Santa Clara sophomore competes in the Boston Marathon

By Gina Massetani

26,000 people competed in the Boston Marathon on April 18, but David Steenson was the only Santa Clara student running in the race.

Sophomore Steenson began running the summer before college because he wanted to do something active to stay in shape. He played soccer throughout high school, but he hated long distance running. However, after doing some research and finding joy in running, he competed in his first marathon in Seattle over Christmas Break during his freshman year.

Since then, he has competed in marathons in California, Oregon, Washington and Massachusetts. In the Portland marathon in October, he finished the fastest among 19 year-olds in the Northwest.

Steenson trains diligently to prepare for every race. He begins preparing 18 weeks before the marathon and does interval training and long cardio workouts, running 15 to 30 miles in some weekends. For some, these workouts would be boring and routine, but David loves them.

"With running, you have to find the right way to do it to enjoy it," said Steenson. "Running with the approach to burn a certain amount of calories can be really boring. If you let running be a stress reliever and find enjoyment in it, running can be quite fun."

David started the Boston Marathon as number 2,092. He ran in the first section of the race which is comprised of the first 8,000 people. He pushed himself right from the starting line and ran the best race of his life. He finished number 794, which was a significant jump in his ranking.

His goal was to run the marathon in 2:54:20, but he actually ran it in 2:53:22. Steenson reported that there were less than ten other participants in his age group that finished within thirty minutes of his time.

Steenson explained that one of the best parts of the race was the atmosphere. The Boston Marathon is always held on Patriot's Day, a holiday in Boston. Most schools have the day off which creates an even bigger crowd for this event.

"The energy was absolutely insane," said Steenson. "There were probably around 500,000 people around the course. There was no more than a 2-foot gap between people watching. It was probably my best race every because of the energy and how excited everyone was."

David is already thinking ahead after his successful performance at the Boston Marathon. He has signed up for his next race this August in Idaho. It is a much smaller race with only 2,000 participants so far.

Steenson explained that he wants to race in different states whenever possible. Eventually his goal is to compete in the New York Marathon. After that, he will try to take his talents overseas possibly to compete in the Berlin Marathon with over 50,000 other participants.

However, David's dreams do not entirely revolve around running. Here at Santa Clara, he is a civil engineer. He hopes to continue on to graduate school and study structural engineering. His ultimate dream  is to build sky-scrapers.

Contact Gina Massetani at gmassetani@scu.edu or (408) 551-1918.