Found the article:
"Afterward Komen admitted he had not even known what the existing world record time was going into the race. Indeed, according to those who then surrounded him, Komen had little general understanding of records and paces and distances.
“He didn’t really comprehend what he was doing,” Ratcliffe says. “He just ran as hard as he could. There was no barrier there.”
Alongside his hunger to escape poverty, Komen’s innocence as a runner might have been one of the most important psychological ingredients to his success.
“He was an uninhibited runner,” says Ricky Simms, who also helped manage Komen under Kim McDonald. “He had no fear of times or other runners.”
Gaskell recalls an incident that perfectly captures Komen’s mindset toward competition. At a running club appearance in London, Komen was asked how he dealt with pre-race nervousness.
“Daniel did not understand the question,” Gaskell recalls. “It wasn’t that he didn’t understand English. He didn’t understand what it was to be nervous before a race.”