Marathon runner with cancer aims to complete race

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — Elinor Scott wants to finish what she started.

Her life changed at 2:49 p.m. last year when the bombs went off at the Boston Marathon.

Scott, 51, is a Sioux Falls, S.D., native, who is now a mother of four, living in St. Louis Park, Minn., a Twin Cities suburb.

A year ago in Boston, she had just passed mile 25 of the 26.2-mile route. The explosions stopped the race and police barricaded the street. As Scott and other runners milled around in confusion, she received a text message from her daughter explaining what happened. A dream for her died at the barricade in Boston.

Her life changed again in January when she received bad news of a different sort. She'd been in declining health several months because of myasthenia gravis, an autoimmune neuromuscular disorder causing muscle fatigue. Now she learned something worse, that she had stage 4 pancreatic cancer. She went through one round of chemotherapy, which failed, and started a second. If it fails, she'll move to experimental injections of Millenide, a new drug developed at the University of Minnesota.

It is an extremely grim prognosis, but one thing it does not alter.

Scott is back in Boston to finish the race Monday.

"It's because running is everything to her. She started running and she fell in love with it," said her sister, Dr. Jodi Scott, a Sioux Falls physician.

Jodi Scott flew with Elinor, their mother, Donna Scott, and Elinor's daughter Martha to Boston. Monday, with the blessing of race officials and the Boston police, Elinor Scott will return to mile 25 to complete her run.

"Her original intent was to run that last mile, but she's so weak she will have to walk most of it," said her sister, an obstetrician-gynecologist. "The race director will give us the instructions. If they let somebody walk or run the last mile with her, Martha will."

Martha, 15, was a spectator last year at the finish line. Minutes before the explosions, she repositioned herself for a better view -- just outside harm's way, as it turned out.

Elinor Scott began running five years ago. She qualified for Boston by finishing well in other marathons, but 2013 was the first time she went. Her health already was slipping, and on race day she struggled to get as far as she did.

"I was very disappointed when I realized how hard it was getting to run,'' she told the Minneapolis Tribune. "The goals kept going from 'I just have to run faster' to 'Just let me run the Boston Marathon once' to 'If only I could just keep running.' It was slipping quickly.''

The Tribune said a friend from her running club spoke with David McGillivray, director of the Boston Marathon. McGillivray spoke with his board and Boston police to clear a way for her to return for the final mile.

Elinor, coincidentally, had requalified for Boston at another marathon last year and, with her health getting worse, ran still another in October, her sister told the (Sioux Falls, S.D.) Argus Leader.

This chronology would be baffling behavior, she said, except for those who know her sister and other marathoners.

"One thing I have realized when I spend time with my sister. They are not the same as the rest of us. They're super human, and they're obsessed. Those of us mere mortals just can't understand why something like that would be so important."

She is not entirely in the dark.

"I am a runner," Jodi Scott, 43, said. "Put that in quotes. I've done a half-marathon before, but mostly 5- and 10-kilometer runs. I do it for fitness and well-being and it's relaxing to me."

Then there is her sister.