The 18th Century four-minute mile | Hacker News Reader

The 18th Century four-minute mile

bbc.co.uk

34 pointsColinWright10 comments

I'm with Roger Bannister. It's inconceivable.

How could it possibly be true that in the 100 years between 1770 and 1870, the fastest milers lost a full 30 seconds (25% performance decrease)[1]? How could it be that men like Thomas Horspool[2] were widely recognized as champions and world record holders while running so much slower than amateurs from only half a century before?

Anyone who has trained seriously on the track would know the type of all-encompassing effort--nutrition, sleep, physical therapy, training--and modern science--VO2Max, heart rate, running economy [3]--that go into training for a four-minute mile. The idea that people were doing all of that in Britain in the 18th century is laughable.

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/timeline/d3c109a21... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Horspool [3] http://sportsscientists.com/2007/12/running-economy-part-i/

One explanation for the inconceivability is that earlier runners weren't "milers". The milers of Fletcher's era were amateur athletes with well paying professional jobs suitable for an Englishman with bording school and university education.

The pool of gentlemen runners was small and not motivated by money. They didn't welcome competition from all comers...e.g. Jim Thorpe was stripped of his golds for playing semipro baseball and Jesse Owens had to live off campus at OSU. Access to sports competition was a privilege in the first half of the 20th century.

There were people in 18th century England whose job was to run alongside coaches: http://kongehuset.dk/english/Historical-Collections/Coaches-...

So one can argue that 4minute mile is not inconceivable with such training.

Maybe, if there is evidence of coaches regularly traveling at twelve miles an hour or better. But Mark Twain, in Roughing It, gives eight or ten miles an hour as a good pace for a stage coach. I was never more than a decent recreational runner, but I could sustain six minute miles for an hour, and seven minute miles for three or four. That is not the sort of running that trains one to compete at elite (even high school) distances in the mile.

Consider that in those times a large fraction of the population engaged in very hard labor since they could walk, 6 days a week, 12 hours a day. Is it inconceivable that in such a large group of people, there might be some athletes comparable to today's? I wouldn't be quick to dismiss it.

Also consider that people in those days had little choice but to work physically hard, and so if any were super athletes it would become apparent.

Today, super athletes are drawn from highly motivated people who choose it. That is a far smaller pool of people, and may not necessarily correlate with people who have a genetic predisposition to being a super athlete.

For example, someone with the right super athlete genes may never know it because all he does is sit around writing compilers.

"That is a far smaller pool of people"

The population of England in 1801 was ~7.75M people (versus today's 53M).

"For example, someone with the right super athlete genes may never know it because all he does is sit around writing compilers."

Very unlikely. Most people are exposed to a decent amount of physical activity as teenagers.

Some "potential top athletes" end up never having a career as an athlete, but the kind of person who has the predisposition to be a "super athlete" at something like running a mile, can be spotted very easily among his/her peers while doing normal "school physical activities".

Also, no one achieves extraordinary results without being highly motivated and training extremely hard on their speciality. That is something that people "in those days" certainly didn't do. Working physically hard in general wouldn't have helped them to achieve extraordinary results at specific events.

The 8 million people of 1801 England is more than double the current population of Uruguay. Uruguay has won twice as many FIFA World Cups as England. [1] This may be because its "super athletes" are often found on the streets rather than in schools and academies. The English sense of sport leads them to vilify ruthless competitors rather strive for their level of passion.

Training hard is a way for a person to achieve their maximum potential. A person whose maximum potential is 140% of average and who trains to 80% of it will outperform someone whose maximum potential is 110% of average who trains to 100%. If the 110%'ers are winning it's a sign that access to the competition is limited.

Fletcher was better than his peers and that is why he was given an opportunity, but that opportunity was reserved for him and his peers. Once people could make a living from track and field, English gentlemen mostly ceased winning elite competitions for largely the same reasons that they are disappearing from the world's top footballing clubs.

[1]: And four fourth place finishes versus England's one. Uruguay's success has been consistent.

Interestingly, there are datasets suggesting reaction time has actually increased since the 1800s. They likely suffer from selection biases, but that still indicates that "modern" physical feats were possible.

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.5406/amerjpsyc.123.1.0039?u...

The comparisons to Galton's studies were dominated by selection biases. They're not indicative of much of anything in particular, except perhaps how not to do this kind of research.

http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/05/22/the-wisdom-of-the-ancie...

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