During the first week of my first year of cross-country, I skipped practice to go to Wild Waves water park for my cousin's birthday. I cleared this with the coach ahead of time and asked what I should do to make up for the workout I'd be missing. He said to just make sure to go for a run that day. Because it was early in the season there was nothing specific I needed to work on at the time. "Just get some miles in," he said.

I woke up at 4:45 to go run, shower, and meet at my aunt's house for the drive up I-5 from Portland to Tacoma. I remember my route from that morning: I started out going north on 27th, as I often did in those days, up across Fremont and left up Dead Man's Hill, a steep block-long hill running, in this case, from the bottom to the top of Alameda Ridge. It is a short but demanding hill. A runner reaches its top before realizing how hard the climb was. It is in the following block that the price is paid as legs and lungs burn in revenge. And it was in this recovery zone, on this morning, up and running well before sunrise, still new to the sport and not knowing how far I had gone, would, should, or could go, I decided to go straight on 26th and then crisscross through the neighborhood. A turn on Mason, another on 29th, somehow back to Alameda, and all of a sudden, the next thing I notice, a green street sign, white- writing illuminated by street light: Prescott. Prescott, a good street to turn and run up for ten blocks or so before turning down the ridge and cutting back through Grant Park and home on Thompson. Prescott for a while, and done.

A couple of months later a friend of mine (a runner friend, I need not add) invited me to see a movie about Steve Prefontaine (Without Limits).

"Who is that?" I asked, revealing myself as the running novice I was.

A famous runner, I found out. From Oregon, no less.

We watched the movie. And a year later, during the next cross- country season we rented and watched another Prefontaine movie (Prefontaine).

It is striking what little impact these movies had on the aspiring runner version of me from the late 90s. The me of the present decade has found a source of unending inspiration from the legend that surrounds Prefontaine. Before every marathon or big race now I choose one from my pile of Prefontaine DVDs, which includes, in addition to Without Limits and Prefontaine, a third film, the documentary, Fire on the Track, which, on the subject of rebellious Oregonian heroes, is narrated by Ken Kesey. On the eve of Hood to Coast every year, or sometimes just after our first set of legs when we've each just run four to seven miles and have twice as much again to go in the coming confusion of hours, my sister, some friends, and I gather around plates of spaghetti and the TV for another viewing. Throughout the rest of the year, to my girlfriend, Sandy's occasional annoyance, I periodically put one of these movies in and recite whole scenes, as if preparing for a memorization test or a movie-based version of karaoke:

Men of Oregon, I invite you to become students of your events. Running, one might say, is basically an absurd pastime upon which to be exhausting ourselves. But if you can find meaning in the kind of running you have to do to stay on this team, chances are you'll be able to find meaning in another absurd pastime: life.

It chills me, just to think these words. My pulse rises; my mind races like my feet want to, itching under the desk, ready to feel the ground striking against them as my legs extend for farther ground. Of course, with apologies to Sandy and her attempts to study, I can't help but accompany: "I'd like to work out so that in the end, um, it comes down to a pure guts race. If it is, I'm the only one who can win it."

We choose neither our tastes nor our inspirations. When these two abstractions coincide in a song, or a person, or a film, we are helpless--wonderfully so.

Pre's story, for those who don't know, is a tragic one by any definition of the word. It is tragic in the contemporary colloquial sense of being very sad and in the literary sense that it was his one great character flaw, his excess, (also, poignantly, his greatest virtue), that brought him up to the edge of perfection and crashed him down (quite literally, under his gold '73 MGB) to his early death.

A quick summary: Born into a working-class family in Coos Bay, a logging town on the central Oregon coast, Steve was a precocious and rambunctious boy. He made up for his small stature with his uncompromising toughness. Undersized for football, he switched to running and joined the cross-country and track teams in high school, finding instant success and receiving numerous accolades (trophies from his high school successes line a room in his honor in the Coos Bay Art Museum). Foremost among them was a national high school record in the two mile (8: 48.4). He qualified for the national team before joining the prestigious, Bill Bowerman-led, cross- country team at the University of Oregon. At Oregon he set numerous collegiate and American records, and won three national cross country titles and four national three mile titles. In 1972 he ran in the 5K at the Olympics in Munich, finishing fourth, by all accounts one of the great races in track history, and a race that he did more than anyone to create.1 Despite his on the track success, Prefontaine might be best known for his off the track persona (which was essentially the same persona he carried on the track, but which stuck out much more in non-racing environments). He was an outspoken advocate for athlete's rights, instrumental in bring about the Amateur Sports Act, which came in 1978 (three years after his death) and took oppressive power over athletes out of the Amateur Athletic Union's hands. After his collegiate career ended he turned down $200,000 to turn professional so he could retain his amateur status and have a chance at the Montreal Olympics in 1976. During that time he lived in a trailer on food stamps. That it is hard to imagine any athlete today making a financial sacrifice like that is partially due to Pre's efforts; they don't have to. He was arrogant in a way that can be charming in people who have the ability to back it up and the charisma to intrigue us (think: Muhaumad Ali, the best comparison, and one made in the closing credits of Fire on the Track). Most importantly, he believed in himself to such an extend that it led others to believe in him too. And for many of the people who watched him in his life or who know his story now, to believe in themselves a little bit more. And along the way he helped Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman get Nike up and, well, running.

Or so it seems. I think that most of that is fact, though the inspirational bits do sound editorialized. With Pre, the facts spill over quite easily into the legend that survives now in popular memory and celluloid. Whatever exactly happened in his life, or how people responded has been replaced by how we choose to remember it--however close those two things are--in our collective consciousness; it has become how it really was. As Donald Sutherland, in the role of Bill Bowerman, puts it so aptly in Without Limits: "Like Plato and his tale of the world's creation, I will not say absolutely, this is the truth. But I will say it is a likely story."

This legend and these biographical facts, in whatever combination make up a story that continues to be relevant in the running world, and embodied in particular places in the geographical world.

On Pre's Trail: A trail that winds through Eugene's Alton Baker Park. Pre suggested this trail after being impressed with running trails he saw in Europe.

At Pre's Rock: A memorial at the site of his death near Hendrix Park in Eugene's hills. It reads:

"For your dedication and loyalty To your principles and beliefs... For your love, warmth, and friendship For your family and friends... You are missed by so many And you will never be forgotten..."

At the Pre Classic: An annual track and field meet in Eugene that draws top athletes from around the world.

At the Prefontaine Memorial Run: A 10K race held annually in Coos Bay.

And other places. In the mind of every high school runner dreaming big. In Korea and Malaysia on T-shirts in Nike stores, and if there then, through Nike's global reach, everywhere. All of this despite the fact that he won no gold medals and held no world records, facts Nike has opportunistically capitalized upon and admirably inspired us with.

The legend of Prefontaine lasts, not the least for me. Recently, I wrote to my friend who had been an extra in the movie and joked that I was going to get Prefontaine's likeness tattooed on my shoulder. It was a throw-away line. Just something I said to have a better way to respond to "What's going on?" than the usual "the usual." The realization, which came soon after I wrote those words, that I was, at the time of said writing, older than Prefontaine had been when he died gave me pause. What about this man (he had been a man once, even if I knew him only in his current formless form as a disembodied spirit2) drew me to him? He died young, so there isn't as much material for counterexamples to the legend that endures. There are no Washington Wizards years to taint his legacy, no pitiful decline from prominence into obscurity, no sad elderly years limped through on bad knees. He had his potential snatched from him--and what makes it sad is that he, we can be sure, would have reached his potential--or more likely, surpassed it, while most of know, if we know anything about ourselves, that our potential is one thing that we will not reach.

That he pushed his limits, pushed them so far that it was as if they didn't exist3 is why he, to the near exclusion of any other runner, comes to my mind when I am running. His persona permeates the air I breathe and the strides I take every time I run. But he is not a trick I use to try to pick up my pace (usually), though this inevitably happens; he is a thought that comes to me as part of my running.

There is that familiar phenomenon in which, upon learning a new word, one suddenly sees and hears the word as if the world were conspiring in some linguistic prank. It is the same for me with Prefontaine. After watching these movies as much as I have over the past several years, Pre's legend, if not his very footsteps, seem to anticipate me wherever I go.4 He was there in Eugene when I went to UO and ran regularly on his trail and past his rock. He was there in Korea when I saw his Marshfield High School jersey conspicuously sported on Seoul's streets. He is here in Portland now racing me along Prescott.

The inspiration I take from Prefontaine lore is very much the inspiration Pre could have taken from it himself, a twisted self-transcendence suggested in the scene in Prefontaine when Bowerman says to Prefontaine, in responses to Pre's uncharacteristically admitted fear of facing a field of stiff competitors in an Olympic qualify 5K race, "Think how nervous Young is, trying to slay you, a fire-breathing dragon, in your own backyard. You are going to burn his ass up." Bowerman reminds Pre explicitly of that legend, and (more importantly) implicitly of himself, the man behind that legend who bore the thing. For fans and opponents, this man behind has been subsumed by the legend in front, but to the man himself there is some amount of agency in its creation.

The crux of the legend, as Prefontaine promoted it publicly, is that he had no talent and was therefore unbeatable! It's counterintuitive on first hearing. We expect a more talented runner to be more intimidating than one with less talent, not to mention one with none. But Pre was getting at a very dramatic Cartesian or Christian separation of mind and body, or, spirit and matter. What Pre means to say by his dismissal of his "talent" is that the source of his running ability isn't found in his body, the physical components which must do the actual moving through time and space (the obvious foundation of athleticism), but in his spirit, disembodied from his physical shortcomings and therefore unbound from physical laws.5 The essential Pre then, the Pre that we talk about when we talk about "Pre", is not the physical Pre that we watched run around the track, but the ego, or will, that compelled that body to run. That is, if Prefontaine the person, can be trusted on the issue.

If we take him at his word here, what he is suggesting is quite radical and in turn equal parts inspiring and indicting. If Pre could run as fast as he did (a decidedly physical accomplishment) without any physical talent, but by the sheer force of his will, then what feats could we accomplish? Or better, what couldn't we accomplish? On the other hand, Pre's success in his talentless pursuit indicts by comparison not only each of our failures, but also each of our marginal successes. Standards are absolute. The only doing well is doing the best. And because there is only the will, there are no excuses.6 In running terms, this is like saying that the legs and heart and lungs are irrelevant. The race is won and lost in the ethereal world of wills. Strangely then, a PR (personal record) in this line of thinking, is of no real accomplishment. If will is disembodied, it quite literally is not in the body. If anyone can do it (say, run 13 minutes for 5K) everyone can.

Of course this extreme view is absurd. Examples abound: infants, the elderly, amputees, paraplegics, obese people, people with bone or muscle weaknesses, not to mention most runners, even most very good ones, cannot run with the world's best runners. One wonders, not whether or not Prefontaine really believed it--How could he?--but why he said it.

It is likely that Pre said it because it gave him the advantage of being free to think he could do anything. While that's not true, it might be helpful, a source of mental strength during a race. In this, Pre's confidence might not be unlike religious faith where patently ridiculous beliefs are held not for their truth but for the psychological benefits they bring about. When he says that he will make it a guts race and that only he can win it, we believe him--and not just in the movies, but in his interview clips too--because of the conviction with which he asserts it, the faith.7

One of the things he says (in the movies at least) is that he can endure more pain than anyone in the world. Let's imagine that in his childhood he internalized that thought. Maybe it led to him actually being able to take more pain than anyone else. After all, someone in the world, by definition, has to be able to take the most pain. Why not Prefontaine? Well, one problem, one that Pre wanted to avoid, was that taking the most pain in the world is not the same thing as being the fastest runner in the world. Given a group of exceptionally fast runners, the ability to withstand pain is a huge advantage, perhaps the marginal difference among elite runners, but that does not gloss over the beginning of this sentence, given a group of exceptionally fast runners.

Pre wanted to downplay his physical body because it made his accomplishments even more impressive. If he can do all of this without that, imagine what he would do if he had it. Not admitting to be fortunate to have the physical talent that he did have, actually meant admitting a much greater vanity in himself. When Pre shouts, "you're not God," at Colin Ponder, head of the AAU, in Without Limits, we laugh to ourselves, because God is very much who Pre seems to think he is. He is unbound in the physical. He exists as his will, the unmoved mover (of his body). He has transcended the body and is therefore omnipotent in his control of it. Thankfully, in a movie-saving scene from Without Limits, Bowerman casts the crucial doubt on Pre: "All the will and hard work in the world isn't going to get one person in a million to run a 3:54 mile. That takes talent. And talent in a runner is tied to very specific physical attributes. Your heart can probably pump more blood than anyone else's on this planet and that's the fuel for your talent. Your bones and your feet, it'd take a sledgehammer to hurt 'em and that's the foundation of your talent. So your talent, Pre, is not some disembodied act of will. It's literally in your bones so it's got its limits. Be thankful for your limits, Pre. They're about as limitless as they get in this life."

But what about a less extreme view, whereby the will exists but is embodied? Surely in running, as in life, there is a back- and-forth between the will and the body it is embodied in. This is obvious to runners. We wonder all the time if we could beat someone if we pushed ourselves a little harder or if he is just too good? Is someone overachieving or underachieving? What we mean is, is his will getting everything it can out of his body? We want to separate the two and talk about them as different things. This is a bit of projection on our parts. Never do we have access to two in him. I see him and his running and imagine an "I" in him similar to the "I" I think myself to be in here. Then I put his "I" in conflict with his body.

People tell me sometimes that I'm fast (and sometimes that I'm slow) and that they wish they could run like me (or that I should run like them). I tell them to just push harder, if you want to run faster, move your legs faster: run faster! The problem of course is that we cannot compare our "I"s apart from our bodies. If we could disembody our selves, we could have races of bodies against bodies and Prefontaine-style races of wills against wills. Then we could determine who has a fast body and who has a strong will, and on which side to place our genetic gratitudes.8 When I outrun someone, I think that I outworked them. When I lose, I think it's because they are faster and I couldn't help losing (my "I" is as good as theirs, but my legs aren't). We want credit for our successes and blame luck for our failures. And, we think of our legs (that is, our genes) as being the source of luck, but of our wills as being the source of our selves (as if our selves and our wills were separate things!). "I" cannot account for "I." There is no grounding. But the body is grounded. Will is as much the myth of the successful as fate is the myth failed.

Pre (his legs, his lungs, his heart, his self) was a great runner. That his self thought that his self was particularly strong, in effect, helped make it particularly strong. Pre's self depended on his running, which depended on his self depended on his running on his self running self. A real bootstrap story, this feedback loop: sui generis. We do better to let this causal loop get so tangled that we no longer see the self and the body as separate things, but two ways of looking at one thing: the runner.

The balance of talent and hard work is one I have always tread tenuously. After a summer that saw me take on my most committed running, I thought I could set a PR, pushing through a level of pain that was easier for me to stop just short of, and run a sub-40 10K. And I wanted to get close to Pre, to feel connected to him.

So I went to Coos Bay. When I pulled into my hotel nostalgia for Pre (would the town be mourning him?), blended with anticipation (would the town be celebrating him?). I went to the lobby for check-in. The man in line in front of me said he saw a sign as he was driving through downtown and wondered who was the guy in the picture, this Steve Prefontaine. The hotel clerk answered, "He was a runner from Eugene who died when he was visiting here. I didn't know either. I had to ask my husband."

I couldn't help myself and stepped in, race brochure in hand, and pointed to his picture, saying, "Actually, it's kind of the other way around. He was from here and died in Eugene."

Neither part of my audience was much interested. Woman at the counter (laughing): "Could be. My husband doesn't know anything." Hotel guest: "So a lot of people are in town this weekend. Good night for the bars."

My initial reaction was of surprise. He I could excuse. An out-of-towner, interested in the local night life. She I couldn't at first. How could Coos Bay not embody this legend and indoctrinate their children with its lore? Isn't there a Prefontaine Reality Tour Bus or something along those lines? As I was in Coos Bay longer, I started to understand that the legend that I love trades in a very specific circle that is organized by interest not geography. Pre's memory is held very dearly by those who hold it, but those who do number a very few. And on a weekend like this, with runners traveling from around the state, and as it turned out, from around the world (Helsinki9), to be there, there was a good chance that the majority of whom were out-of-towners, like me.

Coos Bay is a small port town known for its logging exports. At one point in its past (I would be told) it had been the world's largest logging port. The surrounding hills reflect this history, as many are clear-cut. Some sections have rows of trees, two-deep, lining the highway, as if this could hide the true source of the town's economy. Intervening years have depressed the town economically, and one imagines spiritually. The population is 16,000. It retains the innocence of a small town and feels, to someone coming from Portland, like a throwback to a different era. It wasn't hard to imagine a young Prefontaine running these streets and looking for challenges. (I would spend the next morning looking, unsuccessfully, for just that.)

Downtown that evening, looking for a bite to eat, I passed a display case on the side of a building with a poster for the race the following day. Pausing to look for any extra information regarding the event, I glanced up and noticed a reader board that read "Fire on the Track Tonight 7 p.m." That was an obvious way for me to spend the evening and saturate my visit with Pre-philia. Reading further, I saw these serendipitous words: "readings from friends and special guest speaker 6 p.m." I walked into the the theater, The Egyptian Theatre, passing between two foyer-sized pharos guarding the entrance. I asked the gentleman at the counter how much one ticket would cost. He was surprised by my question and told me it was free. I then told him that I wanted to get a sandwich, and that I would do that and return. To my further confusion, he told me I could take my sandwich to go and bring it in to the theater. I did so.

The speakers combined childhood friends (childhood friends making up the majority of friends for a person who dies young) and locals connected to the Egyptian, which was using the event as a fund-raiser (yet, again, still not charging for tickets). We heard stories of adolescent hi jinx: sneaking into the theater to watch what we would now call R-rated movies, candy thrown from the balcony until the projectionist stopped the show and threatened to kick out the culprits, marathon make-out sessions--Steve's record-setting single kiss lasted an impressive 30 minutes. No word if the girl's later physical accomplishments matched those of her partner.10 The guest speaker was Steve's younger sister, Linda, who turned out to be a very lively and charming speaker. Linda has MS and works to raise money for research for her disease, much like her brother continues in his death (via people like Linda and the Prefontaine Memorial Foundation, which replaced the old track at Pre's Marshfield High School) to raise money for his home town. Linda spoke mostly about her memories of the Egyptian, suggesting, rightly among this audience, that we already knew quite a bit about her brother, though there was some disappointment that we wouldn't be getting any more inside stories. We all still wonder: Who was he? How was he able to do what he did? Linda ended with Margaret Mead's famous aphorism, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has," which, cliched as it can sound, had a palpable poignancy in Pre's memory. Dead for 32 years, what he did in his 24 years was still changing the world, for everyone in that theater, for the better.

Roaring applause. And we settled in to see how these changes were put into effect and feel the inspiration again.

The audience was primed for the show. At the climax of the story, the 5,000m final in Munich, we all slid forward in our seats. I thought, as I always do when I watch the movies, that this was the time. In the hopeful words of Fred Long, "Maybe this is the race...."11 Maybe. And this time, with a hundred people thinking right along with me, it went deeper. As Pre made is final surge and took the lead with 600m to go, I knew he would do it, knew it.

When he didn't, when Lasse Viren won again, and Mohamed Gammoudi finished second, and Ian Stewart passed by a stumbling Prefontaine in the final meters, the room was crestfallen. Tears were in my eyes. I heard gasps of disappointment all around me. Wasn't there any justice in the world?

Our hope was gone after that race. We could no longer pretend that we didn't know how the story would end. The arc of the tragedy was coming down and we had to wait to see it complete.

The sports writer, Blaine Newnham, said that after that race in Munich he gave Pre a pep-talk, reminding him of how much of an accomplishment it was to be 24 years old and have run the 5,000 in the Olympics to win. The fact that he finished 4th (the most painful place) wasn't a failure. I think we left the theater that night still sad - how else could we leave? - but resilient, with those words in mind. Tomorrow at the race we could succeed in Pre's style, by running our best. Few of us would have a chance to win the race, but we could all run hard. Pre: "To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift"--A much better apothegm than his, "Talent is a myth."

In the morning, I had a few hours before I needed to be at the start line for my pre-Pre preparation, so I thought to see some of the Pre sites around town. I stopped in for breakfast in a diner. Leaving, I asked for directions to Sunset Memorial Park, where Prefontaine is buried. The waitress did not know. She asked a regular patron, who also did not know. A quick survey of the establishment followed, and I started to wonder if I had the wrong name. Eventually one man offered that it might be just south of town on 101.

When I found the cemetery with the name I described where the man said it might be, I wondered again why everyone in the town would not know where their local hero rested.

Inside the cemetery's gates, early on this Saturday morning, I was alone--surprisingly so. Where were the other out-of-towners who were at the movie last night, who I saw back at my hotel identifiable by their warm-up pants, running shoes, and T- shirts from various other races in the area? I drove up to the cemetery's office, hoping to find a sign pointing me to his grave. There had to be a sign, if nothing else. When I pulled up to the building and found it vacant and not to be opened at all during the weekend, I went to my backup plan, which was to drive around the cemetery looking for the tombstone that was sure to be covered in an inordinate layering of flowers. I pictured the Prefontaine memorial in Eugene, only bigger, this place where he was buried. After circling the cemetery twice and finding nothing, I pulled back into the office building, seeing this time another car there. As I approached the building, a woman exited from the building. I rolled down my window to ask for directions, but before I opened my mouth, she-- "I normally wouldn't talk to anyone while I'm wearing my pajamas--I'm just here to pick something up--but you look like you're lost here, which means you're probably looking for Prefontaine. See that Christmas tree half way up the hill? He's right in front of that." All in one rapid out-breath.

Her power of induction was impeccable. "Thank you," I recovered to say and drove up to the Christmas tree half way up the hill.

In the particular section of Sunset Memorial Park where Steve Prefontaine lies, alongside his father, Ray, for now (a vacant plot waits between them for his mother, Elfriede), his is the only upright marker. On the stone are carved his name, the dates of life, a cross, the Olympic rings, and an epitaph: "Our beloved son and brother who raced through life now rests in peace." Next to it, on that morning, lay a single bundle of blue flowers (to call it a small bouquet would be too generous), beginning to rot into the soil. This was not what I expected, accustomed as I was, to the ornamental remembrances at his Eugene memorial. It was again as if he had been forgotten. I wanted more. I wanted a monument with fresh flowers and evidence that we remembered him. It occurred to me then (a bit late) that I should have brought flowers of my own. But that was silly. He was dead and wouldn't know the difference. It mattered for me, and I could think of him without being demonstrative about it. And in that case, why even bother with the grave? Prefontaine was a thought now only. Not even a memory for someone born five years after his death. Even the ground had forgotten him. The grass grows around his gravestone as it grows around everyone's, not faster, stronger, higher, like we would expect if it could tap into what made him him, and not slower, weaker, short, like we could imagine if his stubborn body refused to give into decomposition in death as it had refused to succumb to pain in life. Here was a not so subtle reminder that life goes on. The morning fog, which had been thick and heavy at sunrise, was beginning to burn off. Sunlight shone through blue patches in the overcast sky onto daring spider-webs. It was quiet enough and slow enough there to watch time move. 1975 seemed to have just passed. It was close enough to touch, but inevitably past. I didn't want to drive away, to leave him alone in time, while the rest of the world got on without him. For a brief moment I considered wearing a Prefontaine shirt that I bought in Korea for the novelty of buying a Prefontaine shirt in Korea. But there were many Prefontaine shirts in Korea and around the rest of the world. And still, where Prefontaine had last been, he was forgotten. The shirt wouldn't help me keep his memory. The sign had been corrupted. There was an essence that was lost somewhere.

I was lost in these meditations on life and death and remembrance, when I noticed that it was an hour until the race and I needed to get over to the start line to check-in and warm- up. In the course of all these ruminations and all these blatant attempts at meaning and symbolism I had come to feel like a kind of observer of my own life as much as of Prefontaine's and the phenomenon that was taking place around him and the memories that weren't. I wasn't in the mood to run.

My sister had text messaged me, saying to run fast, as I had previously promised I would. I called her back and said, "Hey, Coach. I'm having trouble here. I can't figure out how I want to run this thing. I've been saying I want to PR here and everything, but I am just so fascinated/mystified by this place (where Steve Prefontaine, the person, with family and friends and problems and an actual history, lived, I implied telepathically) that I feel like a sociologist who should run slowly and make observations about the event."

"Well, that's weird. What's the point in driving five hours to run in a race if you're not going to run hard?"

"That would be more in the spirit of Prefontaine."

"Run hard, SP," she said, just as she had in the original text.

I told her I would, but I didn't entirely believe myself. These ruminations had so distanced me from the experience of being there to run, which was supposed to be my primary motivation, that I had a hard time imagining getting engaged with the world again, especially to do something as visceral as run. Why bother?

Downtown at check-in, volunteers greeted me with bubbly friendliness, as I turned my attention to the worldly tasks of stating my name, age, and T-shirt size. A T-shirt? Included in the $18 registration fee? Most races seemed to have started charging extra for shirts that didn't say things like, "Some people create with words or with music or a brush and paints. I like to make something beautiful when I run."

As I was warming up, an old man approached me. He told me that he was too old and too fat to run the race now, but that he had run it in his past and loved it so much that he came out now to take pictures, and that he'd get one of me at about the 1 mile mark. I asked him about the course, starting to think again about a PR. He said that it was a hilly course, up and down all the way out and back on the road that connects Coos Bay to the beach. I forgot my original goal of 39:59 right then and compromised with myself that I would run hard and be happy with my 41:30 - 42:00 time.

Over at the start line a few minutes later, my discursive mind now fully receded from my consciousness and my body, reengaged with the world, in a way that only activity can bring about, I started to feel the connection I had come for. The runners around me were all swapping stories about Pre. One guy talked about running with Pre in high school. Another guy, a coach, said he brings his team every year, and runs himself, because the feeling of finishing on the Marshfield High School track is so special. Adding, "that's what Prefontaine is about." Again, it sounded overly sentimental until I realized that my heart was beating faster and my legs were getting lighter just hearing him and knowing that he meant what he said. He was interrupted however when Prefontaine's high school coach, an elderly gentleman who was given a microphone and a starter's gun. It wasn't a few seconds later before he had used both and we were off into the race.

The race's first mile went by in a blur of crowds and adrenaline. The timer counted off 6:48...6:50 as I passed, a quicker mile than I expected on the steep uphill. The next mile, this one downhill, ended when I heard 12:50...12:52. Much quicker, but could I maintain that effort when the hills went up again? My thoughts had suddenly become, without my having noticed, focused on the race and running it as fast as I could. At two miles, I tripled my time and added a little extra to see what kind of time I could expect. At 5K I doubled it. 20:40 meant 41:20. Not good enough. I pushed myself on the way back into town, choosing runners ahead of me to catch or keep in sight, trying to not get passed. If I had had time enough to think about anything outside of the race, I would have thought that this was the connection with Pre that I was looking for. Not knowing the facts of his life or where he grew up or where he's buried or the routes he ran, but the running, the creating of something beautiful with your legs and your lungs and your heart and your will, that I was getting close(r) to Pre's example, but I was moving too fast, running too hard to have those thoughts. The race was the only thing in my world. At 5.5 miles, making a miscalculation, I had resigned myself to finishing in 41:00, but I was happy with that and pushing hard to get it, a PR in any case, beating a 42- something that I ran back in high school. My legs were heavy now in a way that I hadn't felt in years. They weren't aching from the incessant pounding of a marathon or burning from an extended sprint, they were just quitting, refusing for whatever reason to continue. At least that's what I thought until I looked down and saw that they were moving as fast as ever. Only half a mile left, they could not stop. I came into the track, about a quarter mile to go, spurred on by the crowds and the runners already finished. I felt like I wasn't moving but I looked down and sure enough I was picking up speed, kicking into the finish. I rounded the corner, 150m to go, and saw for the first time the finishing clock. 39:42...39:43. It couldn't be right. I pushed as hard as I could...39:48...39:53...I looked up as I crossed the line...40:00. All those hills and one second off my goal time. I was proud as I wobbled through the gates and received a small pattering of congratulations.

After the race, as I cooled down and stretched, I allowed myself a few further indulgences before I got on with my day, and thought those thoughts about my run that I would have thought during it if it weren't for it. 40:00 isn't a particularly fast time for a 10K. 57 people ran that course faster that morning. But it was a good time for me. And I put all my effort into it. For those 40 minutes I felt like I imagine Pre would feel after running the same race in 28 minutes. That is, good for a while until I started to think about how much faster I could run next time. Maybe I could get down to 39 minutes or 38 or...

Pre was special and (because?) he knew it. That unshakable confidence, that gumption did something for him/does something for us12. Believing oneself to be special isn't an objective consideration as much as a pragmatic one. The consequences of holding that kind of thought allowed Pre to live up to his potential, something that few of us can ever say. We can all believe great things about ourselves but not all of us can be the best runner in the world. Yet it is self-fulfilling to have these expectations; self-fulfilling for the limits of our potential. The consequences of dreaming big are, for the spirit, much preferred to the ones that come from not dreaming.

At the end of Fire on the Track, Dick Buerkle says that he is more like Pre than unlike him. I don't know if the same is true for me. But I have the gall to say that I don't want to be, an ambition inspired by Pre to become more like myself.

A week after the Prefontaine Memorial Race in Coos Bay, I had an early morning flight and thought that I might like to take a short run before going to the airport. I considered getting up at 4:45 and running up to Prescott and back, but when alarm- setting time came, I opted for 5:15. Partly because I was tired and could use the extra little bit of sleep and partly because I knew I had been running that ground for ten years and wasn't finished yet.

1 The race started slowly, too slowly for Pre's liking. The runner's with a faster kick would have too much energy left and out-sprint him at the finish. Boxed-in, Pre couldn't get out in the lead, where he usually ran, until later in the race. With a mile left the race opened up and he took the lead, forcing everyone to stay with him. Lasse Viren, already the 10K gold medalist in Munich, passed him with 1200m left, bringing a pack of three other runners with him. Pre made a big surge with 600m to go, hoping to start the kick early enough to burn the other runners out. He stayed in or near the lead into the final 150m when Viren and Gammoudi pulled ahead and Ian Stewart passed him as he stumbled to the finish.

2Or maybe he wasn't just a man. A veritable Pre-mythology has arisen among a minority of fans to understand his success. From Pre: "And there is, for lack of a better term, the mystical element. It is astonishing the number of coincidences that relate back to Pre's life and death. Some are of the "how curious" variety, such as the sun always seeming to break through the clouds whenever he first stepped onto the Hayward Field track. Others are more macabre, such as Steve wearing a black singlet in a race for the first time in his career on the night he died, or one of the two torch bearers in the 1976 Montreal Olympics having the name--completely by coincidence-- Stephen Prefontaine" (pp. 4-5).

3 Again, why Without Limits is so apt, this time in its title. In a crucial scene for us, the audience, to maintain our trust in the movie and not give in to the emotional tendency of wanting to mystify the will and make a Cartesian or Christian split between it and the material body, Bowerman reminds Pre that he is not without limits (an impossibility) but that his limits are widely bound (a fortune). That Pre pushed so hard on those limits and found them flexible is why he was disinclined to see them. Logically, he must have known they existed, but psychologically, pragmatically, not admitting to them may have been beneficial for his running career. After all, we do not know our limits. Supposing that we do is in effect to draw them, and for lack of imagination we so often draw them too short. And once drawn, erected. Once erected, imposing (insurmountable?).

4 At this point I'd like to reiterate that I'm not fast and am not comparing myself to Steve Prefontaine as a runner, but that I am deeply and genuinely inspired. And very little of my inspiration is interested in where Prefontaine the man ends and where Prefontaine the legend begins. The interactions between whatever version of him and myself is what interests me.

5 Of course, even if this extreme split were accurate, it would be a kind of talent - a spiritual one - no matter from where it came.

6 I will leave aside the question of the source of the will, the important question. But something to think about: What if Prefontaine's famous will depended, if only in part, on the particular make-up of his brain?

7 From Without Limits: Pre: If you do believe in something you tend to make people very very nervous. Mary Marckx: Do you believe in god? Pre: I believe in myself.

8 This is assuming, as I do, that our particular selves are impacted by our physical bodies and brains.

9 No, Sanna Kullberg, the Finnish marathoner, not Lasse Viren.

10 During this reminiscing, a woman in the audience was called out for, apparently, having lost her virginity in the same theatre where Steve kissed (and did who knows what else) and where we now sat.

11 As delivered by Frank Shorter as Fred Long in Without Limits.

12 Wendy Ray, in Fire on the Track: "He had that, whatever it is. I don't know. Actors have it. Singers have it. Some people have it. Some people don't. Most people don't. He had a lot of it."