Get Up To Speed
At times, it’s fitting that we pay homage to the giants who went before us.
And so, in 1996, while backpacking around England and Scotland on honeymoon, I dragged my nonrunning spouse to Oxford… So that I could visit the Iffley track!
This is where Roger Bannister became the first person to run the mile under four minutes in 1954, clocking 3:59.4. Dressed in jeans and a warm jacket for the blustery English weather, but fortunately wearing an old pair of running shoes, I ran a sedate mile to pay tribute and follow in his footsteps.
Sadly, progress meant that the original tinder track was long gone, replaced by a tartan track. But if I listened carefully, I was sure I could hear the crunch of spikes on the old tinder track – and the crowd roaring!
Back then, Roger Bannister used a surprisingly simple training method to break the four-minute barrier in four laps. His coach, Franz Stampfl, told him that once he could run 10 × 400m in 58 sec, he would be ready to break the four-minute barrier, and so it was.
The previous world record of 4:01.6 for the mile was set by Swede, Gundar Haegg in 1945. But this record
