I tried to replicate Roger Bannister’s four-minute mile – but I only lasted a few yards

Not quite as lithe or fleet of foot as Roger Bannister, Jim White nevertheless puts in a good time to mark the famous feat finishing on the same track as the history maker – John Lawrence for The Telegraph

Back on May 6, 1954, Roger Bannister ran a mile round the University of Oxford athletics track in three minutes 59.4 seconds. Seventy years to the day on from that seismic moment, hundreds of us gathered in front of Christ Church Oxford, waiting to see if we could emulate his achievement. Or in my case, run the same distance at significantly less than half his speed.

A mile-long course had been marked out, along Oxford High Street, across Magdalen Bridge, then up Iffley Road, finishing just in front of the very track where history unfolded. And the thing that was immediately evident is this: a mile is a lot further than you think it is. In the footage of the time Bannister – with his two pacesetters Chris Brasher and Christopher Chattaway – made it look like a sprint, a dash over and done with in the blink of an eye. For the hundreds of us pounding the Oxford streets it was more like a marathon haul, a lung-buster of an outing.

People of all ages ran the mile from Christ Church Oxford to the Iffley Road track where Bannister made history – John Lawrence for The Telegraph

Among those marking the great man’s effort were Steve Cram and Hicham El Guerrouj, two of just 13 male athletes who, across the subsequent years, have bettered Bannister’s record. Also there was David Picksley. Now 91, and having recently completed this year’s London Marathon as the oldest competitor, Picksley was among the crowd at Iffley Road that day in 1954. He was then an undergraduate at St Edmund Hall, reading French and Russian. A club athlete himself, he had turned out with a couple of thousand other students, wrapped up in scarves and gabardine coats against an unseasonal chill.

“It was blowing a real gale, the talk was all about whether they were going to go for the record in the conditions,” he recalls. “I was standing on the grass bank in front of the church on Iffley Road. Flying from the church tower was the flag that when they saw it had dropped and the wind had died down, they knew they could go for it. It was over in a flash. I remember when he crossed the line, the announcer really milked it. ‘A new British, Commonwealth and World record time,’ and all that. But when he got to the word three you didn’t need the rest. We all went mad, ran off the bank and down on to the track. I never heard what his time actually was.”

Now, seven decades on, Picksley was back in Oxford, travelling from his home in Croydon.

“I had to be here,” he said. “I was not going to miss this.”

David Picksley, seen here with Jim, was in the crowd to witness Bannister’s remarkable run and 70 years later took part in the run to mark the achievement – John Lawrence for The Telegraph

He was right to mark the moment. This remains a record not only etched in history, but made all the more extraordinary given the circumstances. It was the apex of amateurism. There was no money involved: Bannister did it simply to prove to the legion of doubters that it could be done.

He was a medical student at the time and that day had completed a morning’s shift at St Mary’s Hospital in London before taking the train to Oxford. He was running on a track not like the sprung surface of today, but constructed of cinders. On his feet were not the scientifically calibrated shoes of modern runners, but a hefty pair of leather plimsolls (which, in 2015, raised £266,500 at auction). He had sharpened the spikes the previous day in the hospital laboratory. And his training was comically minimal compared to today’s athletes. Yet he tore round the track at a pace never before recorded and seldom matched since.

Certainly for those of us setting off seven decades on, his speed remains improbable. For me to equal his time would have meant legging it past Queen’s College and the University Examination Schools, over Magdalen Bridge and up Iffley Road at an average pace of 14 seconds for every 100 metres.

When I set off, I tried to run at that speed for the first few yards. I doesn’t last long. As I fell back into a weary plod, it was not hard to appreciate how extraordinary Bannister must have been. All around me, young and old, man, woman and child were getting a practical insight into his genius. Here’s a how quick he was: El Guerrouj jogged round to complete the course in 6’50”, a time well beyond the capacity of most of us, but still nearly twice as long as it took Bannister that day.

The man clearly, I decided as I wheezed up Iffley Road to cross the finish line eight minutes 50 seconds after I had started, must have had jet propulsion in his calves.

It’s not the four-minute mile but Jim got a medal with which to remember his mile run among the dreaming spires – John Lawrence for The Telegraph

In the athletics stadium, out on the track where the record had been broken, dozens of us who had completed the course did little sprints, in our imagination matching the great man stride for stride. Picksley made it there too, striding off on his spring-heeled stroll, looking as though he could walk for miles. And in a marquee on the infield, the two of us looked at an exhibition of art dedicated to Bannister’s run, with watercolours and pastel impressions of his breasting the tape, his face contorted with the effort.

Which is where, we agreed, we mere mortals can at least claim similarity with the man who broke a record for the ages: I too looked as if I was about to expire as I crossed the line.

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