In what year do you believe the first sub 4 minute mile was run by a human

theohiostate wrote:

For those who have pointed out that the animal chasing you would not be capable of chasing you for a mile, consider this:

The guy running away is scared to death. He may have covered a mile before realizing the animal quit 800 meters ago.

Or, how about this:

One animal chases you for 800 meters, quits, and then another animal takes up the chase for the last 800.

Or 4 x 400.

The earliest known relays.

And the baton could be the femur of some poor cave dweller that got killed earlier in the day.

+1

Mitch Mitchum wrote:

Thank you. That is exactly how my thought had come about. What's so hard to believe about the possibility of a super gifted African hundreds of years ago that had to run away from predators. Or what about someone who had to chase after animals for food? If you spend the majority of your days running and hunting its obvious you could have unbelievable running capacity.

The problem with this thinking is that you're assuming a hunter would engage prey that was so equally matched in speed and agility that a chase could last up to a mile and/or 4 minutes before the hunt was successful, the hunter gave up, or the prey found suitable refuge. There's no evidence this would be a remote possibility. No chase has been documented or inferentially reconstructed from archeological records that has lasted more than several seconds. Note that I wrote "chase" and not "hunt," for that's what this idiotic discussion is about.

[quote]Paul The Runner wrote:

There is no need for a thief carrying something, just running away empty handed from an enemy tribe for the nearest cover/forest that happens to be about one mile away. The one running away usually has some head start - sprint race does not happen, enemy sprinters will not catch him and he manages to judge about even pace for the whole distance. Or imagine the cover is a bit farther but the runaway - knowing he is a supreme miler :-) - believes he will discourage the chasers by running a fast first mile and slow down afterwards. There are many possibilities, homo sapiens species has been here for at least 200 000 years.

[quote]

So you've got one empty handed guy who finds himself near an enemy tribe. The one guy turns and runs. The tribe sees him. They see he's alone. They see he's empty handed. They see he's going away. They see he has a head start big enough that they won't catch him in a sprint.

Why would they chase him hard enough to cause him to sustain a near maximum effort for four minutes? It's obvious the empty handed guy is not interested in a fight and not interested in staying on their turf. Why would they all exhaust themselves on a mile race?

/rant on

I find it interesting that no one, or almost no one, gives credence to reports from the pre-amateur era of people running very close, if not below, today's times.

I've also not seen, other than the occasional outcry of "Preposterous!", any systematic, scientific rebuttal of James Parrot's (et al.) accomplishments.

There is a period between our African ancestors and 1954 where people actually did take athletics of all sorts seriously. A lot of that history was lost, of course, with the whole "purity" crap of the amateur era (paging Mr. Thorpe...)

/rant off

I am not sure the year, but I am pretty sure Al Gore was the first person to break the 4 minute mile.

You guys are all missing the obvious problem in running a sub-4 minute mile while being chased by an animal. At the start of the chase your first thought would not be "OK, I am going to have to run a mile so go out at an even pace." No, it would be more like "holy crap, I'm gonna die" and you would sprint as fast as could as far as you could. You would go anaerobic in 300m tops and drop off in pace from there. How many people have run sub-4 while going out in 24 in the first 200m ?

Okay, what if twin caveman were raised together in isolation with only a male parent because the mother died at birth and the dad eventually died of disease and then one day after they hit puberty they both simultaneously saw a hot cave woman down in the bottom of the valley and they knew they had to compete against each other to get there first?

Voila ~ The Caveman Downhill Sub 4 Minute Mile was born!!!

I think there are two separate questions.

(1) When were there people who were physically capable of a 4-minute mile?

(2) Did any of them actually do it?

For the first question, I think it's possible that prehistoric men were occasionally in that kind of shape, but I'd guess it would have been extremely rare. I doubt they had the combination of training required, except for the occasional genetic freak. For instance, I would guess that the Tarahumara don't have any sub-4 runners even though they all run, because they all run long and slow. As for the 1700s-1800s, it seems likely that, if there were runners focused on training to race relatively short (e.g. one-mile) distances, then they could have been in around 4-minute shape, but not many of them.

Would love to hear some historical facts bearing on the above.

For the second question, prehistorically I'd bet the answer is "no". It would require an amazing coincidence. Persistence hunting would not involve all-out chases of that length. Even if someone was running all-out, a sub-4 mile by even a very fit person would require some pacing and knowledge of the distance to go. Even granting that, you'd need it to happen for a distance of between 1609.344m and probably 2000m (beyond that it seems extremely unlikely). However, people have been around for a long time so I guess you never know. As for in the more modern era, 1700s-1800s, I don't know enough about the history to know if the legends are believable or not, but it seems at least a little plausible.

As several have mentioned:

Big Hawk Chief, Nebraska frontier, 1876. As documented by Captain Luther North.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AFour-minute_mile

yogibear wrote:

As several have mentioned:

Big Hawk Chief, Nebraska frontier, 1876. As documented by Captain Luther North.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AFour-minute_mile

According to the link, Big Hawk Chief ran his sub-4 in Sydney, NE. Elevation of Sydney, NE is just over 4,000 feet. Nice story - but no way.

a journalist wrote:

Peter Andersson wrote:

Norweigian academic Thor Gootas has it to be that indian who did it twice in 1876 under US military controlled conditions, but since he wasn't a white man (important at the time) he never got credit for it in the records or history books.

Speaking of books, Gootas is a surprisingly good author and his own book has now been translated to English:

http://www.amazon.com/Running-Global-History-Thor-Gotaas/dp/1861899130

I remember reading this in a "Ripley's, Believe it or Not" one time.

I was fascinated by it.

or NOT.

Goldenboy wrote:

yogibear wrote:

As several have mentioned:

Big Hawk Chief, Nebraska frontier, 1876. As documented by Captain Luther North.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AFour-minute_mile

According to the link, Big Hawk Chief ran his sub-4 in Sydney, NE. Elevation of Sydney, NE is just over 4,000 feet. Nice story - but no way.

How dare you use my own source to refute me.

Actually, it also claims he ran 120 miles in under 24 hours. How many sub 4 milers have that kind of range? Still, you never know. I think the claim is based on entries in Luther North's commander's log. I wonder if that still exists.

I have no reason to think it happened other than in 1954.

BTW, at the end of that year Bannister was Sports Illustrated's first Sportsman of the Year. I don't think we'll see too many more milers getting that honor...

There is documented evidence that a Native American Brave ran 3:53 in the mid 19th century. We don't look so good today 140+yrs later running only 10secs faster with all the advantages. I would even say pathetic.

A bear will certainly stalk prey for up to a mile. Maybe it can chase a human that far at 15mph, maybe it can't. Nobody really knows because it's never been tested.

Even more likely is a human chasing a bear for a mile, with a spear, in under 4 minutes. Many bears will flee when attacked and pursued. A hunter determined to kill a bear may have run a sub-4 mile.

yogibear wrote:

As several have mentioned:

Big Hawk Chief, Nebraska frontier, 1876. As documented by Captain Luther North.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AFour-minute_mile

LOL! I'm sure that was about as accurate as the mile I ran in gym class in the 7th grade!

There’s the example of aboriginal runners who, we know from fossilized footprints, could run as fast if not faster than [Olympic sprinter] Usain Bolt- Peter McAllister

[quote]Bad Wigins wrote:

A bear will certainly stalk prey for up to a mile. Maybe it can chase a human that far at 15mph, maybe it can't. Nobody really knows because it's never been tested.

A bear can run much faster than that

I've seen a video of a bear catching a deer and everyone knows you can't outrun a grizly

Forget about claims made in the last couple of hundred years. Nobody was doing the necessary training

The only chance is if you go back tens of thousands of years. Nearly all animals can outrun humans without specific training. You could assume that in some stage of evolution we were naturally much fitter

As I explained before, bears can run about 30mph, same as humans. But they can't run that fast for 1 mile. They're big lumbering beasts and they get tired.

I've never seen a bear run a mile, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was a bear with a PR of 4:01.