The only people to run a four minute mile did so because they trained specifically to run middle distances fast. Even if we speculate that someone from the 1700 and beyond did similar type of training, to reach a high level of fitness whereupon a sub 4 would be possible, there were certainly no organized and accurate mile races.
Mtn Dew wrote:
wags wrote:i think it is quite possible. i have always had a theory that some native american ran a miles distance in less than four minutes chasing down a deer or somthing in the 1400's.
I doubt that too. If you are chasing something down you're not going to pace yourself, you're going to run all out. There's no way they sprinted a mile under 4:00.
native americans didn't sprint one mile all out - they used the fact that deer only have the capacity for relatively short bursts while humans have the ability to run extremely long disances, and would slowly wear them down over distance of 20-30 miles. pretty cool, actually.
a better lifestyle? malnourishment, high infant motratility and the prevelance of pests and desease, makes life much harder backe in 1770. if it did happen i feel would have been downhill, dont know where its held but im sure there used to be a down hill mile race held somewhere in england until recently, its only a vague memory. an earlier version to a race like this is i feel more likely to have produced the first 4 min mile
caveat emptor wrote:
That doesn't vitiate the fact that performances correlate across two variables. I merely added that in as a factoid for all you kiddies out there. And here is another. Ben Franklin took it upon himself to place mile markers on the Post Road between Boston and New York. This was in the 1760s. He devised a mechanical odometer for his wagon and set off to drive a stake at each mile. Guess what? The few stone markers that remain are exactly a mile apart. Just because it happened long ago doesn't mean there weren't smart people around. And in case you doubt me...see
http://www.samnet.net/esso/Fmm.htm
That may be, but it doesn't show that the guys hwo claimed to be running a mile in under 4 were using anything approaching accurate measurements for time or for distance. It's a hell of a lot easier to get really accurate equipment now than then.
I don't think that lifestyle maeks it more likely they were running well. These guys were doing manual labor, not lots of running. They were eating like crap. They weren't doing speedwork, though they may have had serious aerobic bases from walking.
They were probably in much better all-around shape than most americans today, but I'm sure they weren't fit for runners. I'd guess they were running 4:20 at best.
If a human can run a sub 4 mile today, then one could have run a sub 4 mile 200-300 years ago. We have not changed that much in sach a short pired of time. The qustion is not could they, it is did they. And I bet they did!
On the issue of corse, (did they really run a full mile, was it run on a down hill, was there a head wind). Let's think about this for a minute. You have a great deal of people placeing money that someone CANNOT run a mile in under 4 min. Now any lay person can see that your going to be giving the person your betting agenst an advantage if you do not control for these factors.
Now on to training. Befor the car I have heard that the avrage amout of walking that Americans did was 8 miles a day!. So most of these people would have done a great deal of aerobic training without even thinking about it. Add into that that most kids of you tell them to gear up for a race. Will do a great deal of sprint work. To get in a good workout. They would have had no problem devlopeing the anarobic system needed to run a sub for mile.
People must rember that Roger Bannister only training 20-25 miles a week. And there are now people who train seven times as much as hem. But the world rec is only 19sec faster then he ran.
I believe that the main aspect to train in the 1800's and very early 1900's was to actually walk for a couple hours. I cannot find the source that this came from but I know that this is documented. So if this is what the top runners were doing then it is hard to believe that a hundred years before, people were training that hard. One would imagine the word would tend to get out with performances like that. I know that I would be looking into the training styles of this athletes.
these athletes
One can assume (since many here are assuming many things) that these 1770's runners PRACTICED before wagering scarce resources. It's not a stretch to assume that they had a rough idea of what their times would be. The downhill variable, if true, would make it a virtual fait accompli.
By the way, The average person WAS MUCH MORE FIT then than now....including the aristocracy. As for the distance being correct, it's the 1770's not the 110's.
This is complete and utter nonsense, frankly. There's no chance anyone in the 1770s could have run a 4:00 mile. No matter what kind of talent someone may have, it requires very specific and consistent training to approach the 4:00 barrier. Just read some of the notions of training from the early 20th century. It's no surprise that the "greats" then may have been running 4:40 for the mile, if that.
Forget the talk about people in the 1770s being more active and more healthy. They weren't. They may have led busy outdoor lives, but they weren't RUNNING regularly.They may have exhausted themselves with physical work, but I doubt they had many "recovery days." Their foods may have been pure and less laden with additives, but there was very little knowledge about what a "well-balanced" meal was. And, you know ...quite often, food rotted or crops failed, and these people were starving.
Plus, there were no good track shoes. Plus, there were no good tracks. Plus, who knew how to coach? Plus, what the hell did a 4:00 miles even MEAN to anyone back then?
This whole thing is pretty preposterous.
Priorities Straight wrote:
...Plus, there were no good track shoes. Plus, there were no good tracks. Plus, who knew how to coach? Plus, what the hell did a 4:00 miles even MEAN to anyone back then?
This whole thing is pretty preposterous.
As is the case today, 4:00 for a mile is more compelling than 4:23. Preposterous? Maybe. Impossible? No way. Does it matter? Not really.
It is possible that the author of the article might have an ax to grind with Bannister. Might be his attempt to steal some of his thunder?
Thanks for the link. I'd not seen or heard of Jewell's history of measuring before. I'll review and, if suitable, recommend it to other members of the measuring and statistical community. It runs 24 pages long hardcopy! Well worth it.
A sub-4 in 1770...I think not. Quoting from 'Runners and Races: 1500m/Mile, 1973, by Cordner Nelson & Roberto Quercetani: 'In the early 19th century, all races were held on roads or on courses designed for horse races. The winning times of these races were probably accurate to within a second but the distances were badly measured, so times aren't considered accurate before running tracks were used in the mid-1800's.'
The article mentioned one guy, who won 102 races in four years. That's a lot of time for someone to fine tune there training technique. Training methods today are much better than training methods from 50 years ago, but this doesn't mean that training methods from 50 years were better than 200 years ago. From what I read Bannister did quite a bit of speed work, but little endurance stuff. If you look at the example in the article about the guy who won 102 races in 4 years that's about a race a week and that doesn't count the races he didn't win. That's at least one speed workout a week or at least a tempo run. Now add the endurance he would be doing to just get from place to place. Now I'm just assuming here, but if I was a professional runner I wouldn't walk if I needed to get someplace i would have ran.
Just because we don't know how they trained doesn't mean it was inferior. The pyramids were built almost 5000 years ago and we still aren't sure how they did it.
They didn't even know how to count in the 18th century.
Prata wrote:
Just because we don't know how they trained doesn't mean it was inferior. The pyramids were built almost 5000 years ago and we still aren't sure how they did it.
Yes the pryamids are amazing, but they are only amazing given the resources that were available. Building New York City is a billion times more amazing than the pryamids. Of course the training was inferior.
One measure of how the mile did not always mean what it does now is the fact that at the Millrose Games in NYC, the featured event until 1926 was a one and a half-mile run, not a mile. Heck, in the 1770s, they may have cared more about "cubits' or "furlongs" or "leagues" than they did about the mile.
What's with this notion that manual laborers are better suited to middle distance than people today? First off, while they may have been more active than the average person of today, that doesn't mean they're more active than the athletes of today (of which there are plenty). Their activity as laborers was not exactly all that applicable to running, whereas athletes of today have much more leisure time (sometimes the entire day, every day) to devote to running-specific exercises.
I mean, have you ever seen a manual laborer in modern times and said to yourself "that guy would be a great middle or long distance runner"? Do any coaches ever go on recruiting trips to factories or coal mines or concentration camps?
As far as their being fitter because they had to travel everywhere on foot---sure they did, but towns were a lot less spread out then. Everything they needed tended to be in their town. It was not unusual for people to go their entire life without going more than a few miles from their town.
And sorry, but no Native American ran a sub-4 chasing a deer. It's not like they would ever have a nice, smooth, even mile-long stretch where they could chase a deer at a nice steady pace. Deer are generally running around in hilly wooded areas.
It's all a big fantasy. People always like fantastic stories of what heroes of old were capable of. The fact remains that today, with modern exercise science, the ability to devote all of one's time to athletics, perfect tracks, supportive crowds, financial incentives, performance-enhancing drugs and other substances both legal and illegal, decades of well-documented training of champion athletes to look back on....it's still rare to find someone capable of breaking 4, and the absolute record is only 16 seconds under. This despite the fact that thousands and thousands of kids every year try the sport out, whereas back in 18th century England there were probably, what, a couple hundred runners who trained in any sort of regular fashion?
You sound to me like a pencil pusher.
Never mind what manual laborers were capable of back then.
Why not take a look at what mainstream Europeans (not Zulus or American Indians), were doing in terms of warfare.
From 1770 through the Napoleonic period it was not uncommon for armies of up to 100,000 or more mere mortal footsoldiers to walk 10 to 15 miles on the quickstep, arrive at a battlefield, get off a round or two of musketfire, and then proceed to engage in a giant multi- hour knife fight with bayonets until most of one side was dead.
As an aside it is interesting to note that the French of all peoples were the masters of this.
To believe that in a Europe which produced hundreds of thousands of men capable of engaging in this type of warfare for year after year there were not a handful of specimens who could get down to four minutes in the mile is ludicrous.
Many runners in our day and age have stories to relate about some young high schooler or other who without much training has gotten down to 4.20.
In an age of poverty, it is certainly believable that a grown man could get down to 4 minutes if a few hundred pounds (a small fortune back then) were on the line.
That is terrible logic. Because a high school kid can run 4:20 on little training, someone would have been able to run sub-4 with the correct motivation?
Look at this:
Progression of the mile record throughout the years:
4:14.4 John Paul Jones, U.S. 1913
4:12.6 Norman Taber, U.S. 1915
4:10.4 Paavo Nurmi, Finland 1923
4:09.2 Jules Ladoumegue, France 1931
4:07.6 Jack Lovelock, New Zealand 1933
4:06.8 Glenn Cunningham, U.S. 1934
4:06.4 Sydney Wooderson, Britain 1937
4:06.2 Gunder Haegg, Sweden 1942
4:04.6 Gunder Haegg, Sweden 1942
4:02.6 Arne Andersson, Sweden 1943
4:01.6 Arne Andersson, Sweden 1944
4:01.4 Gunder Haegg, Sweden 1945
3:59.4 Roger Bannister, Britain 1954
The first official record is in 1913. From there it took 41 years for anyone to break 4. Did they just not have any motivation for 41 years? Were there never any wagers placed on foot races? Were there no Olympics?
Idiots.
You are the idiot.
Read the articles.
Men and women competed for real money for years before effete Victorians made it an amateurs game.
There is a big difference in running for enough money to buy yourself a farm and running for a ribbon.
Ask any Kenyan.