[Danielle Balocca]: Hey listeners, this is Danielle. And Shelley. Shelley is a radical Dravidian and racial equity activist.
[Chelli Keshavan]: And Danielle is a community mobilizer and changemaker. And this is the Medford Bites podcast. Every two weeks, we chew on the issues facing Medford and deliver bites of information about the city by lifting the expertise of our guests.
[Danielle Balocca]: Join us in discussion about what you hope for the future of Medford. And as always, tell us where you like to eat. Thanks for joining me tonight. If you don't mind just introducing yourself with your name and pronouns and just a bit about who you are.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, Dave McGillivray. I am the president and founder of DMSE Sports and longtime race director of the Boston Marathon. And the list goes on and on, but I'll keep it contained to that for the moment.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, so sports and running we're going to talk about tonight, which is great. Before we get into that part, though, if you don't mind sharing, the question that we ask everyone on the podcast is what their favorite place to eat is in Medford and what they like to eat there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I don't live in Medford any longer, so there's been a lot of changes, obviously, over the years. But lately, when I visit, there's a Raising Cane's chicken place there. And so I like chicken. And so that's the place I typically go. And they just have that one meal, chicken and fries and, and, you know, I, anything and everything, but in moderation. So maybe once every couple of months, I might stop by there.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, I think that area has gotten a reputation for all the chicken stores. That's right. Yeah. Awesome. Well, so I know you wear a few different hats. I think one of the primary things we wanted to talk about today was Run Medford. But I know that people have probably heard your name because you have a children's book about your run from Medford to Medford. So Medford, Oregon to Medford, Mass. I don't know if it's reversed or whatever.
[Danielle Balocca]: And my son was actually at, um, I know you've talked to like a lot of like kids groups. My son was actually at the power kids camp a few years ago when you came to speak.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. I remember that. Yeah.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah. So yeah. What would you like us to know about Ron Medford or could you tell us a little bit about, um, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay. Yeah. So back in 1978, I was, um, wanted to do something different, maybe. I've heard about a friend of mine who had biked across the United States from Method, Mass and Method, Oregon. And I thought, well, if he can bike across, I'm a runner, I can run across. Well, it's kind of an idiotic comparison, biking and running, but I was a runner and I just said, I need to train and work hard and give it a shot. So before I took off, I said, can I really do this as a personal challenge alone? And I thought, if I combined it with a greater purpose than just me, maybe that would not only help the cause, but help me get through the difficult times that I knew I would be experiencing. So I ended up doing it for the Jimmy Fund of Boston, which is the fundraising arm of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. And I was told by runners world magazine once that that was the first time someone had combined running with raising money for cancer research so I felt good about that whether it's true or not I don't know but I know that. you know, running and philanthropy weren't necessarily what it is today. It seems like every road race in America now is to benefit some cause. The Boston Marathon, every year we raise between 40 and $50 million for various charities. So I flew out to the West Coast and ceremonially started in the kingdom in Seattle, doing a Red Sox-Seattle Mariners baseball game. next morning get up, flew down to Medford, Oregon and took off and ran 80 consecutive days without a day off and 45 to 50 miles a day and landed in Medford, Mass on August 29, 1978 at City Hall and then left City Hall after a ceremony there and ran to Boston and ran into Fenway Park in front of 32,000 people. So to this day, given all the different things I might have accomplished since, I still look at that as the highlight of my athletic career, you know, fulfilling a commitment to run across the continent and then running into Fenway Park for the finale. So after that, I opened up a running store in Medford, in Haines Square. And then I started putting on some events to promote the store. And I decided after a few years that I like putting on events more than shoes on people's feet. So I sold the store and focused all my attention on my own event management company, DMSC Sports. And since then, I've helped manage, direct, consult on over 1,400 events all over the country, all over the world now. Everything from the Olympic Games to U.S. Olympic Marathon trials, to world championship events, to national championship events, and so forth. So, you know, the very first event I ever did was a triathlon in Medford called the Big State Triathlon. And the swim was in Wright's Pond, and the bike was around Spot Pond, and the run was around Spot Pond. And that was like the very first event I ever really directed and put on a few more events in Medford. And then eventually I moved out of Medford, moved up to North Andover. And now, you know, basically 50 years later, I just said, I never want to forget where I came from. I never want to forget the people who gave me a chance to succeed in life. So I decided to come up with a race to give back to the city of Medford. And we've done it for three years now called Run Medford. And it's a series of kids events, a five mile race, a 5K race, a two mile walk, a celebrity mile, a high school mile, a para-adaptive mile. So a little bit of something for everyone is within the overall scheme of this. So for this year, the fourth year, the kids' events will be at Carmel Stadium on the track there. They named the track after me last year, so it's pretty cool to have, I guess, a track named after you, Dave McGilvey track. I ran on that track 50 years ago in high school, and then now it's actually named after me. So we're gonna have the kids' events there on Friday night, September 26th. And then Saturday morning, September 27th at City Hall in Medford Square, we'll have all the other races that morning. So looking forward to a really good event this year where proceeds from the event are being donated to the, I think there's five to eight PTOs in Medford. So basically given back to the, all the schools in the city to support various kids programs within the school system. So that's the whole idea is, you know, I give back to the city that helped give me my start.
[Danielle Balocca]: Wow. You know, it sounds like the event is giving back in terms of like, you know, financial resources, right? Making donations to the PTOs. I wonder though, it sounds like running has served a real purpose in your life. I can't believe you ran an ultra marathon every day for 80 days in a row. That's wild. It sounds like you shared that there were certain things that you had to prepare for in terms of how you might struggle during that. I do think running is a practice in lots of different disciplines. I wonder if there's anything that anything else that you hope like the kids in Medford or the residents of Medford to get out of this event as well?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, well, people say to me all the time, what do you do for a living? And I said, Well, you know, in essence, I'm a race director, and they're like a race director, what do they do, like, chalk marking the road, y'all go. And now when people ask me, what do I do for a living? I say I help raise the level of self esteem and self confidence of 10s of 1000s of people in America. And that's what I think, you know, participating in, you know, events like this do. People say, or ask me, what's the toughest part about running a marathon? Oh, the toughest part? signing the application, having the guts and the courage to commit. Once you commit, then you have to do the work. You have to earn the right to toe the line. Then you toe the line, you answer the gun, you run the course, you cross the finish line, you get a medal, and magic happens. You go home feeling good about yourself. And there's nothing more powerful in anyone's life, especially children, than to feel good about themselves, because it's the foundation by which we accomplish everything in our lives. So my ultimate goal in everything I do, whether it's motivational speaking appearances, putting on road races, whatever, is just to make people feel good about themselves, however that might come about, and to encourage them to set goals and not limits and to believe in themselves. So and I basically go through my entire athletic career as a lessons learned along the way in terms of what struggles I've had and how I've overcome them and how in some cases to attain a goal, you know, maybe you can't go left, but then you go right. There's always a path. to the succeeding at what you set out to do. And so that's what I try to instill in, especially in kids in the school system. Because a lot of times, you know, I wrote a book called The Last Pick, because actually when I was growing up in Midford, you know, I was, I always wanted to be a professional athlete. I wanted to play second bases at Fenway Park, but I was short in stature. And so All the kids I hung around with were mainly athletes and they were pretty tall, strong guys. And here's little Dave. And so I was always the last one picked when my friends pick sides or the last one cut when I went out for the teams. And I'm not saying I didn't deserve to be picked or I did or anything. It's just, I had to just deal with what I was experiencing. And the whole concept of rejection, you know, feeling not wanted or needed was almost debilitating. And I said, I gotta fight this. I gotta figure a way out of this. And that's when I started running because no one can catch you from running, you know, just go run. And since then I've run about 165,000 miles. I've run 171 marathons. I've run the Boston Marathon. 53 years in a row. I've done 10 Ironman triathlons in Hawaii. I mean, I ran up the East Coast of America. I mean, the list goes on and on and on. And I continually challenge myself, because I want to feel good about me too. And so I think all this resonates with everyone, not just children, but adults alike, that we all need to be told that, you know, we may think we're the last pick or the no pick, but there's always ways to overcome that.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, that sounds like a really powerful message, like especially for children, but like for any of us, right, that have sort of struggled to find our thing or to fit in or to feel confident. I'm wondering if you have a favorite event that you've organized or that you've run.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, of course, the Boston Marathon. How do you top that? I mean, it's the most prestigious endurance event in the world. And I got offered the job in 1988 to help direct it. Really tough to turn down an opportunity like that. So I've been there for the last 38 years. So obviously that's near and dear to my heart. But there's plenty of other events that I'm involved with. I actually put on a marathon once inside of Fenway Park. The whole marathon was on the warning track. So it was 116 laps. So 50 of us, I directed it and ran in it. And it was just surreal. Like here's the place I always wanted to play in, and now I'm running a marathon inside of it, you know? And this, so many other events that I have participated in, there's so many other events that I have directed. again, all over the world, that it's hard to pick one over the other, because they all had their individual characteristics and uniqueness that made them attractive and interesting to either direct or run in. But I've been very lucky through all of this that I've been able to combine sort of a passion with a vocation. And I try to tell people the ultimate goal in life, if you have to earn a living, which most of us do, then it makes a lot of sense to do it with something that you love, that you're passionate about. When I get asked by kids all the time, what do you do for work? I say, I don't. They say, you don't work. I say, No, not in the traditional or conventional sense of the word, because most people work to earn money. I get it. But it's like nine to five to stay alive. I love what I do so much that I don't consider it work. And I think that that should be everyone's goal, to find something that they enjoy and love and so much that every day they're excited about getting up and, quote-unquote, going to work, even though it may not feel like it's work for them.
[Danielle Balocca]: And it sounds like you sort of figured that out by maybe trying some things that didn't work out, right? Like that, like, and I think for kids, that's an important message is like, sometimes the things that we maybe fail at, or think we want to do, like, in the failing presents us with another option, right? That we might? Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I even say to people that in the world I live in, and again, I don't preach, I don't try to teach people, I just try to show by example and lessons learned, my own personal experience. But I never looked at anything that I attempted to do, but maybe not accomplish it as failure. And in my life, there's only one way you can fail, and that's not to try. Because if you try and you don't, succeed totally at what you had hoped to. It's not failure. It's a learning experience. And then you just put your big boy or big girl pants on and go at it again the next time. There's always tomorrow. So you should at least give yourself credit for having the guts and the courage to try. And I have a lot of different mantras sayings in my life to help me get through each day. You know, when I was living in Medford on my 12th birthday, I woke up the day of my birthday and I ran around Spot Pond in Medford, and it was six miles. And then later on in the day after cake and ice cream, I ran around it again. So I ran 12 miles on my 12th birthday. I thought that was pretty cool. I turned 13, I ran 13 on my 13th birthday, and 14 on my 14th, and 15, and 15. When I turned 50, I ran 50 miles. When I turned 60, I ran 60 miles. You know, now I'm 70, and I've been doing this for 58 years. And people say, or ask me, what are you going to do when you turn 90? I said, I don't know, I wanna be breathing first, I guess, that's a priority. And then get out of bed and I'll figure it out then. But my motto in life has always been, it's my game, so it's my rules. So I can always change the rules. I can always set it up for success and not failure. So each and every day I think about that, that it's my life, it's my game. So it's my rules to live by. And I always try to teach people never to be discouraged by other people who either don't believe in you or don't think you should try something. Those who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it kind of thing. And then people ask me all the time, you've done all these different things, what's your best accomplishment? I always say, well, my best accomplishment is my next one. What do you got for me lately? Because, I mean, the past is gone. You can't live back there. And a lot of people have a tendency of doing that. Like, where they are today, they're probably not in a comfort zone. I don't know, they don't feel good about themselves, but when they go back to where they came from and live back there a little bit, it's like, oh, I used to do this and I could do that. Well, that was before. What about now? So for me, it's always, yeah, using what I've accomplished in the past as a foundation of confidence in believing in myself, but always setting new goals going forward and not limits, you know, live for today, plan for tomorrow, not live in the past. So it's always what's out there, what's the next one I want to go after? And again, kids say, you know, the dandest questions, but like, what do you want to be when you grow up? You know, what makes you want to grow up? But, um, I saw a billboard on the highway, actually right in the method area on route 93, a couple of years ago, and the billboard had one word on it. And the word was accomplisher. And I said, that's it. That's what I want to be an accomplisher. All I want to do is set a goal, work hard, earn the right, accomplish it, check it off, move on to the next one.
[Danielle Balocca]: Wow. Well, I'm wondering what the most common question you get about your run from Medford to Medford is.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, there's a bunch of questions, you know, how many pairs of shoes did you wear? You know, things like that, just the mechanics of it all. Like, how did you do that? If you ran 45, 50 miles a day, did you run it all at once? Did you break it out? So, cause I can't just like, they can't understand how someone could do that. First of all, I was young, I was 23 and I didn't know any better. So there was no real fear involved in the process at all. But there was a lot of little tricks to it in a sense of like for me, I ran 10 miles at a time. I had a crew of two or three guys with me at a time in a motor home. So I would leave the motorhome at, say, 6.30 in the morning. And then I'd take off, and maybe 45 minutes later, the motorhome would take off. And then it'd see me down the road and pass me and go to the 10-mile point. So I'd run until I saw the motorhome again. And that was 10 miles, because I had no other way of knowing. There was no GPS back then, or cell phones, or anything. No Garmin watches. Nothing. No Garmins, no nothing. And I'd go into the motorhome, get some of the E, You know, come out 10 minutes later, do another 10. Go back in the motorhome, do another 10, another 10, another 10. So I'd break it up into 10 mile segments for the most part. And I would just think about the next 10 miles. I wouldn't think about 50 for the day. I'd think of 10. And it's a form of immediate gratification. Get that done. You feel good. All right, now let that one go. You got the next one on deck. Go get that one. As far as footwear, you know, I brought like eight different pairs of shoes with me in different styles and different manufacturers, different models. And so every time I came back in after a 10 mile split, I changed my shoes and I put on a different pair because I felt like it was almost like a renewal. Like I put on a different pair and went out to run and my legs weren't as sore because I'm, you know, accenting sort of different muscle groups, you know, with a different pair of shoes. And that was a little thing I figured out that helped me get through each day. So there's things like that along the way. I mean, it was like 120 degrees in the desert and running 14,000 feet over the Rocky Mountains and all that kind of thing. But I just had a take one day at a time, and I never really, the weather was the weather, and it didn't matter, because I was getting out there anyways. And there was, in a sense, no such thing as bad weather, just bad gear. In other words, you just gotta dress properly for the conditions. And that's what I did, and nothing ever slowed me down.
[Danielle Balocca]: Wow. I'm wondering if there's anything else that you want to make sure that we know about you or not.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, on the whole runmented thing, again, the way I look at it is it's almost like a gift I'm giving to the city and it's the cities, it's the residents, it's the businesses event. And so, but it won't be successful unless you have critical mass. So the idea is to, hopefully encourage as many people to participate as possible so that you get the health and fitness aspect of it, you get the social aspect of it, you get the goodwill and giving back aspect of it. It's a lot of fun. So I just want to see this event be successful over the years so that it can continue long after I'm gone. I'd love to leave this as a legacy to the city in appreciation for so many people from Medved helping me get a start in my business and in my athletic career. So yeah.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thank you. And I know that people have enjoyed it so far, and so I hope we get a good amount of people coming out this year.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks. Yeah, I appreciate that.
[Danielle Balocca]: All right, Dave. Well, thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_00]: My pleasure. All right. You take care.
[Danielle Balocca]: You too. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. The Medford Bites podcast is produced and moderated by Danielle Balacca and Shelly Keshaman. Music is made by Hendrick Guidonis. We'd love to hear what you think about the podcast. You can reach out to us by email at medfordpod at gmail.com, or you can rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts. Thanks so much for listening. Guys, what's the name of the podcast? Medford Bites. Medford Bites. Go Dodge.