Steve Prefontaine

Ever since i saw the movie "Without Limits", staring Billy Crudup, when i was 15 years old i have had a small to medium obsession with Steve Prefontaine or as many people referred to him "Pre". His mental/physical strength and endurance was a force to be reckoned with. Though he never won a world championship and died at age 24 in a car wreck, the man was destined to be an icon. He was one of the best runners in the world. In his short life he was quoted as saying some one the most impressionable things. Here are a few of his quotes so you get the idea.

• "To give anything less than your best, is to sacrifice the gift."
• "A lot of people run a race to see who is fastest. I run to see who has the most guts, who can punish himself into exhausting pace, and then at the end, punish himself even more. Nobody is going to win a 5,000 meter race after running an easy 2 miles. Not with me. If I lose forcing the pace all the way, well, at least I can live with myself."
• "I don't just go out there and run. I like to give people watching something exciting."
• "I run best when I run free."
• "A race is a work of art that people can look at and be affected in as many ways as they're capable of understanding."
• "I'm going to work so that it's a pure guts race at the end, and if it is, I am the only one who can win it."
• "Someone may beat me, but they are going to have to bleed to do it."
• "The only good race pace is suicide pace, and today looks like a good day to die."
• "Something inside of me just said 'Hey, wait a minute, I want to beat him,' and I just took off."
• "Some people create with words or with music or with a brush and paints. I like to make something beautiful when I run. I like to make people stop and say, 'I've never seen anyone run like that before.' It's more than just a race, it's a style. It's doing something better than anyone else. It's being creative."
• "How does a kid from Coos Bay, with one leg longer than the other win races? All my life people have been telling me, 'You're too small Pre', 'You're not fast enough Pre.' 'Give up your foolish dream Steve.' But they forgot something. I have to win."

So all in all, to me Steve Prefontaine was a real life hero. Right along with John Rambo.