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After leaving the city council in 1987, former Sunnyvale Mayor Lynn Briody pursued a number of interests. She left her job as a Realtor to work for the county board of supervisors as a health analyst; then she was the chairwoman of the board of directors for Camino Healthcare. In June 2003, she completed her master's degree in liberal arts from Stanford University. For an eight-year period, she worked as a travel agent.
But on June 19 of this year, she went in a direction she never had before. Briody participated in her first marathon as a walker in the Mayor's Midnight Sun Marathon in Anchorage, Alaska. She walked as part of a Team in Training, which raises funds for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Her motivation was a friend and former Sunnyvale resident, who's currently suffering from leukemia.
Briody ended up completing the 26.2 miles in 71/2 hours and crossed the finish line having raised $4,150 for research and treatment. In her age group, Briody, 62, finished 15th out of 22. "I always knew I was going to finish," she says. "But I really wanted to finish strong and with a smile on my face."
While she was never a dedicated athlete, Briody felt up to walking the full marathon. "I've done what everyone's done--gone to the gym twice," she says. "But I do walk three miles a day, so I'm a strong walker. This experience made me a better walker."
The thought of participating in a marathon had never crossed her mind until her friend Deana Stock contracted leukemia. "Her family and mine, we all put our kids through Cumberland and Homestead together," Briody says. Stock was also heavily involved with Music for Minors in Sunnyvale.
While Stock had moved to Modesto when her husband's job had transferred to the Central Valley, the two kept in touch by letter. After Stock became ill, she mentioned in writing that her son had done a triathlon for Team in Training. "A marathon became one of my New Year's resolutions," Briody says.
She attended the organization's initial meeting in January and decided to make a run for it. Over the next five months, she attended dozens of training sessions and workouts to prepare. "I generally don't like to take direction, but the coaches were really good," Briody says. She trained alongside survivors of the disease, who inspired her to keep going. "The difficulty of living with leukemia doesn't pass when you get better, because you're always worried it's going to come back," Briody says. "They did an absolutely wonderful job."
At one point, Briody had an unfortunate run-in with a bicyclist along the training trail, which left her badly bruised and unable to train for a week and a half just a month before her trip to Anchorage.
Many of Briody's teammates were training to walk or run in local marathons, but timing made the Anchorage marathon her best choice. "And I'd never been there before," she says. Team in Training will pay for transportation and accomodations at marathon sites, but because Briody's chosen marathon was farther away than the more common local marathons, she was required to raise more money for research than normal. She managed to go above the necessary $3,800 with help from friends and family and a matching donation from her husband's company, Adobe.
The marathon itself was an odd experience. "I had to learn that every eight minutes, you take a sip of water, and every 10 minutes, you have to eat something," Briody says. "They said not to walk fast at the beginning, which seems off if you're going for a good time, but they were right."
There were times during her 71/2 -hour walk when there were few people around and the trail became a bit lonely. "It's a challenge to go for 21/2 hours without talking to anyone," Briody says. But she managed not to be the last one to cross the finish line--her ultimate goal--and sported few physical ailments beyond blisters on her feet. She attributes her success to the Team in Training staff for preparing her so well. "They have the support--for fundraising, for training, for everything," she says.
Briody is in the middle of a busy summer--her son just got married, and she's planning a European trip for the fall. But she is thinking about signing up for another marathon sometime soon, possibly the Honolulu Marathon in December. Stock hasn't yet recovered from her leukemia, so Briody is still motivated.
But there isn't another event on the agenda any time soon that's quite so aptly named as the Mayor's Midnight Sun Marathon. "Since I was a mayor, I thought it fit," Briody says.
Registration is currently ongoing for Team in Training's fall 2004 training season. For more information, visit www.teamintraining.org/ncdp or call 800.446.9460.
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Contributed photograph