Taste the Pain

Admin note: By this point, I had been doing track workouts on a regular basis. My split times were dropping from week to week, but one thing that never resolved was the amount of pain involved with running fast. Looking back, I’d still place those workouts very near the top of the list of things I dreaded most in my entire running career.

And yet, they were a necessary means to an end - as the following piece explains. Also, on the topic of pain – and since it’s been a while since I’ve included any music video here – there’s a very fitting old-school rock video at the end of the article.

**
Chasing Roger Bannister


Part 6: Taste the Pain

Reporter (to Clubber Lang): “Clubber, what is your prediction for the fight?”
Clubber (long pause, staring at camera, scowling): “Pain.”
- from Rocky III

Runners are accustomed to dealing with pain. Even those of us who are passionate about our sport would have difficulty arguing that, for the vast majority of the time, running is an inherently uncomfortable activity.

Everyone has heard of the “runner’s high,” or being in a zone where running becomes effortless and the miles just float by - but let’s be honest: the percentage of time spent in such a zone is extremely small in comparison to any runner’s overall mileage. The predominant physical satisfaction of running only comes afterward- whether it’s the immediate relief of being finished, the satisfaction of achieving a goal, or the more gradual rewards such as an enhanced body shape or higher energy level for our daily routines.

Unfortunately, in order to reap these rewards, there is a price of pain to be paid.

After a great race or exceptional effort, muscle soreness seizes us for the next few days, reminding us of the damage we inflicted upon ourselves. Hard workouts leave us sore and fatigued, and several weeks of conditioning take a cumulative toll on the body. When I’m training for marathons, one of the first indicators of my improved overall conditioning is a constant lingering soreness in nearly every muscle group, lasting for several weeks or more. Those aches tell me that I’ve been working hard, and that once I finally start tapering, I’ll be primed to race.

(In fact, dealing with pain has become such a constant fact of life that when I periodically take a long layoff from running, it strikes me as strange when my legs don’t hurt if they are touched. Runners live a somewhat deranged existence sometimes.)

All athletes deal with pain. In any sport, on almost any level, pain is a factor in how events transpire and which competitor prevails. What distinguishes runners and endurance athletes is that our pain is entirely self-inflicted, whether in training or in competition.

Part of the strategy in team sports (think football) or contact sports (martial arts) is to inflict pain on your opponent while trying to avoid it being repaid. Compare this to running a 10K, where any individual’s actions are basically independent of everyone else. The only thing that allows us to succeed is the ability to override the constant pleas of our rational brain to stop the senseless physical assault on our bodies. Some competitors handle this factor better than others.

Therefore, in addition to high VO2 max and anaerobic threshold, an athlete’s intrinsic capacity to cope with pain is a prime factor in becoming successful. For example, an abnormally high pain tolerance is the reason many cyclists cite when discussing what sets Lance Armstrong apart from the rest of the peloton (although the fact that he has the highest recorded VO2 max on record certainly helps).

As a marathon runner, I was a bit ignorant of the physical toll taken in training for shorter races. I thought that since I would be running shorter distances and fewer days, my body would handle the strain without significant problems. I very quickly learned that running fast hurts. A lot. And it’s a really good way to injure yourself if done foolishly (that lesson only took me a few weeks to understand).

Throughout this season, I’ve had more aches and pains throughout my entire body than during any marathon buildup. My elbows hurt from pumping my arms so fast. My abdomen hurts from stabilizing my flailing limbs during interval after interval. There's soreness in all of my leg muscles that feels like I’m continually on the verge of a muscle strain. And that’s just the pain that occurs between workouts, when I’m not actually running.

On the track, I’m never certain that I’ll summon the willpower required to make myself run fast. It’s an entirely different type of pain than experienced when running long distances.

Think of it this way: imagine that running a marathon is like developing a severe sunburn on a hot day. The pain doesn’t feel too bad to start with, but after several hours, it can become excruciating. By comparison, racing a mile would be like stepping into a shower of scalding hot water, and staying there for (in my case) about five minutes. The resulting burns to your back would be the same, but the manner in which they are acquired is dramatically different. Either way, you’re going to get fried – but which method would you prefer?

During my warmup for each track workout, my stomach gets queasy with dread, and it feels like I’m staring at the burning water, steeling myself to jump in. Almost immediately after I start an interval, I wish I could just quit, to refrain from torturing myself. On most days, I’ve somehow been determined enough to finish the workouts, only to spend the rest of the day dealing with the post-exercise soreness while recuperating. For this novice miler, such experiences are the new normal.

It all begs a question – namely, what is it that drives us? Why do otherwise rational people inflict such misery upon themselves day after day, for no recognition or immediate reward?

Sports psychologists have a field day with this question. Some say that the pain is a form of physical penance for earlier excesses (of food, alcohol, etc), and that the ritual suffering cleanses our conscience until the next time we indulge. Others compare the cycle of suffering and pleasure to that of drug or alcohol abuse - except that we experience the painful component in advance of the euphoria, instead of afterward. There are numerous other theories of how athletes continually drive themselves into repeated bouts of discomfort, but I honestly don’t think it’s that complex.

For me, the main reason that I toil the way that I do is because it is the only way to get better. Despite what many advertisers and product manufacturers want us to believe, there is no easy path to becoming a faster runner. It takes the dedication of hour after hour, hard mile after hard mile, and in many cases, agony after agony.

Sure, I would much rather do easy runs, take days off, and avoid discomfort as much as possible - the problem is, I could never be a 3-hour marathoner that way, or a 5-minute miler, or accomplish any other goal that is truly meaningful to me. I suspect that anyone - from Olympians to back-of-the pack runners – will offer a similar justification.

Finally, here’s the good part. Even though we anguish in striving strive toward meaningful goals, the satisfaction and reward we reap upon accomplishing them is usually worth all the suffering it took to get there. Above all else, that’s the reason we can inflict pain upon ourselves: because a small part of us knows the pleasure we will eventually gain is far greater.

On some days, it’s hard to convince ourselves of this, but then we start to see progress. That’s where I am right now with my mile training - seeing improvements in small doses that encourage me to continue this training cycle towards its eventual conclusion. I’ve slowly forged a sense of confidence that I can break through the five-minute barrier. I also know it will be enormously painful.

So to properly prepare myself, I just have to maintain the motivation to keep jumping into that hot water.

*
“Walk away and taste the pain-
Come again some other day -
Aren't you glad you weren't afraid?
Funny how the price gets paid.”
- Red Hot Chili Peppers, “Taste the Pain” (click to play):



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The Beautiful Race

Admin note: If you’re surprised that I can muster so much infatuation for one race, perhaps you just haven’t read my blog for long enough. The bad news is, it only gets worse from here. I described a previous article as a love letter to the marathon; in that case, consider this one the romantic ramblings of a starry-eyed runner toward his new obsession.

**

Chasing Roger Bannister

Part 5: The Beautiful Race

Is it possible for a race to be beautiful?

I’m not talking about a situation where the course is in a scenic location, or the athletes who run it are particularly good-looking, or a winning strategy by one particular runner is admirable in its execution. I’m referring to a case where the race distance itself, and the format in which it is contested, are models of intrinsic beauty, consistent at every level of competition.

Brazilians frequently refer to soccer as joga bonito, “the beautiful game”. They speak of the fluid motion of the game and the constantly evolving tactics of the players as living poetry that transcends the actual participants involved - meaning that the game is just as beautiful to observe when played by amateurs as by the legendary Brazilian national team.

If an equivalent event exists in the track and field world, it would have to be the traditional one-mile race. Roger Bannister termed the mile the “classic Anglo-Saxon distance.” Coaches consider it to be the ultimate test of strength and endurance, requiring both pure speed and remarkable stamina to succeed.

The unit of measurement dates back to the Roman Empire, and was used throughout Europe for many centuries. The mile was also the standard measure for determining plots of land and establishing road networks in the New World. In the modern era, America has stubbornly (and many of us would say, thankfully) resisted global conversion to the metric system in nearly every facet of life – with the notable exception of track and distance running.

Prior to the 1970s, most tracks in America and Europe were 440 yards per lap - exactly four laps per mile. The one-mile race lent itself to dramatic execution, much like a four-act play, or a symphony in four movements. A successful race required a strong opening, a solid, thoughtful effort through the second lap, and perseverance and determination through the third. The final lap then built upon these with a climactic final crescendo toward the suspenseful – sometimes tragic, sometimes inspirational - conclusion.

Dividing the race into four equal segments gave the mile a mathematical symmetry: with each lap, runners knew precisely how they stood in relation to their target finish time - and just as importantly, so did the crowd. During the chase for the four-minute mile, track stadiums around the world would reach a fever pitch whenever a runner passed the half-mile under two minutes, or the ¾ mile anywhere close to three minutes.

The four-minute mile had an especially elegant symmetry to it: four laps, one minute per lap. In Bannister’s day, races were timed by those old-fashioned sweep-arm stopwatches, where the second hand made one revolution per minute. Thus, a runner keeping four-minute pace would circle the track in perfect synchronicity with the arm of the watch. The aesthetic appeal of a man doing such a feat contributed to the race’s mystique during its heyday in the 1950s.

Now compare the stylishness of the mile to the 1500 meters, or the “metric mile” that is most commonly raced today. Whereas the mile is aesthetically perfect, the 1500m is a complete hodge-podge. The distance is exactly three-and-three-quarters laps around today’s 400m tracks. It starts along a strange arc drawn across the curve of the track. It doesn’t finish where it starts.

Spectators and runners alike are often confused by split times: is the first split given at the first full lap? Or the initial three-quarters of a lap, when there are three even laps to go? Can either of these lap splits tell anyone what kind of finishing pace the runner is on? Can metric splits (at 500m or 1000m) give spectators an appreciation of how fast the runners are moving?

Sadly, as the metric system became the international standard, the 1500m rapidly grew in prominence - despite fierce resentment from elite athletes of the day. John Landy, Bannister’s Australian rival, has said, “That’s not a race at all. It’s shame we’re stuck with the 1500m. It’s a tragedy. It’s awful. There’s nothing graceful about it. It’s ugly. It has no elegance. The mile is a vastly better race.”

(Not only that, but for Americans, the mile has a stranglehold in the popular conscious, especially among runners. Split times are always broken into minutes per mile. Pace groups at every major race use minutes per mile. In my whole life, nobody’s ever asked me how fast I can run a K. With the exception of my one Canadian friend, kilometers are simply meaningless – it’s a measurement to which nobody can relate. If that makes us lazy, so be it.)

Now that almost all tracks have been converted to meters, the closest we can get to capturing the beauty of the mile is the 1600m - exactly four laps around the 400m track. (As an aside, shouldn’t this be considered the metric mile? It’s only 9 meters short of one mile. It’s as close to equivalent as you can get. Why arbitrarily make the race another 100m shorter? Europeans really frustrate me sometimes.) And yet, it’s not quite the same. Most runners will agree that the mile adds an additional 2 to 3 seconds for those extra 9 meters, so mile times are often extrapolated from the 1600m - but shouldn’t mile times actually be accomplished instead of estimated?

To their credit, most American high schools favor racing the 1600m over the 1500, but these races still lack the historical comparison to their parents’ and grandparents’ generations. Part of the excitement over Alan Webb’s 3:53 mile in 2001 was that he was the first high school student in more than 30 years to go under 4:00, and he broke a schoolboy record that stood for 36 years. Nobody kept track of 1600m times 35 years ago - and even if they did, would anybody care? The mile is a benchmark that resonates much more clearly.

So as I’m training and racing around the track this summer, monitoring my progress with 400m and 800m split times, in the back of my mind I know that at some point, I’ll have to actually mark off those extra 9 meters before I time myself in the mile. With all of the time and interest I’ve dedicated to Roger Bannister and the mile, there is no way that I would be satisfied with racing 1500m, or even 1600m.

In a perfect world, this beloved event would remain unchanged through the generations - much like futbol in Brazil – and all over the world. Sadly, the track and field landscape has driven the one-mile footrace to the brink of extinction. However, I can still dream of finding a 440-yard track someplace, where I can run not just the same distance as Bannister, but also the same “beautiful race.”


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May 6, 2004

Admin note: despite all of my praise for and infatuation with the mile, I still hadn’t quite gotten around to actually, you know … racing one. I decided to wait until my April marathon was finished, then picked the perfect date to switch gears into mile training.

In this installment, I also mention a book that captivated me during the Bannister project; it’s one I’d whole-heartedly recommend to anyone who wants to know the story in greater detail – just in case there are one or two strange souls out there who somehow find these blog articles too short. It’s definitely in my top-three running books of all time. A link is provided in the post.

**

Chasing Roger Bannister

Part 4: May 6, 2004


Fortunately for me, the 50th anniversary of Roger Bannister’s 4-minute mile fell on a Thursday.

I planned on using the date as the official start of my summer track workouts in pursuit of a 5-minute-mile – and I figured an all-out one-mile time trial would quickly tell me if my ambition was realistic, and gauge exactly how much work I had ahead of me. The timing worked out perfectly to recruit some running partners to help my cause.

Our group regularly does track sessions on Thursday mornings, so I hoped to convince some of them to race the mile with me. A few days prior to the date, I told my training partners about my plans - and I was delighted on May 6th to find that three of them showed up anyway.

The morning didn’t exactly have the same meaning for all of us. I, of course, had been counting down the days until the historic anniversary, and was very anxious to see precisely where I stood in relation to the five-minute goal. The others just welcomed the opportunity to do some quality speedwork.

Perhaps that’s why they gave me a perplexed look as I wished them a Happy Bannister Day - and why, after I explained the occasion, they uttered one of those humoring, drawn-out “Ooohhh…” expressions usually reserved for meeting your three-year-old daughter’s imaginary friend. Perhaps they appreciated the significance of the day after I told them, or maybe they just decided to temporarily accommodate my craziness. Either way, I had my pacers.

Coincidentally, I wasn’t the only one who thought to mark the anniversary by doing a one-mile race. In fact, Roger Bannister himself organized a meet at Oxford’s Iffley Road track on May 6, with the one-mile race as the featured event – so I figured that if I was crazy, at least I was in good company. In true Bannister style, the Oxford meet was open only to amateur runners: no sponsors’ logos were allowed on uniforms, no advertising money was accepted, and no prize money was awarded.

On the same day, at the Nike Invitational track meet (advertisers, logos and sponsors welcome, of course) in Eugene, Oregon, America’s top high school miler, Galen Rupp (pictured), would attempt a sub-four mile of his own, racing against a world-class field. Throughout the day and night of May 6th, running clubs all over the world would gather for the exact same reason ours had - to remember a great accomplishment of the past, and to honor Bannister’s ambition and ideals by recreating the race.

And so it was that four of us stood at the start line in the morning twilight, and commenced our own one-mile time trial.

During the first lap I felt great, running smooth and strong, but nervous about how my body would respond to the lactic acid lockup that was inevitably coming. I hit the 1-lap split in 75 seconds - exactly 5-minute pace - but immediately knew there was no way I could sustain it for even another 200 meters, let alone 3 more laps. I slowed considerably in the second and third laps, but kept a steady stride and maintained 82-second splits. In the final lap, I ratcheted my speed up as much as possible, and marveled at the amount of pain that enveloped my whole body - from my feet up through my legs, to my lungs, chest, and head.

In the homestretch, my form completely fell apart, and I gasped across the finish line after completing another 75-second lap, for a 5:15 mile (actually, 1600 meters- that will be another story). All things considered, it was a solid effort and a promising starting point for the upcoming summer.

Throughout the rest of the day, I monitored some observations of the anniversary, and marveled at just how many people were influenced by one simple footrace so many years ago. At lunchtime, I read a few chapters from The Perfect Mile, Neal Bascomb’s excellent account of how Bannister, Australian John Landy, and American Wes Santee - despite living on three separate continents – pushed and challenged and threatened each other in their pursuit of the elusive four-minute mile. I learned that Galen Rupp ran a 4:01 mile in Oregon- a fantastic result and a personal best for him, but a bit heartbreaking as well, considering the occasion.

Fittingly, another sub-four minute mile was run at Iffley Road, albeit by an Australian instead of an Englishman - although in 1954, they would both fit one of Bannister’s favorite descriptions: “Empire men”. (Good day for the Empire, the Brits would tell you). Speaking to the BBC about the Oxford meet, Banister explained, “I hope this acts as an inspiration to sportsmen and women everywhere to keep striving to achieve their best through personal effort alone.”

Five thousand miles away, on a dark track in Salinas California, the four of us racing each other on this particular morning definitely accomplished Sir Roger's objective. I can’t think of a better launching point for the challenge ahead of me this summer.

Let the quest begin.


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My Internet Dollars at Work

OK, time for a break. I'm interrupting this much-longer-than-any-of us-anticipated Bannister series to show you my small contribution to Sunday's Super Bowl broadcast: (click to play)



Kind of makes you proud to be a part of it all, doesn't it?

I'll just say this quickly: I love GoDaddy.com. I've purchased two domain names from them at very reasonable prices, and their customer service has been outstanding on the (thankfully few) times I've had the occasion to use them. (So I guess now you can say that I'm an "enhancer", as well.)

And then there are the Super Bowl ads.

GoDaddy is making this an annual tradition of sorts - right up there with the Cindy Crawford/Michael J Fox Diet Pepsi ads of the 1980s, or the Bud Bowl series of the early 1990s. Except in this case, the tone of the ads are quite a bit more, um ... distinctive. From a purely creative standpoint, they're hard to not enjoy - especially this year's version, which makes a mockery (check that - an even further mockery) of the Senate baseball hearings. On the humor scale, it's right up there with the "Everybody wants to work in marketing" classic from two years ago (video below).

Are the ads funny? Definitely. Are they offensive? Possibly. Do they have anything to do with a web hosting company? Um ... probably not.

I guess I don't really have a point to make here, except to say I needed a break from the current series of posts - and a potent cocktail of sports, sex, and humor was the perfect tonic to jolt me briefly off-subject. I guess I'm also saying that regardless of what you think of their commercials, GoDaddy is a pretty cool company.

And I hear that their marketing department is pretty crazy. (click to play):

Back to the Bannister stuff tomorrow.

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The Marathon and the Mile

Admin note: Although I had previously pledged to focus on the mile for the year, I found it much harder than I imagined to tear myself away from marathon training. For many years, racing the marathon was the end-all and be-all of my running existence – and much of this article is a love letter to the race I was temporarily leaving behind.

Also, remember what I said before about my being a track geek? Well, the nerd coils are burning pretty hot underneath this article as well. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

**

Chasing Roger Banister

Part 3: The Marathon and the Mile

This spring, I find myself at a curious crossroads in my training regimen. My favorite race, April’s Big Sur Marathon, is rapidly approaching, yet my mind is dwelling to my main objective for the year: training to run a five-minute mile this summer.

The close proximity of these dates has triggered a cognitive drift between the two events, which represent bookends in the catalog of classic distance races. Both have a wealth of history, tradition, and drama. Both are fairly well known and appreciated by casual observers, and both offer easily identifiable barometers of one’s ability.

The marathon has the most famous origin of any athletic event. In 490 B.C., the vastly outnumbered Athenian army, after defeating the mighty Persians in a crucial battle at the city of Marathon, dispatched their messenger Pheidippides to carry news of the victory back over 24 miles to Athens. As the legend goes, he arrived at the city, uttered the exclamation “Nike!” (meaning, “victory” – or possibly foreshadowing the rise of an athletic company juggernaut some 2400 years later), and promptly died of exhaustion.

Ever since its inclusion in the modern Olympiad, the marathon has had a remarkably colorful history. For the first three Olympic Games, the distance of the race varied - anywhere from 24.8 miles to 25.4 - based on geographic logistics of the host cities. Prior to the 1908 London Olympics, King Edward VII established the official distance by the least scientific means imaginable: he lengthened the race to the modern-day standard of 26.2 miles so that the royal family would have the luxury of watching the race start in front of their home at Windsor Castle, and the finish in front of the Queen's viewing box at Olympic Stadium. (On a related note: if you’ve ever bonked in the 26th mile of a marathon, feel free to direct your cursing towards the British royal family.)

Marathoners were long considered the rogues and misfits of the running community. Competitors in the early 1900s often took mid-race breaks to indulge in cigarettes and brandy, which was thought to improve their stamina. Through the years, the race has attracted more cheaters than any other sporting event, as would-be tricksters have tried to steal the glory of a victory by cutting the course, hopping on horses or subways, or hiding in the bushes before emerging ahead of the pack in the final miles.

Obviously, the marathon’s checkered history hasn’t limited its popularity, as participation levels have exploded in recent years. As more runners take part in the event, many become focused on benchmark times that have gradually seeped into the popular conscience – of which the most obvious example is the list of qualifying times for the Boston Marathon.

Aside from Boston, however, round numbers offer the most enticing goals. To both participants and observers, running a 2:59:58 seems far superior to a 3:00:05, with vastly more significance than the mere seven seconds would indicate. The hour marks (whether it's 3, 4, or 5) are highly visible milestones that many runners strive for years to attain – as I can attest to from personal experience.

At one point, my marathon PR was 3:03, and for more than a year I was obsessed with the quest to dip under 3 hours. It took several attempts and a few agonizing misses, and I wasn’t content to stop the chase until I finally nailed it. The fact that my eventual breakthrough race was a 2:56 seemed relatively insignificant; I would have been equally satisfied in the result even if it had taken up to three additional minutes.

Similarly, the mile has its own symbolic benchmarks - measured in even minutes instead of hours – and the first-ever four-minute mile is the most classic example.

Think about it: would we celebrate Roger Bannister and remember his name 50 years later if he had run the distance just 7/10ths of a second slower (4:00.1 instead of 3:59.4) that day in 1954? The time still would have been a world record – but it was the round number that had, over the years, acquired a mystique far larger than the simple act of running around the track faster than anyone in history. Even to this day, despite the passage of 50 years and an ever-increasing number of runners who have reached it, the four-minute mile remains one of the most glamorous accomplishments in athletics.

For recreational runners, other minute barriers loom just as large. Many high schoolers frame their entire season around beating a five-minute mile, while older athletes would be thrilled, just for one time, to run a mile under six or seven minutes. Being somewhere between “high school” and “older”, I frequently imagine that I’m capable of a 5-minute mile, although I’ve never actually tried it.

Just as they did for the marathon, the round numbers of the mile entice me like a siren’s song. What’s worse, somehow I already know that if one day I run a 5:03 but never go “under the zeroes”, it would be a haunting conclusion to my season’s toil. The benchmark times are like beacons that continually call us beyond the measures that we would otherwise consider acceptable, and won't let us rest comfortably until we arrive.

Sadly, while the marathon has broadened its appeal in recent years, the one-mile race hovers on the brink of extinction. Almost all major national and international championships today race the “metric mile” of 1500m, which for many reasons is unforgivable (as I’ll describe in a future article). Thankfully, a handful of meets still exist where world-class runners gather to race the mile. These contests are typically the headline events, with sentimental monikers such as the Miracle Mile (in Vancouver), the Dream Mile (Oslo), or the Golden Mile (Rome). Others are named after track and field giants, such as the Bowerman Mile at the Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, Oregon.

Finally, the question I’ve been pondering lately: Is it possible for a runner to excel at both the mile and the marathon?

At the international level, the answer is a definite “no”. Nobody has ever won world championships in both events – although two legendary men have come close. Finland’s Paavo Nurmi won Olympic gold in the 1500m in 1920, and later set a world record for the 20K (13.4 miles). Perhaps the greatest distance runner of all time, Czech Emil Zatopek (at right), set an unprecedented triple by winning golds in the 5K, 10K, and marathon at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics. However, the marathon and one-mile “double” has remained unattainable to all who have tried to accomplish it.

It’s not hard to understand why. The two events feature dramatically different physiological and psychological demands; one requires explosive bursts of speed and precise race strategy, while the other rewards a prolonged, calculated effort that gradually builds to maximal exertion. That’s not to say that runners can’t find satisfaction in pursuing both disciplines – just that it’s nearly impossible to simultaneously do well in both.

So it is that I find myself training for the marathon, but thinking about the mile. And since I’ve spent the vast majority of my running years at one end of the distance spectrum, I feel like a relative newcomer to this brave new world of one-mile racing.

Honestly, that’s a huge part of the mile’s appeal. Much of my satisfaction this summer will be in knowing that I took on a new challenge and gave it my best effort, regardless of the result. Unless, of course, the end result is that I run a 5:01 - in which case my only reward will be whole new set of neuroses.

While that’s not exactly what I need, at least it might provide continuing fodder for my writing career.

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When Milers Ruled the Earth

Admin note: I've mentioned before that I'm student of the sport of distance running. More accurately, I'm the awkward, pimply nerd sitting in the front row completely enraptured by each day's lesson. If for some reason you didn't believe me before, consider this series - and the following article in particular - Exhibit A in my claim to be one of the biggest track geeks around.

**

Chasing Roger Bannister

Part 2: When Milers Ruled the Earth

Roger Bannister nearly retired from running in 1952 - two years before he would run the world’s first sub-four-minute mile. That year, he ran in the Olympic 1500m race at Helsinki, and was on schedule to finish his medical studies at Oxford within the next two years. He knew that his matriculation as a physician would prevent him from training well enough to be competitive in the next Olympic cycle.

However, two factors ultimately persuaded him to stay in the sport for two more years. His disappointing - he was the pre-race favorite - 4th place Olympic finish caused many in the British press to question the validity of his training methods, which he could only justify by setting a world record. He also believed that he should accomplish all that he was capable of in his athletic career before he left it for good and focused, in his words, “on my considerable hospital duties.”

At the time, he was 22 years old.

Today it would be anachronistic for world-class athletes to pursue “real jobs”, or to walk away from a sport they dominate at such a young age – but Bannister was very close to doing just that. Truthfully, the idea wasn’t at all unusual in the 1950s.

Bannister’s chief rival was Australian John Landy (at right, after breaking the world record), who was the second man to break the four-minute mile, eclipsing Bannister’s world record just 46 days later. Landy’s competitive career lasted a mere two years longer than Bannister, as he retired after the Melbourne Olympics in 1956.

The next great miler was Herb Elliott, another Australian. From 1958 through 1960, he ran 17 sub-4 miles, set 3 world records, and was undefeated in all of his races. After winning the gold medal at Rome in 1960, at age 22, he retired from running and never returned.

In other words, the three greatest milers the world had ever seen only raced competitively for a combined total of eight years.

These men all retired for essentially similar reasons: there simply wasn’t any money to be made by being track stars. Elliott (at right, in the Rome Olympics) in particular had a family to support, and there was never any question as to where his priorities lay. Interviewed years later, he said, “Running is just something I did. It’s a sport. It wasn’t my life. My family is my life.”

This was the age of true amateurism, when athletic competition was a young man’s passion - one to be thoroughly quenched before taking on the normal responsibilities of life. A couple more decades would pass before an athlete could parlay his talent into the financial rewards of prize money and corporate sponsorships.

Ironically, although they could barely make a living, the great milers of the 1950s were amongst the most famous and most recognized athletes in the world.

Most of us are too young to ever remember a time when track and field was a large spectator sport, but for many years it enjoyed enormous popularity. Fifty years ago, the NFL didn’t yet exist, the NBA was a novelty act, and stock cars were still used for running moonshine. Track athletes were second only to baseball players in their ability to draw American interest, and were even more popular internationally.

Perhaps the best illustration I have for this point comes from my own family. After reading my previous article about Bannister’s sub-4 mile, my mom sent me the following e-mail:

I remember that well. My dad used to talk about it [the four-minute mile] all the time. I remember how surprised we were when he did it.

On the surface, the statement’s not too remarkable – but let me break it down a bit. My mom was six years old in 1954, living in Salt Lake City, Utah. Her father was a middle-aged man with no personal experience as a runner. And yet, one of my grandfather’s favorite topics of discussion with his young daughter was the one-mile world record (not to mention his conviction that a sub-4 would never happen). This ordinary family man in middle America made a regular habit of following results of events that took place overseas – events with no American athletes involved.

I mean … could this ever happen today? It would be like a modern family having dinner conversation about whether Gebreselassie has another world record left in him [2009 update: he did], whether El Guerrouj will finally win Olympic gold [2009 update: he did, too], or when someone will finally defeat Bekele in cross-country [2009 update: we're still waiting]. Sure, these topics may be regular dinner fare at my house - but do normal families ever talk like this? Can anyone reading this even name three world-class 1500m runners?

However, it’s a tough argument to claim that things were better back in Bannister’s day. Despite the decline in popularity of track and field, most developments in the sport over the past five decades have been enormously beneficial.

For athletes, it is now possible to become very wealthy (although, regrettably for runners, not on nearly the same scale as NFL or NBA players) with appearance fees and corporate sponsors, which allows them to stay in the sport throughout their physical primes. From a fan’s standpoint, it’s thrilling to follow the careers of the great distance runners as they mature, establish their dominance as the world’s best, and later fight to hold their place as the newest young lions roar onto the scene. One career overlaps another in a long story arc that evolves in a natural progression.

How much could Bannister, Landy, or Elliott have achieved if they had competed against each other into their late 20s and beyond? We can only speculate. Landy and Bannister, in particular, always inspired the best in each other, traded the world record, and so captivated the world’s attention that their ultimate showdown at the Empire Games in 1954 was dubbed “The Mile of the Century”. I imagine that a sports fan’s greatest disappointment is that these two great champions couldn’t repeatedly race head to head like heavyweight fighters (think of Ali vs Frazier) pushing each other to new levels of greatness.

(Bannister passing Landy in the "Mile of the Century")

Fortunately, back in 1952, Bannister made the fateful decision to postpone retirement by two years to chase after the four-minute mile, and eventually ran into the history books. No matter how fast future men may cover the distance, there will never be a more watershed performance in track than his fateful run at Oxford in 1954 – because it’s virtually certain that the one-mile (or 1500m, for that matter) footrace will never command the world stage in such a manner again.

Perhaps it is fitting then, that the most pivotal moment in our sport’s history belongs to a runner from that golden age of running, when achievements were pursued solely for personal challenge and fulfillment, with the whole world eagerly attentive – for if a similar achievement happened on today’s track landscape, there’s a good chance that it might slip by generally unnoticed.


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Sir Roger (and Me)

Administrative note: I need to establish a few ground rules before we jump into this series …

1) First, my intent was to publish these articles exactly as they were written five years ago – but where appropriate, I’ll put 2009 updates in brackets if there’s something new that bears mentioning. Otherwise, think of this series as my ghost of blogging past. On a related note …

2) I didn’t realize it until I started reviewing these – but in several cases, my writing is pretty lame. Go easy on me; I had 5 fewer years of practice under my belt than I do now. And finally …

3) My goal is to crank these out in a once-per-weekday fashion until we’re through the 10-part series – with previous entries found in the new sidebar at right. However, I reserve the right to interrupt the series as events warrant - like if someone uncovers an American Idol sex scandal, or if I come up with some theory as to why Ben Linus is working for Faraday's mother, or if Bruce Springsteen inadvertently tears some girl’s clothes off at halftime of the Super Bowl this weekend. You know … important stuff. We’ll see how it goes.

With that, we’re off!

**

Chasing Roger Bannister

Part 1: Sir Roger (and Me)


Late in the afternoon of May 6, 1954, 24-year-old Roger Bannister stood in the bleachers of the Iffley Road track at Oxford University, staring at the flagpole.

He had planned to enter the one-mile race that day - but most of the morning and afternoon had seen swirling winds and intermittent rain, and he arrived at the track convinced that he would defer the effort until a later date. However, as he gazed upward just prior to race time, the flag of St George - which for most of the day had stood nearly horizontal - sagged and fluttered against the pole.

At that moment, a curious thought crossed his mind: an Englishman who waits for good weather will never get anything done. Somewhat pessimistically, Bannister laced up his spikes and stepped onto the track.

(The start line: May 6, 1954)

The rest of that afternoon is now legendary. Bannister, paced through three laps by teammates Chris Chataway and Chris Brasher, surged ahead and broke free in the final 440 yards, crossing the tape in 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds, thus becoming the first man to run the mile in less than four minutes. He later recalled that the race “was my moment to do one thing supremely well.”

(Brasher, Bannister, and Chataway)

Over the next 50 years, the one-mile world record would be held by eleven different men, and lowered by nearly 20 more seconds – but that blustery May afternoon at Oxford remains the defining moment in the history of the event. The magnitude of the achievement sent shockwaves through the entire athletic world, and permanently changed the conventional rules of human achievement.

For several decades prior to May 6, 1954, the four-minute mile was considered the “absolute zero” of physical performance: something that could be approached, but never eclipsed. Many sporting and scientific experts – including some of the most esteemed physicians of the day – considered it the outer limit of athletic potential. (In fact, there were published medical opinions about what might happen to the body if pushed at such an unfathomable pace; one particularly disturbing prediction was that the heart tissue would simply explode.)

(The finish - and the start of a new era)

Bannister’s run demonstrated that the true potential of the body is yet unknown, and that the limits imposed upon it are mainly psychological, influenced only marginally by laws of nature and physics. Indeed, Bannister held the world record for only 46 days, and in the 12 months following his watershed run, the sub-4 mile was accomplished by four other runners. Once the so-called “impossible” barrier was broken, the collective mindset amongst elite runners was forever changed – and within a few years, performances that were once inconceivable became prerequisite just to stay competitive in world-class events.

Bannister was one of the last true amateur athletes in an era just before professionalism overran nearly every sport. He was a medical student at the time of his record run, went on to become a distinguished neurologist, and championed many charitable causes throughout his life. His goal was never to become a professional athlete; above all else, he considered a well-rounded man to be the noblest goal one towards which one could strive. In his mind, there was no glory to be found by excelling in one particular interest - especially one as insignificant as athletics - to the exclusion of all others.

Although he describes himself as reclusive and awkward in person, Bannister is remarkably philosophical and idealistic in his writing. In his book The Four-Minute Mile, written the year after his historic run, he speaks passionately about such topics as amateurism, the importance of balancing athletics with other endeavors, over-reliance on coaching, and the purity of competitive racing as opposed to simply making attempts at records. He authored the book when he was 25 years old – and aside from updated introductions to future versions (such as the 40th anniversary edition I own), he has not written about the four-minute mile in all the years since. [2009 update: the above link is to the 50th anniversary edition.]

For many years, Bannister resisted offers of knighthood from the Queen of England, displeased that the honor would be bestowed upon him due to a singular performance. It was only after persistent negotiation that he finally agreed, under the condition that the designation recognize his entire life’s work - his contributions to medicine and science, and his love of philanthropy - in addition to his historic race. To modern day elite athletes, such notions may seem quaint and naïve - but for millions of recreational competitors all over the world, they still resonate with ideological clarity.

Sir Roger Bannister is alive and well and living in London in the year 2004 [2009 update – he still is], fifty years since he ran the world’s first four-minute mile. Among all of the influential athletes in my life, he has always been a towering presence.

My objective for this year is to recognize his accomplishment in the most appropriate manner that this idealistic amateur runner can think of. To that end, I plan to commemorate the anniversary by temporarily retiring from my marathon exploits to start training and racing the mile.

I have absolutely no idea how this project will end. Check that – there’s one thing I know for certain: it’s almost 100% legitimately impossible for me to run a four-minute mile. However, the next closest barrier - breaking five minutes - just may be within my reach. I’ll have to turn my distance training upside down, and venture into workouts and zones of discomfort that I’ve never experienced – and if I don’t reach my goal, hopefully I’ll at least collect some interesting stories to tell along the way.

If nothing else, I hope to make the whole process a fitting tribute to a remarkable man.


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