Treyton Lara collapsed around mile 20 of the Portland Marathon on Sunday and later died after going into cardiac arrest, turning a race day finish into a family’s worst call. He was 24.
His wife, Audrey Shin-Lara, said doctors told her he went into cardiac arrest and that he was taken to the hospital after the collapse, but it was too late. The news landed on the same day thousands of runners filled the Rose City for the marathon, and it centered attention on a young participant who had spent months training for the event.
Shin-Lara said she saw Lara at miles 18 and 19, when he ran up to her, smiled, kissed her, and kept going looking strong. That detail now sits painfully beside the fact that he went down a little later, around mile 20, a contrast that has no easy explanation in the public record and leaves the specific medical cause of his cardiac arrest unresolved.
She described him as a youth pastor who loved running as a way to relax and release, and said he had also helped open a youth camp called Camp Genesis over the summer. In her telling, he was as much a family anchor as a runner: the best big brother, a tio to many cousins, and someone friends’ children called Uncle Trey.
The death also raises a hard question that has not been answered: what, exactly, triggered the cardiac arrest that overtook a healthy-looking runner near the end of a major marathon. For now, the facts point only to the speed of the turn, and to a wife still waiting for a loss that arrived before the race was over.
