Another Excerpt from Never Stop Pre
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Back in Oregon City, an eight-year old boy watched Pre’s fourth-place finish on a huge Zenith floor console television. He was transfixed and it made him want to become a long distance runner. In fact, after the race, he took up running—he ran out the door, across the street, and through the rubble of an abandoned miniature golf course. He would remember that first run all his life and never forget Steve Prefontaine because Steve Prefontaine kept running into his life, in metaphor and reality.
A few years later, the boy went out for track in elementary school, ran distance races, and continued competitive running into junior high. In 1978, as an eighth grader, he set a school record for the 1320-yard race (three times around the track), 3:58.2, a record that still stands because everything track and field in America changed over to the metric system a year later and the 1500-meter run became the standard middle distance race at all levels of the sport.
He didn’t know it then, but Pre had run a 3:51 1320-yard race as an eighth grader and set a school record.
Was there some kind of metaphysical convergence going on between these two? One was still a kid, the other already dead.
After junior high, the boy stopped running and took up tennis. He admitted to himself he wasn’t Pre and couldn’t hack distance running. He was fairly successful at tennis, and once rallied from 0-6, 0-5, love-40 in a singles match to win, but could never transfer the energy or metaphor of Pre into his game and transcend to a higher level. It’s hard to do that with anything in your life.
That is, until you have to save your life.