Dave and his wife Carolyn, a teacher, have three adult children. He left graduate school in the late
60s to be a social activist and editor of an underground newspaper. Having retired after 33 years in the
Postal Service, Dave is a national delegate to the Green Party of the United States and a co-chair of its
national newspaper.
Dave began running at the age of 48, basically remaining a fitness jogger for two years. As he
approached fifty he had noticed race results in the paper and decided he could win an award after he
turned fifty. So he signed up for his first race in the fall of 1994, the Harvest Harrier Five Miler
at Delcastle where he always had run.
His "training" began in earnest when he bought a real pair of running shoes instead of the cross
trainers he had been running in for two years. Then he added "speedwork" by trying to run his usual
three mile course a bit faster each time he stepped out the door, usually listening to the sounds of
AC/DC Live on the portable tape player he carried to pump himself up.
The "training" paid off as Dave came in third place, a mere six minutes behind someone named Richard
Webb who won the age group. As Dave accepted his award from the race director, Doug White, a county
employee who happened to be a former Pike Creek Valley Running Club member, past President and member
of its Hall of Fame, he knew he was hooked on racing.
Dave began to enter a 5K every week and got faster as he raced, grabbing some awards along the way.
As fall turned to winter, he focused on running longer than he had before. He would run the Caesar Rodney
Half Marathon in March and do the Icicle Ten Miler to train for it. That season was almost a disaster.
As Dave ratcheted up his training he got tendonitis of a muscle attachment near his knee and had to get a
cortisone shot. Then he showed up for the Icicle Run feeling like he was coming down with a cold.
By the time he was done the race he was having the chills from a strong bout of flu and spent the next
three days on the sofa. Finally, he ran the Caesar Rodney, which was the last year of the original course
which went down the steep Rockland Road, and was so sore he limped in the last three miles. As he met
Carolyn at the finish, he muttered "Never again!"
There's a saying that you can't think about doing another race until you forget the pain of the last one.
And Dave quickly forgot the pain of CR. The truth is that he simply did not have the base of training to
support running that far. Dave quickly determined he would run a marathon and set his sites on Philly in
the fall of 1995. He knew that his employer, the Postal Service, was sending a team of employees to the
Boston Marathon and he thought, maybe, he could qualify. While coming up 16 minutes away from his qualifying
time, he learned valuable lessons from this first marathon: he wasn't able to sustain a fast enough pace; he
ran out of energy in the last six miles(hitting the wall); he had to use a port-a-potty; and he had no idea
what to do about the cramps his leg muscles got and spent four precious minutes stretching them out.
After forgetting the pain of this marathon, Dave dedicated the next year to running a qualifying time for Boston.
He began to do speedwork at the open sessions on Tuesday evening at the U. of De. track put on by Coach Jim Fischer.
He found himself getting faster at all distances and all of his PRs occurred between August of 1996 and May of 1997.
In the fall of 1996 Dave again ran the Philly Marathon and this time qualified for Boston by several minutes.
He felt the emotion well up on the return to the Art Museum on Kelly Drive for he knew, despite the fact that
he was slowing down, that he would make it.
The following April Dave ran his first Boston Marathon. The hill training he had done in the mild February
weather that year strengthened him for the Newton Hills. His 3:21 chip time finish became his marathon PR
and his Broad St. ten mile time of 67:50 only thirteen days later was his ten mile PR.
Still Dave knew he had wasted five minutes on the Boston course(another portajohn visit and more stretching)
and thought he could still improve for several years and run a 3:10 marathon and a 19:00 5K. But despite the superior
level of fitness he had achieved, he had ignored the symptoms of a building problem: Having injured a vertabral
disc decades earlier, Dave had not paid attention to the enchroaching symptoms of tingling toes in the left foot
and the occasional feeling that he was being given a hypodermic shot in his left gluteal region. Dave was
developing sciatica, compounded by the ever-tightening pyriformis muscle caused by too much racing that was
clamping down on the sciatic nerve.
One day Dave went out for a run and his left calf literally stopped working. He couldn't push off and
walked home. By then his pyriformis muscle was so tight, he couldn't sleep and was gripping the steering
wheel of his car in pain when he drove to work. He had to do something and was referred to a chiropractor
and to physical therapy. Eventually he added in massage therapy. After a month of absolutely no running,
in which he won his only trophy as a racewalker, he began to run again. But the fitness level he had previously
achieved was gone and his times had dropped to a lower plateau.
Time has allowed the resolve to set in that a person only has a brief moment at the peak of athletic endeavor.
After all, having been a smoker at a younger age and having had a number of bouts of pneumonia, to be able to
run at all is a wonderful gift. Ten years after the peak, Dave is content to be able to qualify for Boston,
even if it's by the slimmest of margins.
This bio would be incomplete without recalling all the friends Dave has made along the way, literally hundreds
of people, all united by the bond of running. Some are competitive Pike Creek racers, some are beer loving Hash
House Harriers, some are the ultra-distance loving Traildawgs, some are the socializing Rebel Runners, and
some are from similar groups in other states. Wherever a runner goes, it seems easy to feel at home with other
runners.
Being the editor of the former Pacer and now the PCVRC E-Bulletin has allowed Dave get back to his interest
in being a writer, observer and reporter of an activity he loves.
A runner for fourteen years, Dave has completed 47 marathons(as of June 2007, including Boston nine times).
His current running goals are to work on retaining what little speed he has and to continue to qualify for
and to participate in the Boston Marathon and to run as many marathons as comfortably as possible each year,
including maintaining his Delaware Marathon streak.
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Dave McCorquodale at 2006 Nat. Guard 5K (NCC Airbase)
Dave McCorquodale at White Clay, 2006
Dave and Carolyn
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Run, Race, Enjoy!