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

In what circumstances would a human ever be in a situation to run a sub 4 minute mile outside of a race or track practice?

No one broke 4 in practice before Bannister.

Cave man running away from a tiger?

Mitch Mitchum wrote:

Obviously undocumented, but what do you think?

...one of the dumber ideas I've heard on this site. That's obviously saying something.

Umm, ever heard of running from a serial killing 4:01 miler?

Downhill count?

...one of the dumber ideas I've heard on this site. That's obviously saying something.[/quote

You must not come here very often. I don't think it's a dumb idea at all.

Someone though ND was going to beat A.

Some lady farted in a cube close to me today and I smelled it.

People buy Newtons.

1770

I'm no historian, but I'm leaning toward 1954.

It actually is an intriguing question. How fast could early man cover a mile? How much faster would he be motivated to run if something was chasing him to eat him?

If your pr was 5:10, and you were running for your life, maybe you'd find a way to get rid of 70 seconds to avoid being ripped to pieces. But probably not.

When did persistence hunting take place? Persistence hunters had the endurance side of things covered very well. Was there an influence on some of them do develop amazing speed, too?

Most probably, Bannister was the first, but maybe there was an amazing individual- Og- who ran 3:59 many thousands of years ago- and got eaten anyway.

While I'm at it, maybe Mallory or Irvine beat Hillary to the summit.

it is actually very possible that someone broke 4 before bannister. All you need is an athletic person, a huge downhill, and an animal to chase him. If someone is running away from an animal down a mountain, which probably happened at least once in all of history before bannister, they probably could have broke 4.

I really think it was 1954. It is doubtful that any cave man ever accidentally trained hard enough and had the right circumstances to do so.

Ok, I'll bite.

Are you thinking practice efforts by Cunningham and lovelock?

Probably 1943 in some unofficial matchup between Gunder Hägg and Arne Anderson.

Hägg would have easily been first to officially break 4 if they hadn't declared him a professional.

He was also the first sub-14 5k. How about that.

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.

I remember someone in the 1980's running a mile on a straightaway (Steve Scott?). I thought I remembered him running like 3:43 or something like that for a mile, no turns, so it was not sanctioned, but it was faster than the world record at the time.

I'm not nerdy enough to track down documentation of it but I really do think I remember someone running a "straight mile," which probably isn't too different from today's Fifth Ave. mile, at least in format.

But it seems possible it could have been done in the 1940's or something if not on cinders, which have been shown to slow a runner at least four seconds per mile, and without turns, and perhaps having 3 or 4 people pace them by running a quarter each--all in the effort to just see how fast someone could do it.

Someone somewhere from back in the day must have a story.

103,763 BC

What kind of animal is going to chase you for a mile and not catch you?

An angered cousin with rabies and a limp.