Without Limits Review

This movie was recommended to me by an influential fitness figure I follow. His motto embodies a hard-nosed work ethic, and lives his life to 'redefine limits'. One of the sources he attributes much of his motivation to is the movie 'without limits' released in 1998. The movie is all about the legend of Steve Prefontaine, an international track star. It was the spirit and mentality Steve had that changed the name of internal competition. His coach, Bill Bowerman later formed a little company today known as Nike. Need I say more about that connection? Sure Bill Bowerman was an innovative guy with a vision, but its easy to see the influence Steve left not only on him, but anyone that came into contact. 

Steve radiated a persona that was on a different level. He was know as extremely confident and a need for competition yet straight-forward, honest, and direct. Those who knew Pete from a young age have said that's just who he was and it didn't change for anybody. Steve was very verbose and quite imaginative, and has many well-know quotes used still to this day.

Here are some of my favorites:

• "To give anything less than your best, is to sacrifice the gift."
• "Something inside of me just said 'Hey, wait a minute, I want to beat him,' and I just took off."
• "Over the years, I've given myself a thousand reasons to keep running, but it always comes back to where it started. It comes down to self-satisfaction and a sense of achievement"
• "A race is a work of art that people can look at and be affected in as many ways they're capable of understanding"

Look guys the movie doesn't have an all-star rating and from a cinematic perspective I fully agree on that, the plot is sloppy and seems to run out of time. But the idea that is captured from Prefontaine's spirit is much more powerful and important in my eyes than the actual movie itself. Steve loved competition, he craved being the best, and he would stop at nothing to achieve that, which was his true happiness. That's the take home message, you don't have to be a hard core Olympian athlete, but live your life in a way that makes you truly happy, and have an intense drive to achieve it!!!!