Salazar was famous for his unyielding racing style and his appetite for suffering. As a nineteen-year-old in 1978, he returned home to the Boston suburb of Wayland, Massachusetts, for the summer after a disappointing sixth-place finish at the NCAA championships ended his sophomore track season at the University of Oregon. He made a sign to post on his bedroom wall, scrawled in felt-tip pen on a giant piece of poster board, that he stared at daily: “You will never be broken again.”
