McGillivray deals with heart woes
Boston Marathon race director Dave McGillivray was at home resting last night after undergoing his third angiogram in the past five years earlier in the day at Mass. General Hospital.
The tests showed that McGillivray, who turned 64 on Aug. 22, has one heart artery 80 percent blocked and another 40-to-50 percent impaired. McGillivray plans to meet with a heart surgeon in the next week or so to decide the best avenue of treatment.
“Right now, my mind is spinning out of control. I never thought during my lifetime and in my craziest dreams that I would need bypass surgery. This just wasn’t on my radar,” McGillivray said in an email sent out to friends and colleagues last night. “But, I’ve also finally learned and accepted the fact that I am not invincible. No one is.”
McGillivray, who maintains a whirlwind schedule, recently served as race director/organizer of the MR8 5K event, which finished inside TD Garden last week.
Just weeks before this past April’s 122nd edition of the Boston Marathon, McGillivray completed an arduous trek of running seven marathons in seven days on seven continents. Each year, to celebrate his birthday, McGillivray runs an equal amount in miles. Thus, he ran 64 miles on Aug. 22
The result of all that activity left McGillivray feeling a tad off-kilter than norm in recent weeks.
“When I left the house this morning, I said to Katie, I do not want to have a stent and I do not want to have surgery. This just can’t happen. It is not who I am or what I deserve. Well, it looks like I really don’t have a choice now,” McGillivray wrote. “On the one hand, I wanted to keep this private. . . . However, I also want to expose the fact that this can happen to anyone, and sometimes I am led to believe that the finest athletes could actually be the most vulnerable ones because they are in such denial of their illnesses and don’t act on it like others do.”