Lou Briones used to tell himself that if he ever had to walk the LA Marathon, he’d quit. That was years ago, when he was regularly competing in triathlons, holding a 7-minute mile.
When he was running, the neighborhoods were a blur. He was too focused on the race to notice much else.
“There’s City Hall — boom,” he recalled, laughing. “Everything just whizzed by.”
That’s not how Briones does it anymore. On Sunday, the 78-year-old Westchester resident will compete in his 41st consecutive LA Marathon — that’s every single one since the race began in 1986 — and he’ll take his time doing it.
He transitioned from running to walking after two knee replacement surgeries a few years ago. The slower pace turned out to be a gift: Now, he has time for all the neighborhood scenes he used to zip by. Taiko drummers in Little Tokyo, “the fun-loving people in West Hollywood,” the smoothie drinkers in Brentwood.
“It’s a completely different experience, and one I’ve come to enjoy,” he said.
Briones came to LA from Indiana. After leaving the Marine Corps in 1969, he worked as an electrical engineer at Hughes Aircraft. When the inaugural LA Marathon was announced in 1985, he did what any detail-oriented thinker would do: He went to the library, found a book on running by Bob Glover, and followed it to the letter.
“I just wanted to be able to say I ran the very first LA Marathon,” he said. “That’s all. Just once.”
But he kept going.
Briones has completed every LA marathon since, along with 85 other people dubbed ‘The Legacy Runners.’ They come from all over: South Carolina, South Dakota, Cambria, Laguna Beach. They are doctors, veterans, engineers, truck drivers, plumbers and nurses. Some were single when they started: got married, had kids, got divorced, remarried.
“We’re part of the real community of LA in all aspects,” Briones said.
“After 40 years, we have all aged,” he continued. “We were all runners when we started. Over the years, you lose the capacity to run fast. Some of us have lost the capacity to even run.” But they still train together in advance of the race, all over the county: the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, the beach in Playa del Rey, from Lake Hollywood to Whittier Narrows.
“We don’t call it a walking training session,” he said. “We call it a run. Regardless.”
Briones doesn’t have a finish line ritual, but he does have “a self-imposed task” that he and the Legacy Runners assigned themselves three years ago.
It started in 2023, when fellow Legacy Runner Sharon Kerson was on the verge of completing her 600th marathon. But the 81-year-old wasn’t on pace to complete the race while the official finish line was still in place. The finish line gets taken down about 6 ½ hours after the race begins, requiring runners to keep a pace of 15 minutes per mile. After that, the roads are opened for traffic, and any remaining competitors have to move on to sidewalks, obey traffic lights and stop signs.
Briones and another Legacy Runner, Cliff Housego, set up a makeshift finish line for Kerson and noticed that there were many other runners and walkers still trying to complete the course. That single act has become routine, and now there is an unofficial “No Legacy Left Behind” finish line, a reference to Housego and Briones’ experience as Vietnam veterans.
Briones and Housego hand out water, snacks, Mylar blankets and medals to each finisher. They also take down runners’ times and submit them to the marathon office the next day.
“If we didn’t do this, many participants would not have anyone there to greet them,” Briones said
Kerson, Housego and Briones will be at the starting line on Sunday, wearing special bibs identifying them as Legacy Runners.
As Briones says, “OORAH!”