To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the Gift.
Quotes
The Legendary Words of
Bill Bowerman
Steve Prefontaine
What I want
is to be
number1
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.
If you have a body, you are
an athlete. - Bowerman
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
Don’t give anything away. Never make it easy for the guys you are trying to beat. - Bowerman
Something inside of me just said “Hey, wait a minute, I want to beat him,” and I just took off.
A race is a work of art that people can look at and be affected in as many ways they’re capable of understanding.
I’m going to work it out so that it’s a pure guts race at the end, and if it is, I am the only one who can win it.
Somebody may beat me, but they are
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.
going tohave to bleed to do it