USU chemistry professor places 2,200th at Boston Marathon
Shivering and disoriented from the cold, rainy weather, and tired from the marathon he had just completed, Scott Ensign searched for his family.
But because of a miscommunication, he had to take the subway back to his hotel alone. After a 45-minute hot shower, he was able to track down his family.
Ensign wasn’t too broken up about it. In fact, he was able to find some comic relief in a situation that nobody would want to experience after running 26-plus miles in wet shoes and socks.
But, “All’s well that ends well,” he said.
Ensign, a professor in the chemistry and biochemistry department, was another one of the three Aggies to run in last Monday’s Boston Marathon. The other two were Christina Hansen, a freshman in chemistry, and Marvin Halling, an associate professor in the civil and environmental engineering department.
This was Ensign’s second marathon after qualifying for the Boston in the Top of Utah Marathon. He ran a time of 3:13:08 in Boston, which gave him an overall finish of about 2,200th place. Ensign finished around 500th in the 40-and-over men’s division. He hoped to run a better time, around three hours and five minutes, but the weather held him back a little, he said.
Ensign, 45, started running again about five years ago when he was shaken up by some heart trouble his father, a cross country ski racer, had been having. Ensign started racing in 5, 10 and 15 K’s, and wanted to run one marathon.
But after he and his brother qualified for Boston in the Top of Utah, Ensign’s brother registered for Boston and convinced him to as well.
And Boston won’t be his last marathon either. Ensign said his goal is to break the three-hour mark, possibly in a marathon in Newport, Ore., which is a flatter, more sea-level course. This won’t happen until he lets his “poor legs” recover for a while, Ensign said.
Until then, Ensign will continue running local road races where he challenges any of his students to compete in the “Beat the Professor Challenge.”
The challenge is simple. Whenever he is preparing for a local road race, he challenges the students in his classes to come out and race against him, and he promises any of his students who beat him a t-shirt that says, “I beat the professor.”
So far, Ensign hasn’t had to give out a single t-shirt.
-dabaker@cc.usu.edu