PROFILE--Dave McGillivray has been running for 52 years

 

It's hard to imagine anyone Boston stronger
or more resilient than McGillivray.

(10-18) Friday morning, Boston Marathon race-director and uber-endurance and charity runner Dave McGillivray will undergo open-heart surgery. Please join us in wishing him well. We fully expect to see him back to his usual tricks in Hopkinton and Boston next April.

McGillivray is widely known for his stamina, compassion, and organizational skills, but we believe his most admirable trait is his candor. Dave doesn't duck questions; he answers fully and truthfully. This has become particularly clear in recent years as he has discussed his personal health challenges.

Career/profession? I am the founder and owner of DMSE Sports, Inc. (38 years - event management company and have directed or consulted on over 1,100 events), and I am the Race Director of the BAA Boston Marathon (have been with the BAA for over 31 years).

When did you start running and WHY? Like most active young boys, I always “ran around” but started to “run” seriously and competitively at age 12. Why? Because I was

RESEARCH--A New Look At Age Graded Performances

Ed Whitlock ran a 2:54 marathon at age 73,
and a 3:56 at 85.

Many Lifetime Runners are accustomed to evaluating their race times with the widely-used and excellent World Masters Association age-graded system. There are many versions of this calculator around the web, and they are sometimes included in computerized road-race results.

There is another less-well-known system, created by Ray Fair, a retired Yale University economist who has run 39 of 41 New Haven 20K road races, missing the event only when ill or injured.  Fair, 75, recently updated his system--an update covered by the New York Times.  An abstract of his new paper, published by The Review of Economics and Statistics,  is available here.

The Fair system differs little from the WMA calculator--it’s just a matter of how deep

PROFILE--Debbie Zockoll has finished 42 St. George Marathons in a row

(10-18) Debbie Zockoll, 62, holds the unofficial world record for consecutive finishes in the same annual marathon. She has completed the St. George (Utah) Marathon 42 times in a row, the most recent three days ago when she finished in 4:17:24. "Oh, what a day! It was filled with so much happiness and emotion," she emailed LifetimeRunning. "I have so much to be thankful for, and I am already looking forward to next year."

A wife, mother, grandmother, former teacher, current hiking guide, and 278-time marathon finisher, Zockoll had her third cancer surgery just six weeks before this year's St. George Marathon. [The following interview was conducted prior to her most-recent St. George finish.]

Career-profession? I taught first grade for 30 years. I currently work as a hike guide for a fitness spa 5 days a week. I usually get up at 3:30 a.m. for a