Steve “Pre” Prefontaine was one of the greatest runners of all time. He had epic quotes that inspired me all my life. Here are a few:
To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.
It’s not who’s the best – it’s who can take the most pain.
“Somebody may beat me, but they are going to have to bleed to do it.”
“I do it because I can, I can because I want to, I want to because you said I couldn’t.”
I’m going to work so that it’s a pure guts race at the end, and if it is, I am the only one who can win it.
A lot of people run a race to see who is the 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.