Pre: The Story of America's Greatest Running Legend, Steve Prefontaine

by Tom Jordan

  “I always had the feeling that he was doing the same workouts, but basically expending about 70 percent energy on what were really tough workouts, whereas the other guys would be spending 90 percent.”

  Indeed, some of his workouts are the stuff of legend, like the one Bence calls Steve’s “greatest.”

  “During the summer of 1974, Pre was preparing for a return trip to Europe. It was supposed to be 2 x 1-mile with a 5- to 10-minute slow jog between. Pre asked for some moral support, so we showed up to give him encouragement. His first mile was 4:08. Four seconds too fast. His second mile was supposed to be 4:08. We asked Pre how he expected to run his second mile as fast or faster. He responded by running 4:02.8.”

  Sometimes after the afternoon workout, Pre would stop by the weight room for 10 or 15 minutes of work, but it wasn’t with the diligence he applied to running. His remarkable upper-body strength was partially an inherited gift and partially a result of the pull-ups he performed without fail. More important, he felt, were situps, for abdominal strength. Back from his morning run, Pre did numerous sets, and, in a typical timesaving measure, massaged his head at the same time, Tyson relates. “Pre was losing his hair, and he had been told that the secret to keeping it was to rub your scalp and take a lemon every day. I don’t know if he took the lemon, but he’d rub his head to keep good circulation in there.”

  Combined with Pre’s strength and resiliency was what is glibly termed “mental toughness.” It was very real and he had plenty of it.

  “Pre’s biggest asset on the track was his competitive personality,” teammate and rival Paul Geis states. There was a workout once where the team was supposed to run three 1320s in 3:20, 3:16, and 3:12. Scott Daggatt, one of the few runners who could stay with Pre over the long haul, ran 3:08 on the first one.

  “He went with me and he was pissed,” Daggatt notes. “Then we went 3:06. On the last one, he said, ‘Goddamit, I’m going to do it to you, Daggatt.’ He went 3:00 and I went 3:02.”

  “Pre had to be number one in workouts,” Geis says. “I remember another time when Scott might have blown by him at one part of the workout. Three days later, Pre just obliterated him, and you realized what had happened: Pre had gone home and for the next 48 hours had mentally prepared his case.

  “There were many casualties left in his wake of people trying to keep up with him, myself included.”

  7

  End to Innocence

  The spring of 1974 was Steve’s first year as an “open” athlete, and there were difficult adjustments to make. He no longer had to contend with the collegiate dual-meet schedule, a man-killer of meets every weekend that Pre rarely coasted through. But then, he wasn’t on show every weekend either and didn’t have a conference or national meet to get ready for.

  “I get the idea a lot of people think I died,” Pre complained. “Sometimes people come up to me and ask me what I’m doing now.”

  He moved out of his trailer and into a house with Steve Bence and Mark Feig on Amazon Drive in Eugene for a few months, close to the Paddock Tavern, his favorite watering hole. Eventually, he was to move into a house that he bought on McKinley Street in Eugene, where he felt more settled and at home.

  Two mavericks: former coach Bill Bowerman and Pre at the opening of the first Nike retail store. UNIVERSITY OF OREGON ARCHIVES

  Now 23, Prefontaine still had that odd mixture of stubbornness and naïveté which marked his personality. When he first met teammate Steve Bence, who had attended an Air Force high school in Spain, Pre said he thought Bence spoke pretty good English for a Spaniard. And it hadn’t been all that long since the time Prefontaine was out on an easy-day road run with then-freshmen Terry Williams, Dave Taylor, and several others. It was supposed to be a relaxed 10-miler, but one runner took off and disappeared, which nettled Pre to no small degree. So near the end of the run, when Taylor and Williams started to pick it up, it was too much for Pre. He caught up with the two of them, grabbed each by the shoulder and started screaming that there was no way they would ever make it, that they were both going to burn out so fast.

  “Today it makes me laugh,” Williams says, “and I understand what he was trying to get across, and he was right. But he just didn’t know how to explain it to us, so he jumped on us—literally!”

  That fierce energy, the man of action in Prefontaine, was something to behold. “Whenever Pre stayed with Feig and me,” Bence says, “I could have sworn that he was living on five or six hours of sleep a night. Pre generally got in after midnight and before Mark or I was awake in the morning, he had run, showered, and eaten breakfast.

  “Pre said at that time he was going to grow a garden at his new house on McKinley. I thought that he would never have the time to work on it, but I was wrong,” Bence admits. “It wasn’t long until his salads included vegetables from his back yard.”

  In addition to his nontrack activities, Steve was getting in two workouts a day and running up to 100 miles a week. Near the end of April, after a few low-key tune-up meets, he was ready to tackle his first serious outdoor race of 1974 at the Oregon Twilight meet.

  “I haven’t done the quality work to run a good mile,” Pre noted. He asked the Twilight meet organizers to add a 10,000-meter race rather than a six-mile. The metric distances were not run very much in the United States at that time. Most of the world, though, ran meters, the Olympic races were in meters, and a fast race at 10 kilometers would be of much more significance to Pre’s competitors than one at six miles.

  On the lonely road—10,000-meter AR, April 1974. ERIK HILL

  Olympic steeplechaser Mike Manley led through the mile, and then Pre took off on one of his loneliest races ever. The 7,000 fans who showed up in the chilly weather kept up steady encouragement, but as he clicked off the miles between 4:28 and 4:30, Pre was by himself. He sprinted the last lap in 58 seconds and won in an American record of 27:43.6.

  “I could have gotten the six-mile world record today if I would have sprinted the last lap of it,” Pre stated after his race. Indeed, if he had run his 58-second lap at the finish of a six-mile, he would have beaten Ron Clarke’s world mark by two seconds. And this was only Pre’s second serious long race ever. As it was, his 27:43.6 was the sixth-fastest 10,000 ever run.

  “I think this indicates I’m ready,” he said with understatement. “And I still think I can run three miles with anybody in the world, including Paul Geis. I needed this one to compare with the Europeans. Now I’m shooting for bigger things.”

  The Lure of Big Money

  The pressures of being out of college began to get to Pre. He now competed for the Eugene-based Oregon Track Club, but received no compensation. Even the paltry $101 per month scholarship for room and board he had received in college was money sorely missed. Some help came when he was hired after graduation by fledgling Nike. This association was a natural fit between the shoe company with Oregon roots and America’s most popular track athlete. Pre’s job description: National Public Relations Manager.

  “I think he made up the title himself,” recalls Geoff Hollister, a former Oregon distance runner who scheduled Pre, decathlete Jeff Bannister, discus thrower Mac Wilkins, and other athletes for clinics and public appearances. In typical fashion, Steve had business cards made up with his new title and threw himself into the job. After the then unknown Bill Rodgers placed third in the World Cross Country Championships in Rabat, Morocco, Pre sent him a letter and free shoes. Rodgers wore the shoes when he won his first Boston Marathon in 1975.

  Pre had an instant rapport with participants at running clinics organized by Nike. GREG HOLLISTER

  Steve did numerous running clinics for kids, worked the floor of the first Nike retail store, and learned what went into making shoes. For this, he received $5,000 per year, at the time strictly against the rules for an amateur athlete.

  “Quite simply, we felt it was the right thing to do,” Hollister says. “The idea was that Steve should have this as a training stipend, and it was not a lo
t to live off of, but it was going to make it easier for him.”

  It wasn’t long before Pre again crossed swords with his old nemesis, the Amateur Athletic Union, track’s governing body and upholder of the rules of “amateurism.” In May 1974, he was sent a letter from the Chairman of the AAU Registration Committee informing him that the AAU national office had “received a report stating you have been wearing a sweat suit with the word “NIKE” on it. I believe you are aware, as I am, that by wearing this garment you are jeopardizing your amateur eligibility and future competition.” Pre was to be supplied with a “proper sweat suit” by Nike, without the offending logo on it.

  For Pre, it was one more vexation, one more shove in the direction of professional track and field. After the 1972 Olympics, the International Track Association (ITA) had been formed with the goal of establishing a pro circuit in the United States and, eventually, around the world. Former Olympic stars Kip Keino from Kenya, Jim Ryun, Bob Seagren, and others signed on; and the ITA meets drew reasonably well in the first year. But to sustain interest, the pro circuit needed a current star, a guaranteed draw, a showman. Quite simply, it needed Pre.

  He was sorely tempted. His hand-to-mouth existence was frustrating for a go-getter like Pre. The ITA kept upping its offer all during 1974, until it approached $100,000 a year. This was substantially more than even the marquee athletes like Prefontaine earned in under-the-table payments common at the time in “shamateur” track. To turn pro would bring everything out in the open, above-board. “I just have to decide whether I want to make running a job and accept the responsibilities that go with it,” Pre said.

  To go professional would of course mean giving up a chance for a medal at the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal. Throughout 1974, Pre engaged in an almost love-hate relationship with the entire concept of the Olympics. On the one hand, he was disillusioned by his experiences in Munich and the ongoing threat of boycotts of the Montreal Games over political issues. (Most of the African nations did boycott in 1976 in protest of a trip by a New Zealand rugby team to South Africa, which was banned at the time from Olympic competition because of its racial policies.) On the other hand, winning an Olympic medal, along with setting world records, were the greatest accomplishments possible for any track and field athlete. To an achiever like Prefontaine, it was the supreme challenge, and not one to be dismissed without long soul-searching.

  Accepting the ITA offer would also mean the curtailment of several off-the-track projects he was pursuing. Foremost would be his evolving position as Nike’s public relations manager. Athletes who remained amateurs would never be allowed to have business dealings with a professional athlete. To receive even a free pair of shoes from an ITA athlete would be to risk lifetime banishment from the sport.

  Pre had also given serious thought to opening a sports bar in Eugene or Springfield with the name “Sub-4,” which would have pictures on its walls of all the Oregon milers who had broken four minutes. Its menu would specialize in Prefontaine favorites—fresh tossed salads and beer.

  Former Oregon distance runner Geoff Hollister worked with Steve on clinics, public appearances, and the Finnish tour. DON DICKOVER

  And Pre was involved with Hollister and Bannister in what they termed the “Decathlon Club.” “When we’d go out and do the clinics, we were in touch with a lot of people who were interested in fitness,” Hollister remembers. “People had a need for information and some kind of an organized program.” The three envisioned opening a fitness club near Alton Baker Park in Eugene. It would have a wood-chip jogging trail close by, like those Pre had seen in Scandinavia, and would offer a variety of activities, not just running. Steve had kept detailed notes about all the training centers he had visited in Europe, their programs, fees, and design. Once again, however, bureaucracy intervened. Long months were spent lobbying the Parks Advisory Committee, and it kept tabling the proposal to make the land available for the Decathlon Club. Pre was getting increasingly irritated and frustrated. He had had enough of bureaucracies.

  While pondering the choice between professional and amateur track, Pre spent most of his spare hours, briefcase in hand, going to classrooms, playgrounds, and recreational centers and interacting with the kids on many different levels.

  Geoff Hollister’s sister, Laura, worked as the secretary of the Decathlon Club and did some of the scheduling for his public appearances.

  “He always walked in and out of the office with a lot of speed and bounce,” she recalls. “Sometimes he looked so serious but would break a big smile when he saw a friend. About this time he was really being recruited hard for pro track. Half the time he would say he was thinking about quitting track completely so he could work full-time and make good money. The other half of the time he would say he couldn’t stop running and ‘if I was in pro track, I would be getting paid for all my public appearances.’

  “Once I asked, was he going to do it, turn pro? ‘No, probably not,’ he said. Sometimes he was really thinking about quitting. He had spent so much of his time running. He didn’t want to be ‘like an old football player who could never die,’ he said. He wanted more than a good track record out of his life. He wanted people to know there was more to him than that. That he was intelligent and hard-working and creative. Not that he drank lots of beer and was on an ego trip. He wanted to give the people of Eugene—‘My People’—more. When he thought about quitting track or turning pro, he thought about his people and how much support they had given him and he didn’t want to let them down, ever. So he would keep running, until the Olympics at least. That was his decision. No pro track.”

  Pre continued to consider the offers from the ITA throughout the year, but friends slowly began to notice a renewed enthusiasm for running-related goals that to some extent had been missing since Munich. While he was never again to be enamored of the Olympic Games themselves, he gradually spoke more about competing in Montreal and said that his goal was a medal, not the medal. That would have been an almost-impossible concession for the Steve Prefontaine of 1972. This was the Pre of 1974. Older, more mature, and once again looking ahead to all of his options, within the sport and beyond.

  On Pre: Don Kardong

  I can remember responding very viscerally when Pre was speaking about the difficulty of trying to be a world-class athlete in an amateur sport. I have always felt that when we finally began to move toward professionalism in the early 1980s, that his comments and strong feelings about that were on everyone’s minds, especially mine.

  I guess he was one of the first runners I remember saying, “How am I supposed to pay the bills, when somebody keeps telling me that I can’t take any money?” He was the first person I ever heard trumpet these ideas.

  I never thought I would be running past college. It’s not a career path I ever chose. I’m sure to a large degree that excitement that Pre used to create has sent me down this path. It was just so exciting to be in the races he was in, and the way that people related to him. And the state of the sport at that period of time was so powerful and so much fun that all of that got me to stay in it, to make the Olympic team. And then here I am still at it, because it is hard to leave.

  Don Kardong is a noted writer, administrator, and founder of the Lilac Bloomsday Road Race. He placed fourth in the 1976 Olympic Marathon.

  Europe on the Horizon

  This outdoor season was to be the “Year of Europe” for Prefontaine. Although by any standards but his own, he had acquitted himself well in his European tours since his graduation from Marshfield High, Steve was tired of being asked why he could win in Eugene but not in Europe. He was also tired of explaining that for the American collegiate athlete, you peaked in June, not in August like the Europeans. With his NCAA career now completed, Pre could finally train with the late-summer European track season in mind

  “I’m really excited about getting to Europe healthy and fresh this summer,” he said. “When I run a race this year, I want to be ready for it.”

  The f
irst major competition of his European-style season was a three-mile at the Hayward Restoration meet in early June. Frank Shorter, winner of the gold medal in the 1972 Olympic Marathon, would be in the race; and in a decision that would eventually bring him once again into conflict with the governing bureaucracy, Pre chose to skip the AAU Championships to prepare. To the AAU, not only had the sport’s top draw snubbed its biggest meet, but Pre’s non-appearance meant he would not be on any international teams. He would, in effect, be traveling around Europe as a free agent. The moguls at “AAU House,” as the national office in Indianapolis was called, were definitely not pleased.

  But for Steve, their disapproval was inconsequential. He had other things to worry about. An unusual bout with the flu left him uncertain of his form, and preparation for the race against Shorter took priority.

  “I haven’t had a decent workout in about three weeks,” he lamented, “and that may affect my confidence.” Two low-key two-mile races in the mid-8:30s after his American-record 10,000 had done little to bolster that confidence. Nevertheless, he cut down on his workouts the week before the race and prepared for a fast pace.

  On June 8, some of the best open athletes began warming up before a packed house in Eugene. As Rick Wohlhuter from the University of Chicago Track Club was running 880 yards in a world-record 1:44.1, Prefontaine checked in with Larry Standifer at the trainer’s tent.

  “Before his many big races, he would come in with a complaint of some kind,” the Oregon trainer remembers. “A sore foot, tight hamstring, or any other mild complaint. I would always check him over, decide what the problem was, and we would treat it. Usually, it was of a mild nature. Steve was like a finely tuned machine, and if it wasn’t running exactly right, he would know it.”