Steve Prefontaine came to mind during my run yesterday. This is not unusual as Pre is a running idol – forever 24 years old and still record-breaking fast in the mind’s eye nearly 37 years after his tragic death – for most everyone who regularly laces up running shoes.
Hanging around my neck, bouncing slightly on my breastbone with each stride, is a small medallion designed by Prefonaine’s artist sister,Linda (http://www.prefontaineproductions.com/). Given to me by my son a few years ago after I qualified for the Boston Marathon, it is a bronze oval representing the track at Oregon’s Hayward Field made so famous by “Pre” in the early 1970s and bears the words “Love To Run.”
I do Love To Run, as evidenced by a consecutive-day streak dating back to July 6, 2003. Moreover, Pre has a presence in my home as the walls in my son’s boyhood bedroom remain decorated with posters and pictures of the late, great runner, including one with Pre going all out – although I suppose no other kind of photograph was ever snapped of Pre in a race – and featuring this hallmark quote: “To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.”
It is this Pre-ism that surprisingly popped into my head during yesterday’s 11-mile run. I say “surprising” because what inspired the thought was not my necklace or my hell-bent effort for my pace was easy recovery, but rather crossing paths with a middle-aged, heavily perspiring, heavyset, heavy-breathing, heavy-footed jogger. In other words, at first glance he did suggest the fleet-footed Pre.
However, this was not my first glance. I have seen this man now and again for the past year or so, but only yesterday did this realization hit home: he has become noticeably lighter of foot and weight; his familiar cotton T-shirt takes more loops, and at faster speed, to grow dark from sweat; the plodder who sometimes needed to walk has become a fitter runner who does not.
Something even more important also struck me, something I should have understood the first time I saw him out there working up a good sweat, something that had no relation to his former heavier weight or slower pace: he was out there giving no less than his best. After all, we do not all share the same gifts; what matters is that we don’t sacrifice them on a couch.
As always, the man and I exchanged waves as we passed each other going opposite directions around a park loop. The next time around, I said, “You look great!”
“Thanks!” he said, smiley widely, and the following go-round added proudly without being short of breath: “I’ve lost forty pounds!”
“Congratulations!” I replied quickly as we passed head-on, turning to add with a shout at his back: “That’s awesome!”
Then I quickened my own pace, inspired by a fellow runner who is very little like Pre except for the one way that matters most: he is not sacrificing his own gift. 