World Record Progression: The Mile 

Since this video is taking off now, yes, I know I accidentally called Pavvo Nurmi Swedish lmao. This was my first genuine running docu, so there may be some small errors sprawled out. Apologies if people were annoyed.

I’ve ran 2 sub 5 minute miles. So some of these records are just absolutely insane to me

I love how the the start of the video shows pictures of beefy dudes in suits and top hats and says they ran 4 minute miles

i usually watch video game speedrunning videos, but real world speed running is surprisingly engaging, great work my dude

How is this only at 3k views this is an actual masterpiece

While hitchhiking through Europe in 1975, I made sure I got to the track where Bannister set the mile, and of course, I ran a mile (considerably slower).

The amount of research put into this video is amazing man!

I’m a 78 year old D-1 Track and Cross Country runner. I ran 4:15 Mile; 14:30 @ 3 miles; 49.5 @ 440…and a host of other NCAA level races and times…after watching this documentary, I realize how mediocre I was. I was enlightened by the chronological tracing of the world record. My love for the Sport will never be diminished. My appreciation for guys like Nurmi, Cunningham, Bannister, Ryan, Coe; Ovett et al will be forever an inspiration. Thank you for a marvelous job of research and presentation.

These videos inspire me to add more speed to my runs. Gotta practice for CC season hard.

Incredible documentary. Incredible topic as well. But most incredible is how underrated this channel is.

Great video! i love these types of documentary style videos

Excellent video. You put a lot of work into this.

Thank you for the research and effort to put this together

This is SO good thank you for making it

This deserves so much more views! Amazing video

Fantastic documentary. Still remember being at Bislett watching the wr in 1980. A pity that you could not extend the documentary with the Ingebrigtsen/Nuguse Bowerman mile that was almost a repeat of the el guerrouj/ngeny world record run from 1999. I am really looking forward to 2024 Bislett Games when I hope a new chapter in this amazing story will be written.

Massively underrated. This video was incredibly done

You are really out here dropping bangers

I usually don’t subscribe after watching the first video but I love your work! Great job

This old footage and commentary is great. Really well put together video. Glued throughout.

Enjoyed this thanks!

Amazing video!! thank you!

this deserves so much more

The amount of detail and production put into this one video blew me away.

This was sick man! The abyss yearns for us all

This is an awesome video!

This is truly a great video presentation. It's such a shame that you put so much effort in to this remarkable piece of work only to have people complain. I personally do not watch RU-vid videos to be an armchair film critic. I watch them to be educated and entertained. In this case it was great to be reminded of the Coe/Ovette/Cram races. Keep up the good work. It was just amazing to see how far humans have come and how some performances are so great they can takes years to beat.

You did a great job on this video Keep up this quality and you'll go far

Great documentary! This is a lot of work, gleaning historical records going so far back was also educational. As a former runner, this was so very entertaining!

There are very few videos I have put on to listen to and eventually put it on to watch because I get so invested. This was one of them. Great video and I wish my mile stats were close enough to give myself a good perspective.

Great video. Never cared for running, more of a walker myself, but it was still a great watch all the way through.

Awesome video man

I watch A LOT of vintage track and field and have never seen some of this footage-or at least views from different angles. The research...Wow. (And, if anyone ever complains about your pronunciation of athletes names: sour grapes...this is a GREAT video).

It's a great story, and you tell it brilliantly.

@23:40 Steve Prefontaine (RIP) was my hero when I was @Marshfield high school, the same school he attended and set American records. I ran the 800 and Mile there but didn't have the coaching he had and could only shave my times to 4:19.2, it served me well when I served in the US Army though.

Welcome back brotha

Amazing video bro. Great inspiration as i start training for my first marathon. Barcelona 2023 baby letsssss goooo.

Great video, well worth a sub👍

This is one of the greatest videos I've ever watched. Thanks !

Incredible video.

awesome documentary.

mile speedrun progression very interesting video

I like these documentar-ish videos! (You're like Matthew Mayernik in cubing or SummonSalt in video speedrunning, but yours are really "speedrunning"! )

love this

Great video :)

Great work to put this together, very absorbing, I didn't know much about the pre-1950's era, good to see that. In the end however it just makes me more suspicious about the North Africans in the 1990's. I have had suspicions about El Guerrouj's training feats, and his record times, for years. Now I also see the two seconds that Morcelli took off the record in 1993, at the exact time the pro cycling world was being ripped apart by EPO ... it just looks bad. Add that to the fact that in an era now where training and tracks have improved so much in the last 20 years, we are not seeing these numbers any more. Well... it makes me think... welcome to hear anyone counter this.

5 Seconds in and there is a clip of Cr1TiKaL from his "Presidential Fitness Test 1 Mile Run" ... this is going to be good

18:43...The Empire games were held in Vancouver, Canada. My home town. The statue of the 2 men still stands on the site. It's title is "The Look" as Landy looked the opposite way as Banister passed him to win the race. The first race to have 2 men break the 4 minute barrier in the same race. Something to remember as the world records stacked up at a certain point in the mile as in all track events is that Banister and Landy ran on a cinder track (loose compressed material) Many future records were run on Mondo synthetic tracks which allow for much quicker times. Shoe technology also improved. It's simply the evolution of sport.

The algorithm better pick this up soon, criminally underrated!

This is miles

Great video.

Great vid

I love world record progression videos about speedruns in video games, so it's cool to run across a channel that does videos on record progressions in real-world disciplines. You get a sub for subverting my expectations!

Good video bro

Phenomal video

I really enjoyed following the mile distance competition when Marty Liquori and Jim Ryun were competing. 😉

This was an amazing video. The amount of research is very impressive and you keep it interesting at all times.

Chapter One should also include the first recorded sub-4 minute mile, by a native American known as Black Hawk Chief. As a scout employed by the Army he was known to be a very fast runner (scouts ran everywhere), so a group of officers laid out a half-mile track using the steel measuring rods the Army used in the surveying work they carried out as part of their duties.. Black Hawk Chief ran two laps in 3.58 according to their stopwatches. My information comes from a book on native american sports which I sadly no longer have in my possesion. It was recorded in the local press at the time. My opinion is that 4 minutes has always been within the reach of a few talented men throughout human history, when people lived on their feet and many would spend a lot of time running. This would not have been systematic training, but would be similar in its effects.

Motivation.

Five of us trained for 2 months to see if we could break 4 minute mile . It is so difficult I ran over 5 minutes I was blowing out of my arse it took about 10 minutes to fully get my breath back. The closest to the time was 4 minutes 32 seconds, these runners must be super human

I used to train with a friend who ran twice a day, EVERY DAY. His post-collegiate PR of 4:09, a few years out of school, seemed CRAZY to me!

If only I was alive in 1804

Love the film of them running inside a velodrome.

To add to the achievement of Bannister and Landy running sub 4 at the empire games...that was in Vancouver at Empire Stadium...sea level!! (I got to play football in that stadium in the eighties...hallowed ground!!!)

How about doing a video on Emil Zatopek? I was born in 1952 and I was given the middle name Emile because of his fame running in the Olympics that year.

this is a treasure

Sorry to have to give a correction -- in Bayi's 3:51.0 race, the one right behind Bayi (wearing red) is not John Walker; it's Marty Liquori.

Ha - I watched the whole thing! I’m not even a runner. Great stuff!

19:40 Wow, knowing so much less about Landy than Bannister, other than the name. He comes across as very classy and likeable here.

Here after Jakob Ingebrigsten and Yared Nuguse got realllllly close last year. They ran 3:43.73 and 3:43.97. Breaking the World Record in the mile is very much back in the conversation. Side note….I often marvel at what athletes like Roger Bannister, herb Elliott or Jim Ryun could do if they were running on modern track surfaces and in Nike vaporflys as opposed to grass tracks and cinder.

this dude sounds like real life lore

People are putting out great work on you tube about off the beaten track stuff. Engaging, informative and entertaining, all is not lost to the beat of the algorithm.

Awesome video, loved it! Only question though, were all these historical mile races ran at the 1600 meter distance, or the true mile distance of 1609 meters?

We lived opposite the Iffley Road running track and I watched Bannister run that race from our bedroom window as a 12 year old , great memory xx

I was a valet from 80 to 84.I thought I was in pretty good shape. So I thought I’d give running a shot. I was 26 and I knew I had to see what I could do in the mile.15 minutes.from there I was obsessed.in the summer of 87 I ran my fastest mile ever.at Centaurus high school in Louisville ,Co 6:19 and change. I would much rather run 10 miles than a mile at break neck speed. I loved it.Mind,Body.and Soul…

Ahhh. The mid-90’s in distance running, when times were fast and dopers were everywhere. Widespread availability of EPO, and no tests that could detect it.

Summoning salt but track and field

It blows my mind this channel has under 10k subs

As a pretty good, but by no means exceptional runner, I was running under 4:20 in 1500m when in high school in 1985. I never understood why it took so long to break the four minute mark. Shoes hadn't changed much and I trained on a cinder track. By the way Fartleks were a favorite of Mr. Lundin, my cross country, nordic skiing, and track coach!

Wait so there are *3* different distances for the mile!? 1,500 for the "Metric Mile" even though 1,600 meters, which is the distance of 4 full laps, is closer to the 1,609 meters of an *actual* mile!

In 1980 or 81 our high school converted from the imperial measured track and field to metrics…as this was a new designation all participants on the track events, from the 100 meter, hurdles, to the long distances were all record setters, so I held a couple school records for all eternity!, I’m certain they have been eclipsed since????

Hi ha. Will be the king on this distance for a quick long time say decades to come S

Appreciate that you pronounce tanzania correctly 😁

the Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy music in the start lol

My shortest mile time (if I had finished it) would’ve been around 8 minutes, I wasn’t sprinting but definitely it was my most athletic time where I was running 3/4 miles almost every day. Ngl I miss it cuz I wasn’t even stressing while jogging, now a days 11 minutes is good enough

Morceli's RAD form! 😗Cram's Dream Mile was the ULTIMATE. El Guerrouj has the most deceptive final kick.

I love your take on pronunciation of the countries and towns, especially Tanzania 😊

Nice job... is it possible that now that EPO can be tested appropriately and effectively that's a record is no longer falling? The mile is still the glory event. frequently run by the best runners in the world. I'm not sure I ever heard of the dream 1500 meters?

Gotta go fast

If I run a mile under 8 minutes I'm happy.

It's a decent video, great background sound for when working on something else, but yeah I do feel like it would benefit from being paced a bit slower. pause longer a little bit after each sentence and just slightly slower overall. It's a bit rushed for a documentary style video. This pacing is better for list videos.

El Guerrouj still has 1500m record, so its not because the mile is just not run much anymore that the record still stands. But yes the 1500 is more likely to be broken. Amazing how his times have stood up for over 20 years. He also has the record in the seldom run 2000m.

You should have talked about the 1500 as well and the Olympics and world championships more to give context to these people's careers since the 1500 is the primary event

Great video, but that is a wild pronunciation of Tanzania about halfway through

I just love that it was called Pedestrianism. That's so adorable somehow.

I watched coe ovett and cram in person I was a very young boy. Cram is from the same area as me so I prefer him.

Pavo Nurmi - the flying finn - was finnish not a sweed

WOW!

Shout out to Jim Ryan my hometown hero.

Funnily enough the acceleration of World Records in the 90's corresponds with the introductio of EPO to aid athletes..