What's Your 4-Minute Mile?

What’s Your Four-Minute Mile? Myers Barnes

On May 5, 1954, at Iffley Road track in Oxford, about 3,000 spectators watched a track meet between British AAA and Oxford University. A 25-year-old medical student named Roger Bannister had announced that this would be the race of a lifetime. He would be the first person in recorded history to run a mile in less than four minutes.

As a teen, Barrister had won several races and was a successful athlete. When he went to Oxford University to study medicine, he devoted his spare time to running track and became an accomplished middle-distance runner. At the time, the out-of-reach carrot for all runners was to break the four-minute mile. It had never been done and, therefore, was widely assumed to be an impossible task for a human being.

However, Bannister believed it was possible and spent hours researching the mechanical aspects of running. He studied his own running ability and combined it with his medical knowledge to develop scientific training methods that accommodated his body.

Then, on May 5, he went to the track. Here is what he wrote later about that day:
“At three-quarters of a mile the effort was still barely perceptible; the time was 3 min 0.7 sec., and by now the crowd was roaring. Somehow I had to run that last lap in 59 seconds. …I had a moment of mixed joy and anguish, when my mind took over. It raced well ahead of my body and drew my body compellingly forward. I felt that the moment of a lifetime had come. There was no pain, only a great unity of movement and aim. The world seemed to stand still, or did not exist. The only reality was the next two hundred yards of track under my feet. The tape meant finality - extinction perhaps.

I felt at that moment that it was my chance to do one thing supremely well. I drove on, impelled by a combination of fear and pride. The air I breathed filled me with the spirit of the track where I had run my first race. The noise in my ears was that of the faithful Oxford crowd. Their hope and encouragement gave me greater strength. I had now turned the last bend and there were only fifty yards more.

My body had long since exhausted all its energy, but it went on running just the same. The physical overdraft came only from greater willpower. This was the crucial moment when my legs were strong enough to carry me over the last few yards as they could never have done in previous years. With five yards to go, the tape seemed almost to recede. Would I ever reach it?”
Roger Bannister did reach it with a time of 3:59.4 and was rewarded with the honor of being the first person to run the Miracle Mile.

After his win in May of 1954, his record was broken two months later in Finland by Australian runner John Landy, who achieved a time of 3:58. Within three years, 16 other runners had also broken the record.
What happened in those three years? Was there a sudden human evolution? Where steroids actually introduced in the late fifties?

No, the basic human equipment was the same. What changed was the mindset. The runners of the past were held back by the belief that they could not surpass the four-minute mile. As a “barrier buster,” Bannister changed that. He broke the mental limit so others could see the magic of doing something they thought was impossible.

When asked how so many others had run that fast so soon after he did, Bannister replied, “It was never a physical boundary; only a mental one. The mental approach is all important because the strength and power of the mind are without limit. All strategy can be harnessed by the correct attitude of the mind.”

Just as the mindsets and belief systems of runners kept them from the four-minute-mile threshold, the new mental model by Bannister liberated them to achievement. The challenge issued by Bannister is one we should constantly ask ourselves today: “Is it that it cannot be done; or is it that it has not yet been done?”

Update: I drew liberally from Myers' post on Roger Bannisters breaking of the 4-Minute Mile barrier. Go to his link to see his application of this feat to sales. I pulled just the story, you really need to read his application.