The 4-minute Mile: Greatest Sports Story?

an intro that I presented. Do you miss that or have we evolved past that? I mean, I thought those were great for sure, and occasionally when you do them again, it's nice. But also just don't mind the banter version as well. I think they're both great. Okay, well, maybe I'll pepper it in a little more than I have been. Okay, alright, I love it because I like the banter too, But I just want to make sure I'm not like slacking off on you know, my end I'm supposed to be

holding up. No, I mean you know that certainly keeps me quiet longer, which is good or bad depending on which one of us you prefer. So why can't you just prefer both? You know? I like to think so, um, like, who's an Ernie fan? And who's a Burt fan? And everybody's a Burden Ernie fan, you know? Okay, three, the Charlie's Angels equal, Yeah, but Cheryl Lad was far and away the best. You saw that. She was on your on Good Morning America three and we were in our

little virtual green room on zoom. And when you're doing that everyone and you're on live TV, you're watching the feet of the television show, so you kind of know what's going on. And they did a teaser to go into commercial or show this this very pretty lady with blonde hair, kind of from a dis so sitting on the couch, and I went, in my mind, is that Cheryl Lad? And sure enough they said, in coming up, Cheryl Lad. She followed us. We opened for Cheryl Ladd. Finally,

I know. It's pretty cool. Yeah, so um, and I know what I'm talking about. I watched a lot of Charlie's Angels. Cheryltte is definitely the best one. Okay, nay, um, So I've got an intro for this one. Oh, we had the banter in the intro perfect, Chuck, Yes, we're talking about the four minute mile today. Let's begin. Uh. You know, I got this idea because I was until I quit watching it because it's pretty terrible. I was watching that show Winning Time on HBO about the Lakers Dynasty.

Oh yeah, didn't get bad. Yeah, I think it kind of stinks. But John c Riley is really good in it. But he told a story about Roger Banister and the fact that ethist. To Roger Banister, no one had ever thought the four minute mile was innachievable, like the human body just couldn't do it until he did it, and then it started happening on the kind of semi reg and it was in the show. It worked really well.

It was a good story, and I thought, you know, I don't know much about Rogerster, Roger Rogster Banner, Roger Banister, or his story. So we had Dave Rouse cook up this article and it's I found it's super cool and kind of inspiring and uplifting. Yeah, it is. It's pretty neat. Um Ruse did a really good job with this too, like the suspense and I've got chills a couple of times reading. He He asked us a shout out to UM.

A guy who wrote a book called The Perfect Mile, Neil Bascombe, because he used it as one of his sources in it. He I guess he thought it was so great that he wanted to shout out Neil Bascombe. But UM, one of the things that that you gotta have to do when you're talking about the four minute mile and why people thought it was impossible bowl UM, is to kind of start at the beginning, because the mile hasn't always existed. So the four minute mile hasn't

always existed. UM. The mile has been around much longer than the idea of the four minute mile. UM. In fact, it was the ancient Greeks who kind of kicked the whole thing off by coming up with a measurement called a stat. And a stat was the distance across a

field in the in an an Olympic stadium. I guess the Olympic stadium, it was about two ds, right, And so if you were if you were running around a modern track like a track and field track, you would go halfway and stop and you'd shout stop A That's what I do when I run, yep, I go about halfway around the track. I'm finished. And everyone's like, what's up with this creep? But that was the Greeks were into their running events, and the two d the half lap, as we know at the stop day, was the big

showcase event. And then they had the uh diet dioulos dioulos that was too studies. It was a four hundred and then they had even longer ones all the way up to about forty eight hundred meters uh. And then we get if you want to know where the name mile cames from, cames from? What is going on with me? I guess you're getting on a little foggy Oh no, no, no no. The Romans they ran, but that that wasn't

like their premiere event. Um. But the Romans did like to march, and when they did march, they marked their distance every thousand strides uh. And in Latins that was known as a melay pass us m I L l E, with a stride being two steps about two ft five inches. So at that time every melay pass us was four thousand, eight hundred and thirty three ft still not quite where we are today, right, And that's considered the first mile.

And it became like a regular marker that Romans used the other thing Romans were famous for was building roads everywhere they went, and they marked these miles, these somewhat shorter miles than what we consider a mile today, um,

along these roads. And what's crazy is that these Roman roads existed in say the UK for centuries and centuries, I mean like like tens of centuries, um, so that by the fifteen sixteenth centuries, um, wealthy people in the UK used to have their their servants race one another from one mile marker to another mile marker. So first

you've got the mile thanks to the Romans. Well you have a history of foot racing thanks to the Greeks, a mile thanks to the Romans, and then the mile run thanks to the Brits in the sixteenth and seventeen centuries, right. And then it took I believe in FI to get to where we are today lengthwise, because British Parliament said a mile is eight furlongs and a for long is six hundred sixty ft or seventeen hundred and sixty yards or the very familiar five thousand, two hundred and eight feet.

But we should note that as far as a mile long race, um, we still don't do that mile long race in the Olympics, we do the hundred meters, which is almost that. It's fifteen sixteenth of a mile. Yeah, so close. It's just so maddening. It's like, keep going a little further. Kind of annoying. Actually, Um, the same

thing happens at track meets in high school and college. Um. Starting in the eighties, they started building tracks to a uniform four hundred meters and you can't really divide a mile by four hundreds cleanly, so you've got four times around the track. Is about as close as you can come to a mile. I think it's nine m shy of a mile in there, Yeah, exactly, Like that finish line is not movable. Come on, let's let's get it

together everybody. But they don't. They do have special mile races for college in high school, UM, but it's not like a regular event. It's usually a four eight, six hundred, sixteen thousand meter something like that. Yeah, a hundred and sixty million meter. Alright, So we're gonna go back in time again to the nineteenth century, when you know, I

remember our episode on pubs and taverns. They got into running and sporting stuff aside from like darts, and they had tracks sometimes built out behind them, and they would organize these mile long races and people could bet on them, and the runners were called pedestrians. So initially the sport of running was called pedestrianism, which is hysterical so it

doesn't exactly roll up the time, no uh. And then someone said, hey, we've got all these cricket fields, we've got all these soccer or football fields to them, and a circle around one of these things is about a quarter a mile if we if we plan it right, and a quarter mile track is what we're looking for. So they started putting these tracks around sporting fields and all of a sudden, you've got, you know, a really easy way to to raise a mile, and it's another

person right or the clock or both. Yeah. Yeah, you could run against the clock and a person at the same time. It's been done so because by the way, pedestrianism reminds me of like a clinical term for a kink, like walking around in public with no pants on, like

porkypasian would be pedestrianism. Yeah. Um. So because the public kands figured out like, hey, we can we can make money off of this, it started attracting more and more people and it became more and more popular, and there was like this this whole jam in the nineteenth century where pedestrians were called milers because people were nuts for the mile race. Um. And there were pretty quickly in the beginning of the nineteenth century like pedestrian stars, miler

mile racers stars um. Probably highest among them was a guy named Captain Robert Barclay. The reason that he was such as stars because he was the first guy to break the five minute mark, which at the time was considered beyond the limits of human endurance. Sure, and you know, pretty great. A minute mile was not bad those conditions, especially when you look at the meals that this guy

would eat. Barclay his training regiment included a quote, a breakfast dinner of beef steak or mutton chops underdone with stale bread and old beer. Man. I don't know why it's got to be stale and old. Whenever I think of training, like eating for training, I think of that five k on the office and Michael Skott like he was trying to carbload, so a big thing of facchini alfredo right before the race. That was a good one. UM. So yeah, the Barclay had kind of a weird regiment,

but it worked for him. And also you have to consider chuck like these these people were not running in like you know, on clouds or anything or nikes. They were running in like probably some the most uncomfortable shoe anyone living today would have ever encountered. And this guy was still running a five minute mile. Yeah on. You know, who knows what the tracks behind the pubs were made of, but like legitimate racing tracks were made of like tiny

rocks oftentimes or cinders. I was surprised to see which is a tiny rock? I wasn't. I thought it was like old wood. It's like I think it's sort of like crushed lava rock. Okay, okay, I got you. That doesn't sound very comfortable at all. No, not at all. Uh. I remember when I was a kid, one of my

and I still love it. One of my favorite war movies growing up because it was a big HBO special was Gallipoli and that had a sort of a sub story about mel Gibson was one of the young stars and I can't remember the other guy's name, this other Australian. They were like track foes and then eventually friends. And I remembered seeing the shoes that they were running on and the tracks that they were running on. When I was like ten and eleven years old, just thinking like

what is going on back then? Nothing of pain, That's what it was going on, foot Paine. Was it a good movie. I've never seen it. Fantastic. That's the first time I've ever heard it pronounced out loud too. Oh really yeah, yeah, good stuff. So the nineteenth century was a big, big deal for um for running. Basically, people were super into it. There's a lot of betting going on. There were professional runners who made a career out of it, and like we said, Captain Robert barr Clay was the

first guy to break the five minute mile. UM. That was the beginning of the nineteenth century. By the towards the end of the nineteenth century, they were getting closer and closer to breaking the four minute mile. Like just in that century with those terrible shoes, they had gone from five minutes to really close to four minutes. Yeah, and it was really cool, like they were, like you said, the professionals that were making prize money and people were

gambling on it. But to the there was a certain like academic class of athletes that sort of looked down upon them, and they were known as like the gentleman amateurs. And you know, they went to Cambridge and they went to Oxford, and they were educated and like excelled academically and they excelled athletically, and they didn't feel like you had to give up the one to do the other. And it was sort of a pride in doing all those things really well. And we mentioned this because as

we'll see, Banister was one of these gentlemen amateurs. But one of the earlier ones was a guy named Walter George and he was one of the first big dogs that set a record that lasted about thirty years, a mile record. Yeah he um he. So he was an amateur, meaning like he didn't run for money. He considered that kind of lowly, being a gentleman amateur. But he raced against the um the top rated pro at the time, a guy named William Cummings, and in this meat called

the Mile of the Century. Um they raced in front of a crowd of like twenty thou people. It is because also this is at the lily Bridge Sporting Grounds, uh in London, and um there were there weren't stadiums or bleachers like you had to, Like you were in a crowd of twenty thou people at ground level watching a race. Now you're watching the head of the person

in front of you, basically. Yeah. So twenty thousand people turned out for this mile of the century and um uh Walter George one with a time of I think four minutes twelve seconds and this is in again with terrible, terrible shoes. I wonder if they were just the people in the front, like ten ft were just passing word back, you know, and they're like, they're both running fast, and then they're both running fast, and they would just keep saying that until someone went until at the end it

was like the boat hurry smashed, the bannick ensued. Good stuff. Yeah, it is good stuff. Um, but there's something to be said about that for four minutes twelve second um time. First of all, it was the amateur Walter George who

who got it. Second of all, like, that's really close to a four minute mile and we're talking eighteen eighties six here, right, So all of a sudden people are like, wait a minute, maybe maybe it's not impossible, maybe it is impossible, but we're close enough that there's there's runners, there's elite runners around the world, and this is a time where running was still really popular, not just in

Europe but in the United States as well. Um, who were saying, I'm going to dedicate my career to chasing that four minute mile, and um, that's that's kind of what happened starting in the early twentieth century. All right, I think that's a great place to break. We'll talk about a few of these people as that time ticks down towards four minutes. It's very exciting stuff, right it

for this Josh and Shock. Alright, So Walter George Is set the record at the time, which was what four twelve, and the thirty years later, almost thirty years later, a man named American actually named Norman Tabor in nineteen fifteen shaved off two tenths of a second. So now Norman Tabor owns a world record. And then for about forty years there were you know, it started just going down

little by little. There was a finished runner named Pabo Nurmi who owned the record for a little while, I think brought it down to four ten, made the sport kind of even more popular. A Frenchman named Jules uh how would you say that, uh live, do make you led?

Do make you went single digits for the first time at four oh nine point two in thirty one, new Zealander named Jack Lovelock brought it down to four oh seven point six and thirty three, I think an American named Glenn Cunningham brought it down to four oh six point eight. That was Glenn Cunningham the Kansas Powerhouse. And this is a cool story because he as a child had his legs burned in a kerosene accident that actually

killed his brother. I was told he might never walk again, and apparently it hurt less to run than it did to walk. So I don't know if Forrest Gump got this from there, but apparently as a child, like everywhere he went, he was running exactly and like he was told that he would never walk again, and he ends up growing up to set the world record for the fastest mile at four point four oh six point eight.

That's an amazing story. And also we need to say, like Jack Lovelock, Glenn Cunningham, Parvo Nermi, these people are world famous. Like if you went to America and you said Jack Lovelock, most people would know what you were talking about because again, track was really really popular in the United States for a while, and I went online to look to see what happened, and no one knows. Everybody's like, it's kind of tough to watch it. It's um, you know, it's just one person, it's not a team.

People have hypotheses, but none of them were like, this is what happened. I suspect it was the rise of football, and people are like, yeah, football, and I like baseball too, and it just kind of got edged out by the popularity of other sports. That's my guess. I feel like Olympic track is still very big, definitely, like I feel like in America, at least in the summer Olympics, like the Michael Johnson's and the the Flow Joe's are like

they make a lot of the biggest headlines. Um. I always loved I was never good at track, um and I never tried to do it, but I always really loved it growing up because my dad was a uh collegiate track star in a small school Union University in Tennessee. But he still owns some like records from Union as a hurdler, and it was sort of his passion. So

like growing up. He would watch the track in the Olympics and really get into it, and I was always desperately trying to seek a way to connect with him, so I would watch track and it's still sort of as this special thing for me for the Olympics. Love watching track. Yeah, I can imagine it sucks me up um every time too. But then you know, after the Olympics,

I forget all about it until the next Olympics. And there's plenty of races that are like run all around the world, around the country like year round basically, and they don't get televised, you know. Yeah, that's the thing. It's it's a big Olympic sport here, but you you don't know, one talks about like the you know, the Hawaiian program or whatever, right, but this is so this But this is at a time when like the world

is into track. And one of the one of the things that happened that really kind of captured the imagination of everybody was when to Swedish runners became like the world's best runners and they started breaking one another's world record for the mile, getting closer and closer each time to a four minute mile um. And there was this really famous meat between the two of them, Goonder Hog and Arnie Anderson. And it was five at Malmo in Sweden. Um, so it's the two best runners in the world who

everybody knows in the world. Both of them are Swedish and this race is being held in Sweden, so it's like a big deal race. And both of these guys are like flip flopped world record holders for the mile, that's right, And both of them got basically cheated out of Olympic fame because of World War Two. The Games were canceled in forty four when they would have been at like the peak of their you know, athletic ability.

But I believe the end up. I mean, like you said, they flip flopped and it ended up at the Malmo event. I think, uh, Hog one and set the new record at four oh one point four close. I saw that it was estimated that he was four stride short of a four minute a four minute mile. Yeah, and I think this really like hits home on just how hard it was to do and it's still super hard, but how hard it was back then that the premier athletes in the world could get close but not quite get there. Yeah,

Like it didn't. It didn't they. You didn't get any healthier, you didn't get in any better shape, You couldn't run any better than Arnie Anderson and Gunder Hogg. So and they just couldn't do it. It must have driven them crazy, you know. So people people some people looked at it differently. There are two different ways to look at it. And some people said, these guys are one point four seconds off of a four minute mile, right, somebody's going to

get there. We're just too close, and we've been edging closer and closer over the last century or so, So somebody's going to get there. Other people said, look, if if you know Hogg and Anderson can do it, nobody can do it. It's beyond the limits of the capabilities of the human body. Yeah. There was a guy in particular attract coach, sort of a legend apparently named Brutus Hamilton's who He was one of the ones saying like

it can't happen. And he coached at cal Berkeley and did a lot of He wasn't just sort of like not,

I just don't think it's gonna happen. He did a lot of research on the limits the physiological limits of human the human body, and published a list of what he called the ultimates of human effort, where he took a lot of these track and field sports and basically said, no one will ever be able to throw a javelin further than this, or a shot put further than that, or uh, or go over a high bar until by the way, look for a future episode on Dick Fosbury

that's totally coming. Uh. And he said the mile. He just said, there's no way it's ever gonna happen the human body. There's just a physical barrier there that won't allow it. Right. And I read an l A Times article from the nineties that pointed out that every single one of those limits have been broken at least once. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's sort of the hubrist of being in your own time and space and thinking that it will never get any better. Yeah, that's a lot

of hubris, though, to publish your hubrists, you know. Yeah, So poor Brutus Hamilton's I guess he had good intentions because he was saying like, don't even try, everybody, just give up, which makes him a terrible coach really, But I'm not sure what his motivation was but um, there were people out there who are like, no, brutus, brutus, Hamilton's is wrong. Um. And one of those people was our hero of this story, Roger Banister, who was a British dude who I believe was twenty four when he

ended up breaking the record. Yeah. I think if we were a PBS documentary we would say, and it would be right before the commercial. Is what Hamilton's did not count on was the power of the human spirit, the spirit of Roger Banister. Because that's really true. I mean, as you'll see, I mean, let's go ahead and talk about Banister. He was by all accounts a great He

was an Olympic caliber runner. Um. But he was, like we said, one of those gentleman runners who was very stubbornly apparently a gentleman amateur and like many times or much of his career, refused to take on a coach. He would have his own methods of training. Um, he would go to school. He studied medicine at Oxford and he he didn't like give it all up to just train full time and hire a coach to train him

full time in order to improve his times. No, this guy was training to be a doctor and an Olympic runner at the same time, in the same life, in the same years, in his early twenties exactly, so he was rather motivated, you could say. UM. And he started out ho home kind of. I think he had a time of like, UM four fifty two and his first race at Oxford, UM, his first mile race, he was a freshman. He still came in second, so that was respectable,

but he's like, this is not nearly good enough. Um. Within a few months, he shaved twenty seconds off of his time. And he also yeah, and he also learned that he really liked this track stuff because he had been across country runner in high school or grammar school. UM. And when he got to college he tried track, and in track you can just run past a whole bunch of people when you, you you know, kick it into six gear. And he was like, I like doing that a lot.

I'm gonna start really focusing on this track thing. And that's what he he did. He basically set all of his spare time toward training to be a track star in between times when he was studying and practicing to become a doctor. All right, I think that's a great time for a break yeah, yeah, listen to me. I'm Arnie Anderson. Yeah, sure, I'd run a fast mile. That was great. That's appearance in the past few weeks. See what's going on? Uh, the sweet are in the zeitgeist,

I guess. So all right, we're gonna pick up with Roger Banister and his sites set on Helsinki right after this, Josh and Shock. All right, Chuck, So we're talking about Roger Banister and he said, I really like this track stuff. And when he started to become a track star at Oxford, people started saying, hey, you know, there's some Olympics coming up. I think they're They were the ones in Los Angeles, right, okay, yeah, and people said you should run for that. You know, um,

you should try the mile race. I think you do really well maybe there, who knows. And he was like he was levelheaded enough not to get swept up in

that because he knew he just wasn't ready. So he decided he would set his sights on the nineteen fifty two Games in Helsinki and train for those instead, rather than trying to rush things and and enter the nineteen forty eight Olympics, which he probably could have, but he just didn't have enough faith in his abilities to win gold um, so he put it off for four years. That's the kind of like mental discipline this guy had. And that would be Helsinki, Sweden, Finland. Do you get

that reference? No, I wish I did hang out there then. I always feel so foolish when things like this happened, Like, I don't think I'm going to talk for the rest of the episode. You played it perfectly, though, you answered, just like in the movie it was Uncle Buck. Now

it wasn't die Hard. It was when that jackass newscaster they have like the terrorist expert and he talks about something like the Helsinki protocol or the Helsinki something and he just butts in and goes and that's Helsinki, Sweden, and the guys like, no, Finland. You did perfect too, Buddy, I feel like talking again. So I sounded like a world jackass newscaster. You did. But that's what you were

going for. Alright, So where are we are? Oh? Yeah, he's He says yes on Helsinki, which is fifty two, and again shuns the coaching and starts kind of sponsoring or not sponsoring, but um planning out these races and all over the world. He raised in New Zealand, he raised in America. He was lighting himself against the best runners in the world. He ran a very high profile race in Philadelphia called the Benjamin Franklin Mile appropriately and

became sort of a big star in America at this point. Um, such that there was a headline, or I don't know it's a headline, but something in the newspaper was quoted, uh, no manager, no trainer, no monsieur, no friends, he's nuts. He's good. That's pretty great, very nineteen fifties. Yeah, especially

with that voice of yours. Man. It just they also said that he was a worthy air to Jack Lovelock, which just goes to show you how much of a star Jack Lovelock was because he'd raised like twenty years earlier. And where was he. He was at four oh eight by this point, by the way, Okay, so he's got it down to four oh eight, and he's like, okay, I think I'm ready for the Olympics. Um. And he goes there and he runs in the undred and he places fourth. So it doesn't meddle. And this is completely

out of step with the plans that he had. I just suddenly started talking like William Shatner for some reason. Uh. And it was, you know, it was a big disappointment for him and England because this was post World War two. England was you know, got beat up pretty badly as far as like the shape of the cities and especially London, and they needed some big athletic victories and I think

they only got one goal that year. They ended up um, kind of toward the top middle of the pack with eleven medals total, but it was certainly kind of looked at as a as a national disappointment as far as the Olympics go. Yeah, and Banister was very disappointed in himself too. I think he'd really felt you know, the spirit of England on his shoulders, so he felt like

he failed his whole country. Um. And like I said this, this was totally out of step with his plans, which were he was going to get the gold in Helsinki Helsinki in fifty two and then retire from running and focus on medicine and that's just what he was going to do with his life and it didn't pan out like that. So rather than just being like, man, this sucks, I'm not even going to be a doctor anymore. I'm just gonna go, I don't know, just be a shiftless drifter.

How about that? Um, he didn't do that. He redoubled his efforts and said, Okay, maybe I can't get Olympic gold. I have my shot, didn't make it. I'm going to focus my my sights instead on breaking the four minute mile. That's what I Roger Banister, I'm going to do. And he set about doing it. Yes, And he had a little trick up his sleeve, and that he was just he was no ordinary runner in his studies that med. As a med student, he had a research scholarship while

at Oxford to study the physiological effects of running. So this is amazing. All of a sudden, he's doing these deep dive experiments on the very thing he's trying to achieve, which is what can the human body take athletically. He had a paper called the carbon and like on a scientific level, he had a paper called the carbon dioxide stimulus to breathing and severe exercise probably helpful. And another one called the effects on the respiration and performance during

exercise of adding oxygen to the inspired air. So he's getting a scientific physiological understanding of what needs to happen, which was I think for sure. I mean, he had the heart, but this is definitely a leg up on his competitors, Yeah, definitely. And he had the help of kindred spirit named Norris mcwherder, who would go on to found with his twin brother, the Guinness Book of World

Records UM. And Norris mcwardor was also into running, he was into data and analysis UM, and so he very eagerly helped Roger Banister with these scientific studies, including being a guinea pig himself. And one of the studies UM that they conducted together was to put mcwhardor on a treadmill like a nineteen forties treadmill by the way, or a nineteen fifties treadmill, I guess, um, and just make him run flat out as fast as he possibly can

for as long as he could. And I guess he made it to like the six minute mark before he blacked out and fell and was shot like an arrow out of a cannon, which wouldn't be very effective, but it wasn't this case. It was a mcwherdor arrow out of a treadmill cannon. And luckily they had a bunch of blankets and pillows and stuff like against the wall behind the treadmill to catch him. Because I guess Banister had conducted this experiment on himself many times and knew

what to expect. So he's like, okay, the six minute mark. If I can just whittle down my time, I can run flat out for four minutes um and I won't collapse. Those are the Those are the things here, the time running up against the time and then collapsing at some point, Like it's it's that's what's going to happen if I if I run far enough. So from these studies, like he started to devise his strategy at breaking the four minute mile, and it's extremely clever. Yeah, Like it made

perfect sense. He was like, I'm so close and and several of us are so close. If we can just stave off that collapse for a few seconds. That were there And one of his big jams was conservation of energy. And when you look at like when you look at a Michael Johnson run or a Flow Joe or anybody in their prime, it always just astounded me how compact and efficient their stride was. There was no like if you look at me run I look like a sick chicken.

You know, there there's no form, there's no efficiency. I'm like limbs are running all over the place. And you know that's when you look at these elite athletes. Their strides are perfect, uh, machines of efficiency, basically no wasted energy. Right, And and that was one thing that Banister you know, zeroed in on. Like you you like like you're you're just moving forward. That's everything. Every movement of your muscle

was to propel you forward. Um. The other thing is he was trying to figure out how to expand his his um cardio pulmonary um limits um to take in more oxygen when he inhaled a breath. Um, he could probably breathe through both nostrils. I'm guessing. Um he didn't have a deviated septum to um lower his resting heart rate, which is a hell tail sign of either somebody with a heart condition or an elite athlete. It's weird that both of those have lower resting heart rates. So he

worked on this stuff. He figured it out, but he also realized that he needed help. He needed basically teammates and so um he went against his own uh, his own type and met up with the two Chris's Chris Chattery and Chris Chataway and Chris Brasher, and he used these guys, well, then use them. I think they were fully aware and you and like willing participants. Yeah, they're on his training team, right, Okay, that's a better way

to put it. Um, he used them as pacers, so they helped him keep his pace and um, after three laps around the track, they would unleash the banister. That was the strategy. Dirty. Uh. Yeah. I think it's really interesting to the idea of having these pacers because it is a solitary sport, but early you're better when you have either racing against someone or in this case, have a pacer that's sort of you know, reminding you how fast you should be running at this point in the race,

because it's not it's not a sprint. You know, there's there's a technique there, and there's a game plan and in every case, I believe, uh, generally it's you've got to save some for that final burst, otherwise your toast. That's why you see these great moments where someone comes from like five or six back at the end because they have saved more than the other people. Have in front of them. Yeah. And that was the role of the two Chris is to keep him from expending too

much energy too early. And they were really good at running a specific pace. And because he had two different pacers, he um like each one could run at a specific pace without exerting themselves beyond their own limits. Because the first Chris would run the first two laps, the second Chris would run the third lap, and then the fourth lap bandished or ran by himself, just away from the pack. And this was their strategy. Um, this was what they

trained for. And um. Apparently he didn't run for like eight months before the race that he ran on May sixth, ninety um. And he chose this race very wisely and deliberately. It was hen race other people specifically, right he trained, Yeah, right, he was training, but he didn't participate in any actual race. Yeah. And he chose this the place, the site, the day, everything very carefully, didn't he. Yeah. So he chose his favorite track, which was the Ithaly Road track at Oxford. Uh.

And again this was the cinder track. And on the morning of May sixty four, it would it had rained. And so a cinder track is going to be saggy, which would indicate like slower times. And then his memoir he he sort of was like, you know everything, I'll just read it. Uh. I had reached my peak physically and psychologically. That would never be another day like it. This was my first race for eight months, and all

this time had been storing nervous energy. If I tried and fail, I should be dejected and my chances would be less on any later attempt. So what he was basically saying was it's now or never today. Yeah, And what the problem was is the weather wasn't cooperating. So whether whether it worked out or not, this was his day. Um. So he went out there, of course to try it.

And it just turns out that this this terrible weather, the wet track, the gale force wins, everything just kind of died down by race time and he was like, Okay, everything's starting to fall into place. This this is in fact going to be the day that I break that for a minute mile. And apparently he got ready and set and um, if this were a movie, you you'd be like, I can't believe they did that. But apparently in real life there was a false start. All this

build up Roger band. He is about to like pop from nervous energy, and there's a false start. They have to start over again, so he has to reset his mind back at the starting line, and then finally it starts, and I think Brasher, Chris Brasher was the one who ran, who paced him for the first two laps, right, that's right,

So he's setting pace. Banister is yelling at him to go faster, but he's that's basically Banister being a little over hyped in the moment, and thank goodness he had his pacers there because Basher's Brasher's job was to stay in the moment and know what the pace should be and not like deviate from that. So he he didn't go faster, He stayed that pace that he knew we

should stay on and ignored him basically. And they were at the half mile mark at one, so it is they're halfway, they're they're on pace to do it, and then Chris Chataway takes over. Yeah, and so Chataway and Banister running for um the third lap, the three core or of a mile mark where they finish, and they're at three minutes point seven seconds, minutes and seven tenths of a second and they're a little bit over. That's

a little bit nerve racking um. And then at the end of that three quarter mile mark, at the end of the third lap, Chataway just melts away and Banister

takes off. And Banister had figured out how to accelerate, how to move himself after being exerting himself for three minutes, you know, like this was a really fast three laps around the race, and he figured out how to find a different gear and he put it into that gear and he took off at a sprint for the last the fourth lap, and he ended up crossing the finish line at what chuck, Well, this is the coolest part and the way they puts it as really very dramatic

and awesome. Uh. The announcer at the event, I think it was his buddy Norris mcwhorder, right, which is so cool,

just like the movie moment. His best buddies there, and he said the result of event number six, the one mile winner A G. Banister of Exeter and Merton Colleges in a time which will be a new English record, a new track record, a new British Empire, Commonwealth record, a European record, a world record, and three and Apparently as soon as he said three, everyone went nuts and you couldn't even hear the rest of the time announced yep.

So Banister ended up running that day a three minute, fifty nine and four tenth second mile, the first human being in history as far as we know, to have run a mile in less than four minutes. Amazing, he did this impossible thing. People were like, it's not possible, and Banister did it. And what's really remarkable and weird and kind of circles back to John's Riley is within six weeks banisters four minute mile, this thing that no human had ever done and they've been trying to do

for centuries. Now. In six weeks banisters record was broken. Yeah it was. I think it was John Landy of Australia. Go Australia. He beat his time by one second. And then in fifty four there was a showdown between the two of them, which was a big one. You know, you've got Britain against Australia at the Commonwealth British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Vancouver, and they the race was

called the Miracle mile. Uh Landy is ahead on the final turn and apparently glances over his left shoulder to see where Banister was, and Banister booped him on the nose and passed them. He had flair like that, Yeah, he did. Uh. They both finished under four minutes, which was amazing, Like I'm sure that was the first time and there were ever two runners in the same race, but Banister one three eight to three fifty nine six.

And since then, over the years there have been more than fift undred athletes to do it, thirteen high schoolers. And it is not old hat though it is. Every time it happens to any athlete. It is a very very big deal. Still. Yeah, to put in perspective, um, the number of people who have climbed Mount Everest, which was long considered another impossible feat for human um is about six thousand. Only fifteen hundred have ever broken a four minute mile, So it is rather significant when somebody

does it. Still, like you said, for sure, and it was, you know, Dave makes a point. You know, obviously, the tracks now, the shoes, the training, the advance of medicine and training and everything they do now is a big deal. But there was there was clearly something to that psychological barrier and that they started to fall like dominoes. These

four minute miles. Right after he did it, he proved everyone it can be done, and so everyone else said, well, you know, if this medical student can do it, this gentleman athlete can do it, then I can do it. Yeah. So um, yeah, they You can make the case that it's like the chance of it being impossible was broken. It was now possible, and you knew it was possible. So you didn't have that chance of impossibility hanging over your head when you walked up to the starting line anymore,

because Roger Banister cleared that away. And what's neat is he u. He went on to live a very long life. I think he lived for sixty four more years. He died just in two thousand and eighteen, actually, um, and he got to just soak up all the accolades for that that whole time. And he did retire from morning. He went onto um I guess, become a doctor, and then later he became the dean of the medical school.

It either Oxford or Cambridge, I cannot remember. And um, if you are from Oxford or Cambridge, don't be mad at me for not knowing which ones which, Yeah, I mean, imagine what it was like for the rest of his life. Every party, every place, every dinner he ever attended, he sticks out his hand like it's like saying, I'm Chuck Yeager. You know, It's like it doesn't matter what happened since then everyone was like wow. Yeah. He says, I'm Roger Banister, I ran the mile in three, and everybody in the

crowd just starts cheering. At every party, he can never get it out. It's like Dick Fosbery. People say, I'm Dick Fosberry. You know what I invented? I don't know. I don't know. You don't know about this Dick Fosberry. You got an in joke with me, but I'm not in on. We'll do an episode on it. He invented the Fosberry flop, which is going over the high jump bar backwards. No one had ever done that before. Oh, I can't wait to talk about this guy. Yeah, because

that was a crazy, weird way to do it. And uh, plus his name is Dick Fosbery, right, I mean that's enough to do with at least a short stuff on Yeah. Absolutely, Oh look at you, shade. What did I do a short stuff? Well? No, I'm saying just for your name being Dick Fosberry that even if he didn't do anything remarkable at all, we could just talk fifteen minutes about a name like Dickberry. You and what's the what's the current record? By the way, Um, the current record is

held by Hasham L Garrouge of Morocco. Um and it is three minutes, forty three and three tenths of a second. And that's a twenty three year old record. Yeah, that was being Stefan Hassan of the Netherlands holds the women's record, which is four twelve. So the four minute mile apparently has not been broken by a woman yet. Not yet it will though, Yeah, definitely. Um, you got anything else? I got nothing else. I love this episode me too. It was a good one, good pick, good idea. Thank

you John c Riley for this one. Since I just thank John c Riley, obviously, it's time for a listener mail. I'm gonna call this a little love for our TV show. Did you see this one? Yeah? It was very sweet. Hey, guys, want to write this email because my wife recently subscribed to Discovery Plus and after a few days I realized I finally had the opportunity to watch your TV show. I have to admit that for the first fifteen seconds, very first fifteen seconds, Brains Gone Wild had me hooked.

And that was the name of well, long story, but as it aired, that was the name that of our first TV episode. Right the pilot aired last, didn't it? Yeah, standard fashion weird thing. I believe that the show is ahead of its time well well, and I'm sad that the only season, only one season was produced. However, I am grateful that the Stuff You Show podcast lives on recently caught up to the eighteen episodes. Oh wow, so

Chris didn't gonna hear this for a few years. I'm excited to hear YouTube cover recent topics of as They unfolded. I love you all and thank you for keeping me happy, educated, end grounded through the years and all accord to the great content to come with the biggest hugs one kind muster and that is from Chris L. So I did write Chris L back and say this is going to be on the sturmail so maybe he'll start sandwiching or something. Very nice. Hugs back to you, Chris L. We appreciate

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