Scott Mills' Story

Just Another Runner’s Story March 2020 Written by Gale Fischer

Runner for Life

“I’ll be happy if running and I can grow old together”

—-Haruki Murakami

As members of the running community each of us has a journey, a story that unfolds over time. There are specific elements to each of our stories that are specific to running but there are also segments of each of our narratives in which running is weaved together with all fabrics of our lives. Running blends into each participant's life journey at different times. For some like myself, it starts near the end of early adulthood approaching mid-life. Others find running later in life as a way to combat a few decades of unhealthy living in the midst of a half-century of existence. Some excel as high school runners, give it up upon graduation, and reunite with it again later in life. For MHS alumni runner, Scott Mills memories of life before running are few and far between. He began running at a young age and has not looked back. Scott and running have gone together like peas and carrots for most of his life. 

Scott reflects on the beginning stages of his running pilgrimage. “I first started running when I was twelve years old. I was in the sixth grade and was still too young for the middle school track team so I would just run on my own.” By his own admission what Scott enjoys the most about running is the time it allows for him to become lost alone in his own thoughts. As important as this alone time was for Scott at an early age he still possessed a competitive edge. He may have been too young for school-based competition but he wouldn’t let that prevent him from mixing racing against others into his running routine. “There was an AAU meet in Lake City, Iowa so I signed up for it just to get a ribbon. I took first place in the mile.” 

Winning that initial race no doubt fueled his desire to run but I suspect Scott’s infatuation with running would have blossomed with or without a first-place finish. “I kept training. I just enjoyed running. I started running for our middle school team as a 7th-grade student. I ran the half-mile which was the longest distance in middle school.” It wasn’t as if Scott didn’t appreciate the races that were offered for middle school runners, but he still sought longer distances to test his speed and endurance. “I still competed in the AAU circuit and ran the mile and two-mile. I won the mile and two-mile at the state AAU meet in 6th grade and 8th grade. My best mile in middle school was just over five minutes.”

Although running quickly became his favorite sport, Scott enjoyed all sports as a kid. He wouldn’t let his small stature keep him off the diamond, gridiron, or hardwood. He participated in football, baseball, and basketball as a student-athlete but this didn’t necessarily equate to an off-season for running. “I ran year-round. Finding time to run each day was not always easy, especially during the track off-season. Between school, homework, practice for my other sports teams, and a part-time job at Thrifty’s Grocery Store, squeezing a daily run in would sometimes create a challenge, but I always seemed to find time to run.”

Although Scott would without a doubt be content to run simply for the purity and joy of the sport, the push to outlast the competition would help to feed his passion. As a high school track athlete, the oval was Scott’s stage. The two mile was where Scott truly excelled but he proved his versatility his entire high school career and in particular for a home meet his junior year, pulling the trifecta by winning the 800, the mile, and the two mile for the Manning Invitational. He would show his potential running the two-mile his freshman year and then dominate his last three years. “I qualified for the state meet in the two-mile every year but my freshman year. Excluding the state meet I only got beat once in the two-mile my junior and senior years. My highest finish in the two-mile at the state meet was a third-place finish my senior year. My time for this, my final race as a high school athlete, was ten minutes and 26/100 of a second, my fastest two-mile in high school.” This time still stands as the school record for the two-mile. Scott’s fastest mile time in high school was a four-minute forty-seven-second performance in his junior year. 

Cross-country would have been a natural fit for Scott. Unfortunately, Manning didn’t have a cross-country team at the time of his high school career.  Manning Hall of Famer, Floyd Forman, his football and track coach understood Scott’s potential as a runner and realized that something had to be done to allow Scott to run cross-country. Scott’s words illustrate his gratitude to his coach for going the extra mile for him.  Coach Forman had a conversation with me about cross country the summer before my senior year. Floyd thought that I should get some cross-country experience for college. He made a few calls and was able to get me on the Audubon’s High School cross country team.” 

Scott found success as a cross-country runner with three second-place finishes in his only season. He was able to break the seventeen-minute barrier with a personal best of sixteen minutes and thirty-two seconds. 

Scott continued to run competitively after high school, landing a spot on the cross-country team for Westmar College in LeMars, Iowa. He also tried track his freshman year at Westmar.  Scott joined the National Guard after his freshman year at Westmar and competed as a college runner for just one year, but this didn’t seem to alter the role that running would continue to play in his life. 

Upon finishing his career running as a student-athlete, Scott took the next logical step, by jumping up to the marathon distance. “At the age of nineteen, I ran my first marathon, the Drake Relays Marathon with a finishing time of three hours and eleven minutes. I wasn’t running competitively anymore so I decided I’d run a marathon. A year later I ran the Drake Relays Marathon again finishing in three hours and seven minutes.” Scott has finished thirty-seven marathons and is most proud of a streak he has going with his hometown marathon.  “I ran the first Des Moines Marathon in 2002. I’m one of five people who have run every Des Moines Marathon. My goal is to run the Des Moines Marathon for as many years as possible.” 

Along with running Scott has dabbled with other passions including geocaching and cycling. He has participated in one of our country’s most popular bike rides, RAGBRAI, which is a week-long trek across the state of Iowa. “I started participating in RAGBRAI in 2007. I have done it every year since except during COVID.” 

In his years as a runner, Scott has faced many great competitors but his greatest victory would come in a race against one of the world’s most unforgiving ailments. “In 2011 I discovered a lump in my right groin. I went to see a doctor in February of 2012.” Scott would eventually be diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. 

 

The diagnosis surely left Scott reeling with a wave of emotions ranging from helplessness to hope with the confidence gained through the years on the athletic field. “I was only forty-one years old. I was hooked up with Dr. Freeman, a young doctor who was also an endurance athlete. I was told that I would have six to eight years to live.” Scott wouldn’t let his prognosis knock him to the ground. “It has been nine years. I believe that I have outlived my prognosis due to modern medicine but also because of a positive attitude, prayer, and a higher power. They say that I am almost cured. I don’t have to do another scan until 2023.”

Like most who have survived or succumbed to cancer’s wrath, the fight was no walk in the park for Scott. “I had thirty rounds of chemo/immunotherapy. I was able to keep running and participate in RAGBRAI through this. I’ve learned to never give up and never be afraid to ask for help. My wife, Carrie, has been a rock. She has always been there for me emotionally and to help organize doctor appointments and medicines.” 

 

Scott remained steadfast to much of his life structure in the face of adversity. He continued to run through treatment and participate in one of his favorite annual events, RAGBRAI. While traversing across Iowa on a bike during RAGBRAI 2013, Scott, his best friend Steve Buser, and his brother-in-law, Vic, decided that riding a bike wasn’t the only way to travel from the Mississippi River to the Missouri River. They decided that Scott would run across Iowa. It would take a few years of planning but in August of 2015, Scott began his trek across Iowa on foot. 

Scott was on a pause with his cancer treatment at the time of his trans-state run. It started as a way for Scott to face and overcome another challenge but the three decided that they should use the event to raise some money. “We picked St. Judes Children’s Hospital as a charity. As an adult who had been dealt a direct blow from cancer, I was annoyed but the idea of a child facing cancer just pissed me off.  We raised over $11,000.”

Scott’s goal of running across his home state was a great undertaking but this is not the only goal in which he has combined his passion for running and his love for Iowa. Scott’s love for running and passion for what small-town Midwest culture represents has driven one of his long-term goals. “I had always heard about people running across Iowa and running across the country. In 2001 I set a goal to run a mile in every town in Iowa. Currently, I have checked off 558 towns.”

In pursuit of this unique goal, Scott’s mindset has always been to keep it casual and fun and not stress out about getting it done in a specified amount of time. “There are three reasons why I like visiting all of these towns. The first reason is that I love the interactions that I have with the people that I see and talk to. Secondly, I am never bored with the unique things that I see. Perhaps what I like most about running in every town is that each small town has good food.” 

As a runner and human being, Scott has been blessed with a bounty of experiences, some good, some not so good but all have given him an appreciation for life. As a high school athlete, he aligned himself with some of the best in the state of Iowa through natural athletic ability and a relentless work ethic. He has looked perhaps his most formidable foe, cancer in the eye, and not flinched. Age and changing expectations about what role running should play in his life have slowed his pace through the decades. His love for small-town Iowa coupled with his passion for his sport has taken him to every corner of the state, proving that one’s backyard can offer just as much as a destination as halfway across the globe. Through it all he has been true to running. For nearly forty years he has been able to enjoy an activity that is known to boost mental, physical, and emotional health and it would seem that he will continue to run for another two or three decades. It seems as if he has hit the lottery. Keep running Scott.

Everyone has a story.  Stay tuned next month for another runner’s story.