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Ralph Ross Russell, How to change your life in four minutes, Brain, Volume 137, Issue 12, December 2014, Pages 3375–3376, https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awu260
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Extract
The lives of great sportsmen do not always make great reading; too often a golden dawn is followed by a grey and colourless afternoon. Roger Bannister’s life is an exception—international athlete and record holder, Government servant, research physiologist, Master of an Oxford college, consultant physician, medical author—there is enough here for three or four autobiographies. To the man himself, the achievements and the records he values most and for which he would like to be remembered are not only on the running track, but in his medical and scientific work. As his story unfolds, it becomes clear that the same personal qualities of self-discipline, determination and endurance which marked his athletic career are those which have brought him success in other fields. It is the character of the man rather than a catalogue of his achievements that makes this book worth reading.
What is so special about a mile? To the Roman foot soldier it was a thousand paces, to the English ploughman it was eight furlongs, four times up and down an average-size field. But to the athlete this arbitrary distance, four circuits of the running track, requires a special blend of speed and endurance. The mile is not an Olympic event, although it seems likely that 1500 metres was selected as its nearest metric equivalent. In the first of the Modern Olympic games held in Athens in 1896, the 1500 metres final was won in a surprisingly slow 4 minutes 33 seconds and the four-minute barrier for this distance was not in fact broken until 1912, by the British miler Arnold Jackson. By the 1950s the steady improvement in performance made it almost inevitable that a four minute time for the mile, once regarded as impossible, would one day be surpassed. So the target was set, the race was on, and this book is the story of the first man to achieve it.
