Four years after retiring as co-founding partner of commercial property services firm Trinity Partners, Gary Chesson says he's turning to a different kind of work — raising money for cancer research instead of for real estate projects.
"I’ve recently decided that I’m going to un-retire! But it’s not what you think," Gary Chesson said in a LinkedIn post. "I’m going to come out of marathon retirement - to run the 2025 Sydney, Australia marathon."
His business partner David Allen died of pancreatic cancer in 2014, and his cousin Thad Chesson died of prostate cancer in 2018.
Chesson set a goal of raising $10,000 for the American Cancer Society in memory of Allen and his cousin. As of early Tuesday, Chesson's fundraiser had raised more than $6,300. The marathon is scheduled for Aug. 25.
"Tokyo 2019 was the last one I ran," Chesson said in an email. "The pandemic shut down races for 2-3 years and then I started thinking that I was done with this distance. If you look at the elevation profile of the Sydney marathon, it replaces Boston and New York as the hilliest of the World Marathon Major races."
Chesson stepped back from leading the company in 2021 after helping build it into one of the largest commercial real estate firms in the Southeast.