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Back in February, when Christian F and I were debating the merits of competition on this blog (see The Spelling Bee, Competition: Success and Struggle, and In Defense of Competition as well as the lengthy comments on these posts), Sharon recommended a great book, The Perfect Mile by Neal Bascomb.
I finally managed to both a) be at the library AND b) remember that I wanted this book while I was there last week. I listened to the first half of the book on CD. Unfortunately, I don’t spend enough time in the car to get through 12 CD’s. I kept having to sit and listen in the garage when I got home because of the suspense. It seemed unhealthful. So when the book itself finally became available yesterday, I was excited to finish the latter half of it by reading the hardcopy.
I enjoyed this book tremendously. (I did like it better in hardcopy than on CD because I could read the story much faster than I could listen to the CDs and that made the story seem to move faster). It is the story of the 4 minute mile. For many years, it was believed that it was impossible for humans to run a mile in less than 4 minutes. At the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki, three athletes, Roger Bannister, John Landy, and Wes Santee each suffered great disappointment. Each returned home committed to showing that their Olympic results didn’t tell the full story of their athletic abilities. The next two years saw the three in a frantic seesaw battle to see who would be the first to break the barrier.
It is a neat story because each athlete is different. They live on different continents, they come from different backgrounds, they have different racing philosophies, different ways of training, different challenges and different personalities. But they share things as well: each embarrassed himself through failure to live up to expectations at the Olympics. Each is eager to beat the barrier. Each has great natural athletic gifts and each has an even greater natural determination to improve and excel. Each of the athletes readies himself to run the race of his life and then comes up short, again and again. The book is a fascinating look at their lives, how they handle failure, and how they pick themselves up and go back at it. Although the 4 minute barrier fell over 50 years ago, Bascomb was able to interview all three runners and many of their contemporaries, so the book is rich in the detail and has the credibility that make this sort of account great.
You will like this book even if you don’t know anything about running and don’t enjoy running yourself. Both are true of me. I did learn a lot of new things about running by reading this book: strategies for running a very fast mile, the importance of a pacesetter, the difference between racing a clock and racing competitors. I also learned not only about the cinder tracks of 50 years ago and how track shoes have changed, but how the world of elite-level athletics itself has changed. This was interesting. Even more interesting was the story of Bannister, Landy, and Santee’s drive towards excellence, their thirst for remarkable achievement, their desire to run faster than anyone had ever run. I especially liked the theme of redemption. Of how one can embarrass oneself, disappoint others, and then pick up, work harder, and do things that almost everyone else on the planet only dreams about. These men didn’t dream it, they did it.
Finally, I appreciated being able to observe the truth that played out in the background: while running a world record mile is a stunning individual achievement, this book showed that none of them could have done what they did without support. Sometimes it was friends or family, sometimes it was a coach or fellow competitor, but none of the men got where he did completely on his own.
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