« envision success | Main | out of time »
postfontainism
October 05, 2006
another great run this morning - I was supposed to run a warm-up easy, then four miles at my half-marathon goal pace of 9:03 (that relates to a 4:10 full marathon).
10:27
8:32
8:53
8:27
8:35
average time over all five miles, including the slow warm-up - 8:59. for the four miles that i needed to average a 9:03, i averaged 8:37.
i think a lot of it has to be the music. it's getting me in the right frame of mind to stay focused and push myself. doing so, i also thought about the half-marathon training group i coach. they voted on a team name, and they picked my favorite, the Postfontaines.
the running is starting to make sense again, and i thought about what i wanted them to udnerstand about the name...
The people have spoken. The Tuesday Night First-Timer Half Marathon Training Group is now The Postfontaines.
So just what the hell, you may ask, is a Postfontaine?
Well, it's supposed to be (and is, dammit) a witty homage to Steve Prefontaine ("Pre"), legendary runner from the early 1970's. Swap "Post" for "Pre", and... well, you get the idea.
This morning, on my run, I was thinking about the name, about my own growing appreciation for Pre, and about the soul-searching I've been doing with my own running lately.
Please keep in mind that I'm in my "taper," the deceleration of
training in the last couple of weeks before a marathon, and people in their taper get weirdly prone to emotion, sentimentalism, and motivational speaking.
"Postmodernism" has been defined as "a movement of ideas that has replaced or is replacing modernism by countering a number of modernism's fundamental assumptions." We could, then, say that Postfontaines are followers of "Postfontainism," which, however, is more about a conscious continuation of Steve Prefontaine's fundamental values, rather than a replacement of them or contradiction of them.
I first became aware of Prefontaine in the past couple of years,
mainly seeing him quoted as saying things like "You may beat me, but you're going to have to bleed to do it," and "The best pace is a suicide pace, and today is a good day to die." He seemed cool, a rebel, a rock star, but at some point, I kind of wondered if he was blown out of proportion because of his flamboyance and early death - for all the hype, he failed to medal in Munich in 1972.
On the other hand, more people remember the name "Prefontaine" than the name "Lasse Viren", the guy that won the gold.
I've been reading more about him, and recently saw "Without Limits," one of a couple of movies made about him (not great, but worth seeing). The more I understand, the more he's become a hero for me, even though I'm not exactly fast, and might only win my age group if the groups are divided up to the exact day, hour and minute, not just years.
Pre was more about how he ran than how fast he ran. He truly believed running was an art form, not so much in the mechanics, I think, as for it being an expression of passion, and courage.
My favorite Pre quote is the one that really gets to what he was
about: "A lot of people run a race to see who's the fastest. I run to see who has the most guts, who can punish himself into an exhausting pace, and then at the end, punish himself even more."
The vast majority of us are, like me, never going to be the fastest in a race, because of our limitations. Every runner, elite or not, in every run, every race, runs with some limitations that they bring to the start line that day - natural ability, training, health, mood, level of energy and motivation, all the grazing they did at the office party that afternoon.
As runners, certainly, part of our commitment, part of our test, is to minimize our limitations, through training, diet, study, whatever. But when we actually run, wherever those limitations set a boundary, we have the opportunity to face it and see if we can break it.
So, ironically, it is the fact of our limitations, not our abilities
or results, that give every one of us the opportunity to be like
Prefontaine, and to be worthy of that same respect. In the end, it is not how fast or how far we can run that matter so much as how much we push against our own limitations, whatever or how many they may be, to be that fast or run that far.
The close runner-up for our team's name was "Team Gracias," which had a lot of support because it would reflect our shared gratitude for being able to run at all. That sentiment isn't lost, though. There's another famous Pre quote that I didn't fully appreciate at first - "To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift."
Few can be as fast as Pre, but we all have the ability to push
ourselves as hard as he did, on any given day. That is the gift we all share in running. Do not sacrifice it.
Posted by Rob at October 5, 2006 04:30 PM
Comments
Cool - I actually saw that movie a long time ago, and immediately appreciated the new team name. The version you're referring to starred Jared Leto, before he became a Martian, right? Great running times, too!
Posted by: Julia at October 6, 2006 06:20 PM
thanks, hoolia.
OK, i'm watching "Prefontaine" right now, and it is truly a piece of cinematic crap. thank god i didn't pay for it.
Posted by: rob at October 6, 2006 07:23 PM