The 4-minute Mile: Greatest Sports Story?

Nobody thought the 4-minute mile was humanly possible, until it was. The story of how it happened is remarkable. So sit back and take a listen.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry and
there's Roger Banister and we're all hanging out, running around
being crazy and this is stuff you should know. Good intro,

(00:27):
it was not my best. Let me ask you this, Chuck,
do you miss the intros of your where like I
would relate some maybe current news story to what we
were talking about, or um, just there would be like
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,

(00:50):
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

(01:12):
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

(01:32):
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

(01:53):
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

(02:16):
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.

(02:39):
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

(03:01):
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,

(03:22):
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,

(03:44):
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

(04:04):
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

(04:25):
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

(04:45):
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

(05:08):
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,

(05:28):
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,

(05:49):
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

(06:11):
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

(06:36):
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.

(06:56):
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.

(07:18):
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

(07:38):
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

(07:59):
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

(08:24):
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

(08:45):
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

(09:07):
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

(09:29):
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

(09:49):
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

(10:13):
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,

(10:35):
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

(10:57):
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

(11:19):
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

(11:41):
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

(12:02):
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

(12:24):
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

(12:47):
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

(13:09):
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

(13:33):
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

(13:53):
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,

(14:16):
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

(14:36):
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

(14:58):
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

(15:19):
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.

(15:40):
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,

(16:00):
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

(16:20):
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

(16:54):
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

(17:15):
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

(17:37):
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

(17:58):
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

(18:20):
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

(18:42):
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,

(19:06):
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

(19:28):
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

(19:48):
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

(20:10):
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

(20:31):
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

(20:51):
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

(21:12):
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.

(21:33):
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

(21:53):
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,

(22:14):
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

(22:34):
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

(22:55):
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

(23:18):
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

(23:39):
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,

(23:59):
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

(24:22):
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

(24:42):
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

(25:03):
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

(25:24):
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

(25:45):
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

(26:05):
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.

(26:27):
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

(26:49):
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,

(27:23):
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,

(27:48):
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

(28:09):
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

(28:29):
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

(28:49):
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

(29:10):
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

(29:32):
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.

(29:53):
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.

(30:14):
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

(30:35):
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

(30:57):
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,

(31:21):
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.

(31:44):
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

(32:04):
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

(32:28):
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,

(32:50):
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

(33:14):
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

(33:34):
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

(33:55):
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.

(34:15):
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

(34:38):
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

(35:00):
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,

(35:24):
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

(35:46):
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

(36:09):
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

(36:31):
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

(36:54):
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

(37:17):
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

(37:37):
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

(37:58):
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.

(38:21):
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.

(38:43):
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

(39:04):
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

(39:25):
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

(39:46):
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,

(40:11):
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

(40:32):
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

(40:55):
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

(41:20):
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

(41:42):
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,

(42:05):
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

(42:28):
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

(42:51):
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.

(43:15):
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

(43:37):
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

(43:57):
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

(44:18):
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,

(44:39):
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

(45:01):
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

(45:24):
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

(45:46):
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

(46:07):
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.

(46:29):
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

(46:51):
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

(47:13):
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,

(47:33):
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.

(47:58):
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.

(48:19):
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

(48:41):
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

(49:02):
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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(49:22):
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