To conquer New York

Peter Gilmore aims for Beijing at the Men's Olympic Marathon Trials on November 3

By Cecil Harris

Conquering a field of top-level runners to earn a spot on Team USA is the goal of every athlete at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials – Men’s Marathon. But Peter Gilmore will have a second goal in mind when he lines up in Midtown on November 3: conquering New York. Because for all his success in races across America and around the globe, Gilmore has not always shown his best form in the world’s premier city.

In his most recent New York appearance, the NYC Half-Marathon Presented by NIKE on August 5, Gilmore finished a disappointing 15th in 1:05:06— four and a half minutes behind the top American, Abdi Abdirahman. That was a frustrating outcome for Gilmore, 30, of San Mateo, California, who had specifically entered the NYC Half as part of a strategy to get used to New York before the Trials race.

“The first three of four times I went to New York, it was basically a flop,” Gilmore said. “I didn’t race very well. Whether it was the USA 8K or the NYC Half or even the first time I did the ING New York City Marathon, it didn’t go very well. I think it was because of all the excitement around. I wasn’t able to be myself and focus on the race like I have in other places.”

Places such as Boston, where Gilmore has finished in the top 10 in the famed marathon in each of the past three years, including a personal-best 2:12:45 while placing seventh in 2006. In this year’s Boston Marathon, he led the race with 12 miles to go before finishing eighth in 2:16:41.

“I think the Boston course really suits the way I train,” he said. “I think being a higher-mileage guy and having that leg strength built up has really helped me over the years.”

Though the Boston Marathon course is where the top U.S. women will compete in April 2008 for berths on the Olympic team, New York is for the men, and Gilmore will have to seize the moment as he has at other times in his career.

One of the sport’s hardest-working competitors, Gilmore recorded four years of steady but unspectacular performances on the track for the University of California at Berkeley. He now focuses almost exclusively on road races, competing about seven or eight times per year and spending nine weeks each year with his coach, Jack Daniels, at Northern Arizona University’s Center for High Altitude Training in Flagstaff. 

Gilmore met Daniels while running for a club team at Stanford. Gilmore made his debut at the 26.2-mile distance at the LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon in 2002. “When I started training for that race,” he said, “that’s when I knew running the marathon was something that was really going to work well for me. With my mentality and physical build, it was just kind of a natural fit.”

At 5-foot-9 and 137 pounds, Gilmore has the right build for a long-distance runner. He also has the willingness to work as hard as it takes to succeed. “Running has always been a self-motivation thing for me,” he said. “You keep plowing away at it and, hopefully, you’ll accomplish the things that make you feel satisfied at the end of the day. If people take notice, that’s great.”

Born in Pacific Palisades in Southern California, Gilmore has commanded attention. After he finished eighth in the 2004 U.S. Olympic Team Trials – Men’s Marathon in Birmingham, he placed second later that year at the California International Marathon in 2:14:02. In 2005, he competed in the IAAF World Championships Marathon in Helsinki, Finland—a course he likens to the one in New York.

“That was a loop course,” he said, “a little bit longer than Central Park’s, six miles instead of five, and a lot of little rolling hills like Central Park. But Helsinki was strange. The hills didn’t really bother you until you got out there at 17, 18 miles and beyond. And then, they might as well have been mountains. Those hills really came back to get you. The guys who did well were the ones who really paced themselves early and were prepared for the hills.”

The runners who perform best at the Trials figure to be those who have made a full-time commitment to earning a spot on the Olympic team. Gilmore, who has worked as an analyst for a hedge fund and as a special education teacher, quit his day job a year ago. He now devotes himself completely to running—at least he has since earning his master’s degree in finance from Golden Gate University in San Francisco in August.

“I told myself, ‘This is my shot to make the Olympic team. I really have to do this,’” he said. While I ran the Boston Marathon last year and the ING New York City Marathon the year before against the best runners in the world, I was thinking, you know, what is their training like? What are they doing the rest of the day? And if you had a chance to do it like that, would you take it? The answer was yes.”

Now, Gilmore is on equal footing with the other top contenders. The big question is: Can he handle the white-hot spotlight in New York? His most recent marathon result here was encouraging: He finished 10th as the top American in the ING New York City Marathon 2006 in 2:13:13—three minutes faster than his time in the previous year’s race.

“This is all part of the evolution,” he said, “just getting a little bit more comfortable in New York. I don’t want to be showing up at the Olympic Trials having anything but my best game face on.”