![]() ![]() Looked at in that context, breaking 4:00-first one man, then a parade of others-was just a step along the way in an inevitable march. Race Report: Red Lizard 5-Miler =-.Ĭonsider this: The mile record in 1900 was around 4:15 in 1923, Nurmi ran 4:10.4 by the end of the ’30s the record was down to 4:06.4 and by the end of the ’40s, it was at 4:01.6. I found a chronological list - but didn’t bookmark it and can’t find it right now! However, I did copy and paste the list up to 1960 into a Word file. ![]() This led me to noodling around the Web in search of more comprehensive info. Then last year I read Neal Bascomb’s great book, “The Perfect Mile,” and was surprised to learn that after Bannister went sub-four in May 1954 and Landy broke through in June, it wasn’t until May 1955 that anyone else went under four minutes. I had always heard the story told similarly to the way you did, Matt. This post is part of a series on motivation for running. Where could you use a little certainty? What would it take, short of proof, to make you believe? Later this year I’ll run a 50-miler (the JFK 50-miler is a likely candidate), and I’ll run a 100 after that. They’re not superhuman they’re runners like me. But I found an ultra group and started training with them, guys and girls who do 50’s and 100’s all the time. ![]() I didn’t believe it I thought something had gotten garbled in the chain of communication. Before I knew that people even ran 100-milers, someone told me that a friend of mine was running them. (You’ve seen the new page about all my best BQ posts, right?)Īnd now, it’s that way with ultramarathons. ![]() But I found it somewhere in myself, and it’s for that reason alone that I eventually did qualify last year. When I was trying to qualify for Boston, I wrote a post about how certain I had been that I’d do it, as documented by a grad-school application letter I wrote. As a result, you pay special attention things that help you achieve what you’re after, things you otherwise would have never noticed. When you have a clearly-defined purpose, a mission, and when you live every moment in a state of certainty that you’ll achieve it, you influence what your RAS filters out and what lights it up. We have a system in our bodies called the reticular activating system (RAS) that helps our brains decide what information to focus on and what to delete. Not New Age magical, but science magical. When you become certain of something, when every part of your makeup believes it because you focus on it every single day, something “magical” happens. I’ve witnessed firsthand what a little certainty can do. I don’t know how much of it is true I sense that some of the details have become overblown in an effort to dramatize. New Agers call it the Law of Attraction, scientists call it the RAS He alone was able to create that certainty in himself without seeing any proof that it could be done.īut once he crashed through that barrier, the rest of the world saw that it was possible, and the previous record that had stood for nine years was broken routinely. The point is this: It took a sense of extreme certainty for Roger Bannister to do what was considered un-doable. (5 minutes? Maybe one day.) That’s not the point. I don’t know about you, but for me, a 4-minute mile is probably not in the cards. Even strong high-schoolers today run 4-minute miles. As part of his training, he relentlessly visualized the achievement in order to create a sense of certainty in his mind and body.īarely a year after Bannister’s accomplishment, someone else ran a mile in under 4 minutes. On May 6, 1954, Roger Bannister broke the 4-minute barrier, running the distance in 3:59.4. Perhaps the human body had reached its limit. In the 1940’s, the mile record was pushed to 4:01, where it stood for nine years, as runners struggled with the idea that, just maybe, the experts had it right. It wasn’t just dangerous it was impossible.įurther legends hold that people had tried for over a thousand years to break the barrier, even tying bulls behind them to increase the incentive to do the impossible. By: Matt Frazier The experts said it couldn’t be doneĪccording to legend, experts said for years that the human body was simply not capable of a 4-minute mile. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |