

The 18th Century four-minute mile - dang
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27298505

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Xcelerate
Hmm. I have a hard time believing that anyone ran a sub 4 minute mile before
Bannister. I'm not saying it definitively did not happen, but I think the
probability of a distance measurement error is much higher than someone
actually running that fast in the 1700s.

For people who are good in a certain area (running, piano, etc.) one thing
that amazes me is how the average person does not realize exactly _how good_
these people are at what they do. It is only after years of training yourself
that you begin to realize how extraordinary the very best are. Someone a while
ago created a series of large video screens that allowed people to race Ryan
Hall ([http://www.fastcodesign.com/1665449/video-screen-lets-you-
ru...](http://www.fastcodesign.com/1665449/video-screen-lets-you-run-against-
world-class-marathoner)). The funny thing is that the average person cannot
hold for 60 feet the pace that Ryan Hall can hold for 138,000 feet.

An ordinary person in any century does not have the genetic capability to run
a sub 4:00 mile. There's very few that even have the potential. So the
probability that out of the tiny fraction of people in the 18th century who
did have this potential, one of them just happened to have the free time to
train themselves to their genetic limit for this purpose? I doubt it.

~~~
erobbins
I have an easy time believing that no one ever ran an accurately timed sub 4
minute mile before Bannister... but I find it hard to believe that it had
never been done at all.

~~~
defen
Well, consider that the first modern Olympic games were held in 1896, and
Bannister didn't set his mark until 1954. There would have been no issues with
time/distance measurement accuracy during that period and yet no one did it.
But, as soon as he did, tons of people started doing it. And it's not like
they didn't have amphetamines back then, either. So it doesn't sound
implausible to me that Bannister really was the first.

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amaks
Here is a related TED talk:
[http://www.ted.com/talks/david_epstein_are_athletes_really_g...](http://www.ted.com/talks/david_epstein_are_athletes_really_getting_faster_better_stronger#t-39977)

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dubya
There's a similar account in "Farmer Boy", one of the Little House series, of
an American Indian running a surprisingly fast mile versus horses at a county
fair.

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dang
Someone pointed out that this was posted a few days ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7731094](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7731094).
I don't have an easy way to change the submission credit, but can at least
transfer the karma from this submission to
[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=001sky](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=001sky).
I'll do that tomorrow.

This might be a good place to mention that we're working on some pretty big
changes to the story submission mechanism, one goal of which is to smooth the
time decay curve for new stories. That would have prevented the above problem.

------
skittles
A four minute mile is _under_ four minutes.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
From the OP
[http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27298505](http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27298505)

>" _Then in 1796, the Sporting Magazine reported that a young man called
Weller, one of three brothers, "undertook for a wager of three guineas to run
one mile on the Banbury road, in four minutes, which he performed two seconds
within the time." In other words, a mile in three minutes, fifty eight
seconds._"

