The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance

by Steven Kotler

really knows exactly when the four-minute mile first seemed possible. Certainly, in 1923, when Finnish runner Paavo Numi clocked a 4:10.4, it wasn’t beyond the pale. Yet eight years passed before anyone sliced a second from Numi’s time, and it took ten more for the next three to fall. By 1942, runners had cut it down to 4:04.6; then 4:02.6 by 1943. Two years later, Swedish miler Gunder Hagg clocked 4:01.4 and impossible seemed within reach. A good tailwind, a better track surface, slicing one tick off the time—it was bound to happen. But nothing happened. Not in 1946. Or 1947. Or 1948. The issue, turns out, wasn’t merely physical. It was mental. “Most people considered running four laps of the track in four minutes to be beyond the limits of human speed,” explains Neal Bascomb in The Perfect Mile. “It was foolhardy and possibly dangerous to attempt. Some thought that rather than a lifetime of glory, honor and fortune, a hearse would be waiting for the first person to accomplish that feat.” It was Englishman Roger Bannister who—nine years after Hagg’s near miss—finally broke this mental barrier and accomplished the feat, running 3:59.4 on May 6, 1954. And when we retell this tale, this is typically the point where the story stops, yet two months after Bannister did the impossible and lived, Australian John Landy did it again and then some—cutting 1.4 seconds off Bannister’s time with 3:58 flat. Within five years two other runners had bested that mark; within ten the first s...