The first time Peter Bromka tried to qualify for the Olympic Trials Marathon, he missed the goal by 40 seconds. The second time, he was off by a second and a half. Here's what happened when he gave it one last shot.
Peter Bromka missed the Olympic trials qualifying time by 40 seconds, and then by 2 seconds. So he decided to take a third shot.
"It was hard," Peter recalls."I didn't run as well as I had hoped, and I just thought, 'OK, that was wild. I guess we're done,' 'cause I didn't really have marathon aspirations." Year after year, Peter ramped up his training. He ran more miles and gained strength and speed. The results showed on the clock.In December of that year, Peter and his Bowerman Track Club teammates went to the California International Marathon in Sacramento. Peter ran 2:23 — just four minutes off the U.S. Olympic Trials qualifying time.With meticulous training, Peter got closer to meeting the Olympic Trials qualifying time.
"By the very end, I just stopped looking at my watch entirely, because it became clear to me that there was no information I was going to see on my watch that mattered," Peter says."I was already at 10 or at 11 in terms of effort. I was just going to have to go as hard as I could for the final three to four miles."
In early December, with three months of work in the rear view mirror, Peter and his teammates flew to Sacramento for the 2019 California International Marathon."There's just absolutely no question," Peter says."I was able to feel it every day. And so to be able to be in that zone is really surreal. But none of it matters, 'cause all that matters is running the time.""Right before the gun went off, I was just sort of smiling in, like, disbelief," Peter says.
"My official finishing time was 2:19:02," Peter says."In road racing, they round up to the nearest second. And so, on my watch that I split when I started and finished, it was 2:19:01.5. So a second and a half off the goal.""If you had one word to describe how you felt 10 minutes after crossing the line that day, what would it be?" I ask."So how long did it take for you to take aim at Houston?" I ask.
The day of the marathon, Peter came through the halfway point in nearly the same time as he had in Sacramento the month before. But then the course turned into the wind, and Peter felt his pace slow. "Forty minutes later, I'm looking at my watch going, 'Wait a second, we still have a chance at this.' ""I realized I was going to have to run the final three miles basically alone, and I just ran as hard as I could," Peter says."But, you know, again, you have a sense of these things, and I had a sense that I was going to be slightly over, and I ended up finishing 2:19:20."It sounds silly, but I texted Patrick after the race.
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