Realtor turns New York City Marathon into an annual affair

Executive: Connie Lyke-Brown started off her career as a teacher and cross country track coach in New York. When she and her husband moved to Sarasota in 1981, she couldn’t find a good teaching job without taking a major pay cut. At that time, a friend of hers was enjoying a career in real estate. So Lyke-Brown went back to school. She started her real estate career as a manager. In 1999, she became a real estate agent at Michael Saunders & Co., where she remains today. 

Diversion: A resident of the Meadows in Sarasota, Lyke-Brown, 78, recently set the female record for consecutively competing in the annual New York City Marathon. The 2021 Big Apple marathon, held Nov. 7, was No. 42 for Lyke-Brown. The atmosphere was a little different this year, she says, given spectators had been “cooped up” for two years during the pandemic, especially after the marathon was cancelled in 2020.