him from taking up swimming seriously. In fact, he finished third in the 200m breast stroke at the Bangkok Asian Games in 1998.

Talking about his peep ball exploits, Lai points out that it is a game like softball that is played by the visually impaired.

Their team of nine comprises of six players who cannot see, while three can. For the record, his team had won the international peep ball championship for three years held at Cleveland, Columbia and Houston in the USA from 2004 to 2006.

Here Michelle enthusiastically chips in to add that her husband had won the Most Valuable Player award on the last year.

Lai, who took to running a decade back, had participated in his first marathon in Taiwan last November.

“I did not do so good. I was just testing the waters,” he stated. As for Michelle, it would be her first international marathon experience.

Participating in the full marathon will be 35-year-old Tseng Yi Tsai, who is the current national champion of Taiwan, while Chien Pei-Yu (22) will be competing in the women’s section.

With her hair closely cropped like a boy, Pei-Yu informed that she had finished second to Wan Ling Wu, who came second in the North-East Asian section at the Singapore event held last December.

Regarding his strategy for Sunday’s run, Tseng stated that his main aim would be to get a fair idea of the route and then pace himself accordingly.

“The weather shouldn’t be much of a problem, even though the winters are colder in Taiwan,” he added.