Sunday's half marathon was 13th for liver-transplant recipient

Lenard Yen wasn't the kind of guy who would walk a mile — much less a marathon.

But that's before his liver failed him.

Five years after he underwent a lifesaving transplant, Yen, 58, was among hundreds who walked in Sunday's Seattle Half Marathon.

It was his 13th marathon overall.

Yen is a member of Team Transplant, a University of Washington-linked group for transplant recipients, their friends, family and UW Medical Center staff. Training for the half marathon, then actually doing it, is part of their exercise routine.

Sunday, his arms pumping, Yen sprinted up a steep incline in Madison Park, around the 8-mile mark of the 13.1-mile route and one of the stiffest climbs of the race.

"This truly is a spiritual experience," he panted.

More than 13,200 marathoners ran or walked in the half and full races Sunday — the event's 41st — their route crossing major streets in neighborhoods and in downtown, disrupting and delaying traffic at times.

Among the some 60 Team Transplant members were 41-year old Jennifer Herlihy, another liver recipient and a runner, who won a silver and three gold medals at the recent Transplant Olympics; Bill Furrer, 78, a retired physician celebrating the 10-year anniversary of his heart transplant; and Allison Enstrom, 40, who walked her first marathon with her new kidney and the sister who donated it at her side.

Yen said his diagnosis of liver failure and the subsequent 2004 liver transplant were pivotal, forcing him to reassess how he wanted to spend the rest of his life.

"I realized what a gift I had in terms of extending my life," he said. "And I was able to have a bit more compassion toward myself by doing something that I felt passionate about."

Team Transplant was started in 2001 by Alysun Deckert, an Olympic marathon-trials qualifier and a nutritionist at the UW Medical Center, who was looking for a way to promote wellness and fitness among transplant patients.

On Sunday, she stood on the sidelines photographing and cheering on team members as they passed by.

The team begins training mid-August each year, gradually building up mileage to prepare for the 13.1-mile event.

Most walk the half marathon, though occasionally some run it. A few over the years have attempted the full. Deckert said the real goal isn't the marathon itself. "The point is making exercise part of your life and being part of this community that is supporting and encouraging of that," she said.

For two decades after moving to Seattle from New York, Yen operated restaurants around the Seattle area and taught computer animation at local colleges.

He was diagnosed in 2001 with adult respiratory disease syndrome (ARDS), which compromised his liver. By the end of 2003, he was given a 50-50 chance of surviving the next six months without a liver transplant.

He struggled with setbacks after his transplant the next year and remembers "thinking about what my life and my health would look like for the rest of my life if I survived."

The decision to become part of Team Transplant was easy, he said.

"I'd never run a marathon before — never even thought about it," Yen said. "But I realized that the way to get through the rest of my life was being part of an exercise program."

He said he walks in about three half marathons a year — several around Seattle and the Capital City Marathon in Olympia. In the last five years he's shaved about an hour off his first-year finish of 3 hours, 50 minutes. He finished Sunday's race at just under three hours.

Completing that first marathon, Yen said, was more than just a relief. "It meant that I could be an encouragement to other people.

Three years ago, he traded city life for that as a portrait painter on Vashon Island. It was an easy shift, he said.

"It's creativity and community versus the other c-word — capitalism," Yen said, joking. "I now take every day as a new day — as opposed to seeing it as one day closer to my demise."

Lornet Turnbull: 206-464-2420 or lturnbull@seattletimes.com