![]() The current world record time for the mile sits at 3:43.13, set in 1999. Just 46 days after Bannister’s historic feat, John Landy, an Australian runner, not only followed Bannister past the four-minute barrier, he bested it by over a full second: 3:57.9.5 Before a calendar year had passed after Landy’s record, three more runners broke the four-minute mark in the same race. “All this energy can be harnessed by the correct attitude of mind.”4 The proof that the impediment to a sub-four-minute mile was psychological rather than physical lies not with what Bannister accomplished that soggy May morning in Oxford but with what happened after. ![]() “The mental approach is all-important because the strength and power of the mind are without limit,” he wrote. And like an unconquerable mountain the closer it approached, the more daunting it seemed.”3 Bannister focused just as much time on conditioning his mind as on conditioning his body. ![]() It had become as much a psychological barrier as a physical one. John Bryant, a British runner and journalist, wrote, “For years milers had been striving against the clock, but the elusive four minutes had always beaten them. ![]() Runners had been attempting to break the four-minute mile since 1886. What separated Roger Bannister was that he believed he could do it. He would create the image, see the finish line, and hear the crowd-all in his mind. Bannister was known to close his eyes and visualize the race, step by step. “ Improvement in running depends on continuous self-discipline by the athlete himself, on acute observation of his reaction to races and training, and above all on judgment, which he must learn for himself,” he wrote. How did this happen, and why does it matter? First: Rather than employ an all-out training push that would have required him to sacrifice his studies, Bannister applied a scientific approach to training. Instead, he finished his studies and became a neurologist. Bannister did not go on to become the greatest middle-distance runner in the world. He was notorious for doing the opposite: training for just one hour per day. He was “an outlier and iconoclast-a full-time student who had little use for coaches.” He didn’t train like a maniac and sprint miles every day. The bulk of his time was devoted to being a medical student. The day was cold, the Iffley Road Track in Oxford was wet, and the crowd was small at “just a few thousand people.” On top of that, Bannister himself was hardly the picture of a singularly focused athlete intent on breaking this imposing barrier. On a particular kind of track-hard, dry clay-and in front of a huge, boisterous crowd urging the runner on to his best-ever performance.” But on May 6, 1954, Roger Bannister had none of those things working in his favor. It Doesn’t Have To Be PerfectĪs Bill Taylor, co-founder of Fast Company, writes, the “experts” had long believed breaking the four-minute barrier would require ideal running conditions: “It would have to be in perfect weather-68 degrees and no wind. The most remarkable aspect of Bannister’s barrier-breaking run of 3:59.4 was how unexpected it was for that runner on that day to be the one. Runners from across the globe had been focused on breaking that barrier for nearly 70 years, all to no avail. To chase excellence means to confront that resistance and push beyond it. When it comes to pursuing excellence: the standard of “good enough” becomes a barrier that resists being broken. This is an excerpt from my book, The Pursuit Of Excellenceįrom the beginning of recorded history through May 6, 1954, the fastest any human being had ever run a mile was 4:01.4.
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