Joan Benoit Samuelson and Dave McGillivray look on during a news conference the day before the 2016 TD Beach to Beacon 10K in Cape Elizabeth. Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Staff Photographer

CAPE ELIZABETH — Dave McGillivray is not quite sure when or where he first met Joan Benoit Samuelson.

Maybe it was at the Eliot Lounge, the legendary Boston bar favored by marathon runners before it closed in 1996. Or maybe it was at a race in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when McGillivray – an accomplished runner in his own right – was nearly as fast as Benoit, the 1979 and 1983 Boston Marathon champ.

“My guess is it was probably at the Eliot Lounge, back when Tommy Leonard was tending bar. We all hung out there. But either way, we go back. We’ve known each other for 40 years or more,” McGillivray said.

They got to know each other because they were both runners. Samuelson, an Olympic champion; McGillivray, an endurance athlete who had run across the country for charity.

Since 1998, their friendship has grown around enhancing the race-day experience for thousands of runners as two mainstays behind the TD Beach to Beacon 10K, one of the premier road races in America.

“I think we know each other pretty well and we can pick up where the other drops off,” Samuelson said Wednesday during her annual meet-the-media day near the race’s finish in Fort Williams. “I mean we’re each other’s eyes and ears so to speak.”

As Samuelson spoke, McGillivray and his team from DMSE Sports, which has helped put on over 1,400 mass participation events since 1981, already were busy setting up fencing, fixing tents and preparing the site.

As the founder and visionary for the race, Samuelson has always been its public face and driving force.

“It doesn’t happen without her. It’s her idea,” said David Weatherbie, who was the race president for its first 16 years and an integral and equal part of the race’s management team. Weatherbie is still on the race’s board of directors.

Joan Benoit Samuelson shakes hands with Sam Mills, the winner of the Maine men’s division of the 2022 TD Beach to Beacon 10K, at the awards ceremony after the race. Brianna Soukup/Staff Photographer

As the race director, McGillivray makes sure all the pieces and people are in place to accomplish one over-arching goal: get over 6,000 runners to the remote starting line on Route 77 near Crescent Beach State Park (the Beach) and have them move safely and enjoyably along the point-to-point course that finishes at Fort Williams Park in the shadow of the Portland Head Light (the Beacon).

“Getting Dave to be race director of the event was probably, if not the biggest decision, it’s certainly in the top three,” Weatherbie said.

25TH ANNIVERSARY ON SATURDAY

On Saturday, the Beach to Beacon will celebrate its 25th anniversary. The wheelchair entrants will get things started at 7:50 a.m., to be followed by the elite women at 8 a.m., and then the mass start led by the elite men at 8:12 a.m.

At some point in the afternoon, when the runners have gone home – or perhaps off to their own favorite watering hole – Samuelson, 66, and McGillivray, 68, will take a deep breath. Then they’ll start preparing for next year.

“As long as I’m beating and as long as the race exists I want to be associated with it,” said McGillivray, who lives in North Andover, Massachusetts.

Samuelson, who grew up in Cape Elizabeth and now lives in Freeport, often notes that the Beach to Beacon has become a vessel for stories, personal and public, with the power to inspire.

“That’s what makes this sport so great because when you’re out there and you’re hurting, someone is going to come along to spur you on because they have a story that’s as important as your story,” she said.

McGillivray put it this way: “There’s nothing more powerful in this world than to feel good about yourself. That’s what we’re doing to all these people. We’re making them feel good about themselves and I get a lot of satisfaction from that.”

When Samuelson, the 1984 Olympic women’s marathon champion, first shared with McGillivray her idea of having a world-class 10-kilometer road race in her hometown, McGillivray was already well established as a master of road race logistics.

When he was 24, McGillivray ran across America, from Medford, Oregon, to his hometown of Medford, Massachusetts, covering 3,452 miles. Two years later he followed the route of the Boston Red Sox from their then-spring training home of Winter Haven, Florida, to Boston, a 1,520-mile trip. Those runs raised money for the Jimmy Fund.

He became the technical director of the Boston Marathon in 1988 and has been the race director of the marathon since 2000.

Boston Marathon race director Dave McGillivray thanks volunteers at the starting line of the 2022 Boston Marathon in Hopkinton, Mass. Mary Schwalm/Associated Press

Initially, Samuelson asked McGillivray if he could be the “start coordinator” for the inaugural Beach to Beacon in 1998.

“I said, ‘How can you say no to Joanie?’ I already had a full plate but how difficult could it be to be a start coordinator?” McGillivray said.

Then a few months before the race, as McGillivray tells the story, Samuelson decided her original choice for race director wasn’t the best option. She called McGillivray. Could he take over as race director? Again, McGillivray asked himself how could he say no – and knew he couldn’t.

That first year 2,408 runners from a registered field of 3,000 finished the race. Soon the field size doubled with the number of finishers peaking – so far – at 6,885 in 2017. This year 8,000 runners have registered, McGillivray said.

From the start, race organizers made establishing a strong, positive relationship with Cape Elizabeth officials and residents a top priority.

“It does take a town. It certainly takes a town,” Samuelson said.

McGillivray said several things make Beach to Beacon “just a special one, the cherry on top, one of my most favorite ones that I do,” and No. 1 on the list is community support. And of course, Samuelson herself. “She’s the magnet. It was her vision.”

AND THERE CAN BE CHALLENGES

As for race day, not everything goes smoothly all the time.

There have been both a dead skunk and, more recently, a truckload of dead fish near the start line. McGillivray was told about the squished skunk in the wee hours of race day morning and was able to broom the reeking carcass to the side of the road and the smell fortunately dissipated.

“The dead fish, there was basically nothing I could do about that. It was there the morning of the race so we just covered it up,” McGillivray said. “You never know what to expect the morning of the race.”

Then there was the year McGillivray dropped a table on his foot just before the race started – and one day before he planned to do his annual birthday run. Every year since he turned 12 McGillivray has run his age in miles in one day.

“My birthday run was going to be the next day. I was trying to be careful and one table slipped out of my hands and smashed my toe and broke it,” McGillivray said. “I was limping round the whole day and then when we got to the finish I went right to the medical tent. The race director of the darn race in the medical tent.”

Dave McGillivray and Joan Benoit Samuelson at a news conference before the 2004 Beach to Beacon. Press Herald file photo

This year both McGillivray and Samuelson intend to run Beach to Beacon. Samuelson has run her race once every five years, usually with a special guest or two. This year Deena Kastor, who broke Samuelson’s American women’s marathon record, will be in the race as will Catherine Ndereba, winner of four of the first five Beach to Beacons. Samuelson might run with Kastor and Ndereba, or maybe it will be with Weatherbie and McGillivray, or some combination of folks.

“People have plans for me to run,” Samuelson said with a light laugh. “I really can’t tell you what is going to play out.”

For the record, Samuelson is also unsure where she first met McGillivray.

It could have been the Eliot Lounge – “I met a lot of people at the Eliot Lounge, for better or for worse,” she said – but Samuelson suspects she first crossed paths with her future race director at a random New England road race.

“One with cardboard (race) numbers and popsicle sticks,” Samuelson said.