RIGHT
Trevor
Hofbauer
crossing
the line
as first at
the 2017
Scotiabank
To ro nto
Waterfront
Marathontell he had higher hopes for himself.
“I could see he definitely really wanted it,”
Sportak said. He watched Hof bauer work
hard – at running and at recovery – and wasn’t
surprised when his times started dropping.
Despite missing the podium during his
time at sait, Hof bauer told his father on
a road trip to Lethbridge that he thought
he could make an Olympic team one day.
His dad didn’t dismiss the idea, but others
did, with good reason. As a college runner,
Hofbauer’s best times were 1:19 in the half-
marathon and 35:18 in the 10k, but the way
he saw it, he had improved steadily and
would continue to do so. Sure enough, in the
fall of 2013, he had a breakthrough race at the
GoodLife Fitness Victoria Half Marathon,
running 1:09.
Two years later, in Philadelphia, he
brought his half-marathon time down to
1:04. His 10k times dropped, too, and in
2016, he competed for Canada at the nacac
10 k championships in San Juan, P uerto Rico.
By then, runners outside of Alberta were
starting to pay attention to his progress.
“He’s piquing curiosity as much as anything,”
elite runner Eric Gillis told a Vancouver Sun
reporter in the spring of 2016.
Later that year, Hof bauer won a bronze
medal at the Canadian Cross Country
Championships in Kingston, Ont., earning
a place on Team Canada for the World
Cross Country Championships in Kampala,
Uganda. There, he achieved his goal of
becoming the first Canadian runner across
the line in the senior men’s race.
“I stopped setting limits on him because
he just kept blowing them out of the water,”
said Jamie Grant, the sait coach whom
Hof bauer credits for teaching him the value
of hard work and self-belief.
After graduating from sait, Hof bauer
had fit running into an otherwise busy life,
waking up before dawn or training late
at night if his work schedule left no other
option. However, at the end of 2016, he gave
up his job as a rep for New Balance and
moved to Guelph, Ont., to train with Gillis
and other elite runners in the Speed River
Track and Field Club.
On paper, Hof bauer thrived after the move,
racking up great race results, including the
marathon debut in Toronto, but he missed
his hometown and having a life that didn’t
always revolve around running. After about
a year and a half in Ontario, he moved back
to Calgary, where he intends to stay. Now
27, Hof bauer runs a small coaching busi-
ness and works for Strides Running Store,
owned by one of his longtime role models,
Jeremy Deere.
Hof bauer has until May 31, 2020 to qualify
for the marathon at the Summer Olympics in
Tokyo. According to the iaaf’s new r u les,
he can either qualify by earning points in
a ranking system or by running the quali-
fying standard of 2:11:30. His personal best,
set this past spring in Hamburg, Germany,
is 2:16:48.
His former coach and teammate believe –
unequivocally – that he has what it takes to
be an Olympian, but Hof bauer’s trying not
to dwell on what others think. He’s deleted
some social media apps from his phone and
tries to strike the right balance between
dedic at ion to his goa l a nd pu lling away f rom
the running scene.
As he prepares to race the marathon againin Toronto, he’s not trying anything radi-
cally different this time, but sticking with
a formula that’s worked. Like thousands of
runners across the country right now, he’s
trying to eat well ( he has a weakness for choc-
olate), cross-train and lift weights in the gym.
If he doesn’t hit the Olympic standard
this fall, there will be time left in the qual-
ifying window for another attempt. If all
goes according to plan, though, he’ ll have
another chance to celebrate with his signa-
ture passion on the streets of Toronto.Madeleine Cummings is an associate producer at the
CBC and a regular columnist for Canadian Running.runningmagazine.ca Canadian Running 13pro-file