Eric Gillis shares the details of his incredible Olympic marathon

Three Olympic appearances, a top-10 finish, the best marathon performance by a Canadian at the Games since 1976. Each point is one that any Canadian runner would consider an accomplishment. After Sunday, Eric Gillis has achieved all three with his Olympics marathon. He ran in Rio, finished the marathon in 2:12.29 to land himself in 10th–the best result from a Canadian since Jerome Drayton’s 1976 sixth place finish. Accompanying him was training partner Reid Coolsaet who ran 2:14.59 to be number 23 across the line. Now, Gillis is back home in Ontario, happy to see his wife and two kids (ages six and two-and-a-half) and share these details of his third Olympic experience:

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Landing in the top 10 was one of many goals. “I envisioned myself having a top ten finish and that’s what I did,” says Gillis saying that he’s overall very happy with his result. Landing in the top ten was something that was entertained twice: once by his coach in practice and once when Gillis vocalized it himself. A main focus was seeing improvement. “Mostly I was thinking of improving my 22nd place in London,” he says. But there are so many training sessions that go into that one big day so a big thing for Gillis has been setting up every running day to be the best that it can be. He aims to go into each run with a positive mindset. That’s his mantra.

Having Coolsaet there kept everything normal. “The atmosphere was great in the village. Just going there with my training partner just made it feel normal,” he says. When the pair ran together in 2012, Gillis remembers thinking of it as a “once in a lifetime opportunity.” He’s happy that they were able to go twice.

This was Gillis’ first time in South America. “It’s always interesting going to a new country,” says Gillis. As he had never been to South America before, seeing Brazil felt very new.

His local Rio experience was taking in the Brazilian soccer game. Because the athlete’s village was far from the start line of the men’s marathon, Gillis and Coolsaet stayed in a hotel the night before. That was quite close to the sight of the Brazilian soccer game where Brazil won gold. “For me, that was my local Rio experience,” says Gillis adding that he really enjoyed it. The crowd was about 80,000 strong and as they celebrated, Coolsaet handed out Canada pins.

Mental training is big component of training. Here’s one of Gillis’ best psychological tricks: head out for the run feeling at least 80 per cent positive and all will go well. If it’s a 50:50 positive to negative split, he’s more likely to blame factors like the weather for a not-so-good run. To get to that positive state, he often prepares by having a coffee and listening to his favourite music. He works with sports psychologist Kim Dawson and says he has become a more mature athlete by integrating professional advice into his routine.

His past Olympic experiences helped him prepare. “I can see where the growth and maturity came from. It took 36 years to get to that point,” he says. Having two Olympics to his name now meant that in Rio, he could focus on his race, not taking in the entire Olympic experience. He was thinking enough about the Olympics just to prepare. Of his three Olympics races, he says that this one is the one where he was most able to focus on his own performance.

It was likely his most competitive marathon. “I remember early on thinking ‘This is the most competitive marathon I’ll run,’ and to enjoy that and not feel freaked out,” says Gillis. He made sure to keep an eye on the pack. In the early stages, the leaders were up ahead. (At 10K he was number 71 and at the half he was in 47th place.) That didn’t bother him. He knew that if he stayed close enough to keep an eye on them the whole time, that making a move to join them could be feasible. And it was. “If I wanted to run up front from the beginning, I would have been there,” he says.

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