Will a Woman ever break 4 minutes for the mile?

it took about 50 years for the men to bring it from 4:12 to 3:59.

It does not take 1:50 speed to run sub-4, close, but remember Bannister and Landy were only 1:52-3, with the occasional 1:51.

Yaw mon eez good shit mon...eez called Timewarp mon! An

you bedder get some mon..cuz Time will seem warpt ta you mon when Woman she break da 4 minus for da mile mon. Put

yer money where yer mowt eez mon cuz day say da same ting bowt da man mon...cept it was 'a few year ago mon! Yu jus watch mon cuz we gat a Woman her mon on da island mon ken kick yer buttmon. She be runnin the 400 mon in 51 seconz mon and she lak ta run da mile mon. C'mon!

Rudyard "If"!

There are natural limits to humans I believe and with all the high intensity tarining and techinical aspect of training we have now, and we're still only at 4:12xx, i just dont see it coming

I don't think it will ever happen. There's basically been no progress for the last couple of decades; sub-4 for 1500m continues to be very tough to get, and women were doing that 20+ years ago. It might be that given enough time, a woman would run a sub-4 mile, but you can't take it for granted that track & field will still be contested on an elite level in, say, 500 years. In fact, the odds are it won't be. My guess is that a women's sub-4 mile is about as likely as a man running a sub-2 marathon.

I see 4:01.89 within the next ten years & Yes sub-4:00 will happen.

so long as the broad has my dinner fixed and ready on the table when I walk in that door, she can run run run till blue in the face

I agree with you.

The fact that everyone is overlooking

is that women's "Pace of Progression" is

much quicker at the present moment then man's!

Why is that? Why did the Kenyans, Ethiopians,

and Moroccans move so quickly to the top of the

world? Before the Olympics in 68 the Africans

basically didn't have a chance because they had

been excluded from "the club" as "inferior people"!

Is this not an experience woman have also suffered

through? All one needs to do is look at the advancements

in the women's marathon times as being "normal in

accordance to the pace of progression"...and it is

not difficult to envision a sub 4 minute mile soon

by someone...Kenyan, (where women are just getting

started having been recently liberated from slavery),

America, Russia, or wooooo mon, Jamaica!

Anyone who doubts that woman will soon break the magical

4 minutes has categorically placed themselves in

the same "shortsighted box" as those "experts" who

Pre-1954 said..."it is physiologically impossible for

man to run under 4 minutes for the mile"!

So you are in the box that says humans are not limited physiologically? That is far more short-sighted than saying women won't break 4. They might, but not anytime soon. We won't live to see it, thats for sure.

Law of diminishing returns my friend, we have already seen women get dramatically faster over the last 40 years, but that progress has slowed just as dramatically.

Saying women are close to breaking 4, drug-free, is like saying humans are close to flying with no artificial wings.

Most definately, but not soon. As far as I know no woman in the world is even close to the WR (4:12)right now. But think back to when Bannister hadn't broken 4 flat yet and now look at EL G 3:43! If guys can go from barely breaking 4 to 3:43 than the girls can most certainly go from 4:12 to sub 4. The question is when will this happen? The answer is not soon, but sometime this century. Maybe sometime in the next few decades.

sdfs wrote:

no way in hell

I with you man. Not unless some dude chops off his schlong and tucks in his nuts. That or some serious hormone changing drug comes out that mutates the burliest chicks to grow adams apples?

builttospill wrote:

Is it physically possible for a woman to break 4 minutes for the mile?

Of course, and it will happen in 50-75 years. If it's physcially possible for a (high school) man, it pretty much has to be physically possible for a woman. It's not as though the top milers of today are exactly testosterone-freaks. As a matter of fact, if you glance quickly at El Guerrouj, it'd definately possible to mistake him for a woman (especially if he had long hair).

Womens athletics will progress much more rapidly than mens in the next century, as womens participation in sports becomes increasingly (and globally) *encouraged* rather than forbidden. Just wait until the Kenyan women get their act together, and it becomes as accepted for their women to participate in sports as it is for women in western cultures. Then, the records will fall quickly.

not in my lifetime. the best 1500m runners (a far more frequently contested event) are running perhaps 3:55-56 at best. Thats about 15 seconds (or about 100m) short.

It may well happen in time but the required increase in participation and improvement in training knowledge will take decades to come about.

BTW a 2 hour marathon is a distinct possibility in the next 20 years or so. We've moved on about two minutes in the last 6 years or so (after no movement for a decade) and in percentage terms are far nearer that barrier than a womens sub 4. What price Bekele in 8 years time?

It's on my "to-do" list.

Luke wrote:

Yeah, by the end of this cemtury it'll be done, so you might have 96 years to wait. But it'll get done.

This idea that the women's "pace of progression" is faster than the men's is pure nonsense. Any meaningful analysis of performances over the last 15 or 20 years shows that they have stalled out, if not regressed. The rapid progression we saw in women's records in the 1970s and '80s was due to 2 factors: 1) the records were starting from a very low level; and 2) drugs. Will any of us live to see new women's WRs at any distance other than 5000 (the only reasonably legit one on the books other than the mile)? I wouldn't bet on it...

old tymer wrote:

This idea that the women's "pace of progression" is faster than the men's is pure nonsense.

Actually, it's pure nonsense to think otherwise.

Fact: More women will participate in sports in the future than in have the past, both in absolute numbers and as a % of the population

Fact: This will be particularly true in developing nations, where the concept of "leisure time" will be, in the medium-term future, a reality for the first time.

Fact: Today, mens running is dominated by athletes from developing nations.

So, from this we can conclude that many more women in developing nations with a history of record-breaking men's performance will compete. This fundamentally increases the odds of rapid "pace of progression" of women's times. I don't see how anyone could think this is nonsense.

I agree with you kohlberg, but I'm worried about the pace of change. That is, as developing nations become more "westernized" and opportunities increase to make a living at something other than running, will fewer men/women in these countries take up running, and thus decrease the available pool of possible sub-4:00 women?

I envision two curves, one with participation, and one with other opportunities. As the country (say Kenya) progreses, then the participation curve may decline while the opportunity curve increases. If they intersect in say, 15 years, we may never see a sub-4:00 woman. If they don't come together until 50-75 years from now, I think we'll see that sub-4:00 woman.

A third curve you could add would be the effect of AIDS on developing countries. It is already an epidemic in many African nations including those that produce many solid distance runners. If AIDS is not brought under control, the chances of a sub-4:00 woman from Africa decreases as well.

This is the key. The human body can only do so much. I think we have already hit the limit. That is why drugs are used so often as there is only so much you can do with a healthy body, perfect diet and perfect training. Genetic engineering is the only way most times can really be improved upon, especially in this case. It is a long way from 4:12 and change to 3:59.9999.

Marathon Fan wrote:

I agree with you kohlberg, but I'm worried about the pace of change. That is, as developing nations become more "westernized" and opportunities increase to make a living at something other than running, will fewer men/women in these countries take up running, and thus decrease the available pool of possible sub-4:00 women?

I have to disagree with you here. Any woman who has the potential to run a sub-4 mile will likely exhibit that potential before she needs to make a decision over which career to pursue.

As a big of a proponent of globalism as I am, I really don't see Kenya offering a lot of options career option for women that will be more rewarding (even just from a financial perspective) than being one of the top women's milers in the world.

So, a woman with enormous visible potential, faced with the decision to begin a traditional career or to pursue running for a few years, will likely choose running (looking at it from a rational economics perspective). So, the pool of available women should certainly increase.

On the men's side, I see having career options having a much greater effect on the talent pool. The men will likely the the first to have attractive career alternatives to running. In most developed ("western") nations it took over 100 years for women to have the same opportunities as men. It won't take that long in currently developing nations, but it won't happen right away either.

And as these nations develop, they should be in a better position to provide better education and medical care, which are two of the primary drivers of slowing the spread of AIDS.

The reason that men went from 4:00 to 3:43 in a somewhat short amount of time is because of changes in training volume. Right now, women are already training at a high volume to run 4:12-15. They aren't all of a sudden going to double their mileage like we have seen in the mens' mile training programs.