Dave McGillivray

Dave McGillivray is a U.S.-based road race director, philanthropist, author, and athlete. In 1978, he ran across the U.S. to benefit the Jimmy Fund and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He is currently the race director of the Boston Athletic Association (B.A.A.) Boston Marathon and his team at DMSE Sports, Inc. have organized more than 1,000 mass-participatory endurance events since he founded the organization in 1981.
Athletic achievements.
In 1978, McGillivray ran across the U.S. from Medford, Oregon, to his hometown of Medford, Massachusetts. Over the course of 80 days, he ran a distance of 3,452 miles, averaging 42 miles a day. He culminated his cross-America run by running into in Fenway Park in Boston. His effort raised funds for the Jimmy Fund and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
In 1980, McGillivray completed several athletic endeavors.
During the following year, McGillivray:
During the rest of the 1980s, he continued to combine his love of athletic endeavors and fundraising for charity.
In 2004, McGillivray and other marathon runners ran across the U.S. following the same path he took in 1978, raising $300,000 for five charities benefiting children. Each year McGillivray runs his birthday age in miles, a tradition he started when he was 12 and realized that running was his passion. McGillivray has also run the Boston Marathon each year since 1973; the first 16 years as an entrant and since working with the race as its director, has run the course after his duties are completed. 
Most recently, in February 2018, he completed the World Marathon Challenge, which consists of seven marathons on seven continents in seven days.
In 2006, McGillivray wrote “The Last Pick” with writer Linda Glass Fechter, chronicling his childhood as the last pick for team sports because of his small stature, telling readers never to underestimate their own ability to set and achieve goals. The book also covers his life as an athlete and race director. In 2018 the first of his illustrated children's books was published. "Dream Big":" A True Story of Courage and Determination " is the nonfiction story about reaching deep and showing extreme determination in the face of doubt, disappointment, and loss.
Professional life.
McGillivray created DMSE Sports, Inc. in 1981, a firm that manages mass participatory road race events such as marathons, half marathons, 10Ks, 5-milers, 5Ks, and charity walks. He has worked with the Boston Marathon since 1988, first as technical director, and then as race director beginning in 2001. In 1998, Olympic Gold Medalist Joan Benoit Samuelson tapped him to become the first race director of the TD Beach To Beacon 10K Road Race in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. Other races McGillivray and his team manage include the Bellin 10K Run in Green Bay, Wisconsin; the B.A.A. Half Marathon/10K/5K; Across the Bay 10K; the Boston Marathon Jimmy Fund Walk; the Runner's World Festival & Half; the Mount Washington Road Race; the Feaster Five Thanksgiving Day Road Race; and as of 2012, the New Balance Falmouth Road Race. DMSE has also created several races, including the Fenway Park Marathon (the first marathon to be run entirely within a ballpark since the 1923 race inside the newly constructed Yankees Stadium that had 38 participants running 115 laps ), Run to Home Base (Fenway Park; Boston), Harvard Pilgrim Finish at the Fifty (Gillette Stadium; Foxboro, Massachusetts). In 2003, McGillivray created the DMSE Children’s Fitness Foundation to support non-profit organizations that use running to promote physical fitness in children.