As his feet hit the same track where he had resuscitated his running career a decade earlier, Carlos Trujillo had already run 41,842 meters Sunday morning. To keep his Olympic dreams alive, he needed to run 200 more in 42 seconds.
While fighting off cramps that attacked during the 22nd mile, Trujillo blazed down the Hayward Field backstretch and barely outkicked the clock to deliver a dazzling finish and qualify for the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics at the Eugene Marathon on Sunday morning.
A former University of Oregon runner and Pac-12 champion in the 10,000 meter event, Trujillo won the race by over 10 minutes in a time of 2 hours, 18 minutes, 54 seconds. He cleared the Olympic qualifying standard of 2:19 by just six seconds.
“At the 26-mile mark, I knew I needed about a minute from there to the finish to get the standard,” Trujillo said. “Crossing into Hayward, I had done it so many times, coming around the Bowerman Curve. It just motivated me to really kick hard.”
After failing to qualify for the U.S. team at the at the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials in Los Angeles on Feb. 13, Trujillo decided to take a shot at representing Guatemala — he is a dual citizen and both his parents were born there.
In Los Angeles, Trujillo and hundreds of others wilted under the California sun as the temperature reached 78 degrees, and many runners chose to merely survive the course instead of attacking it. This time around, it wasn’t the hills or the heat that threatened Trujillo’s’ Olympic dreams. It was the isolation of running 13 miles on his own.
“In the first half I had my pacer, Daniel Wallis,” Trujillo said. “Once he dropped, I was like OK, now it’s the real test… It was different. I’ve never run a marathon where the second half I’m all alone and trying to keep pace.”
It wasn’t the fastest time of Trujillo’s brief career — that would be the 2014 Chicago Marathon, where he ran 2:14 — but it was the most significant. He delivered the performance on some of the same trails and roads where his career began to blossom 10 years earlier.
Before he won the Pac-10 10,000 meter championship in 2008, Trujillo had nearly given up the sport for good. He and his twin brother, Esteban, attempted to walk on to the University of Oregon team during their freshman year, but were turned away by then-head coach Martin Smith.
After taking a brief hiatus from running, the duo joined the University of Oregon Running Club the following spring and trained under former Oregon women’s distance coach Tom Heinonen. When Vin Lananna took over the Oregon head coach position in 2005, Heinonen recommended the brothers.
“It’s really amazing when you think about it,” Heinonen said. “Carlos has a great story. That’s the way things are supposed to work out and almost never do.”
Heinonen and his group of student runners meet each day at the intramural fields adjacent to Hayward Field to begin their workouts. Heinonen often jokes that the only thing that separates the athletes he coaches and the elite Duck athletes is the fence that sits between the turf recreation fields and the Hayward grandstand. In the case of the Trujillo brothers, it wasn’t a joke.
Once they made the jump from club to collegiate, Carlos and Esteban each ran three seasons with the Ducks. With a revived passion for the sport, they become contributing members to one of the top track and field programs in the nation.
“I give Tom so much thanks,” Carlos Trujillo said. “He kind of helped me find the passion to get into running. … Ten years ago I got onto the Oregon team because of his help, and now I’m here making an Olympic team.”
