Decoding the science behind Roger Bannister’s 4-minute mile record

Earlier this week, news trickled in about the death of Roger Bannister, the first man to run a mile in under 4 minutes in 1954, a feat largely thought of as impossible at the time. “There was no logic in my mind that if you can run a mile in 4 minutes, 1 and Qths, you can’t run it in 3:59,” he told the Associated Press in an interview before the 2012 London Olympics. “I knew enough medicine and physiology to know it wasn’t a physical barrier, but I think it had become a psychological barrier.” In The Perfect Mile, a detailed account of the transcontinental three-way battle to break the 4-minute mile, Neal Bascomb goes into great depth about the science behind Bannister’s feat. The person to break that barrier would have to be fast, diligently trained, and supremely aware of his body, so that he would cross the finish line just at the point of complete exhaustion.” To do this, Bannister split his training regimen into two parts—he trained his body to run 60-second laps with minimum effort, taking short breaks between laps.