The Perfect Mile

Before the early 1950s many considered the four-minute mile an impossible feat beyond human capability. However, this arbitrary limit only served as a catalyst to inspire runners to achieve it. Neal Bascomb’s The Perfect Mile chronicles the trials of three runners attempting to become the first to reach that goal, one of whom eventually would: the British Roger Bannister, the Australian John Landy, and the American Wes Santee. Split into three parts, The Perfect Mile tells of the 1952 Helsinki Olympics that would propel each to their task, the individual tribulations of each runner, leading up to one of them finally attaining the historic mark, and a culminating race between Bannister and Landy to determine the better miler. Additionally, through this story Bascomb explores facets of human character that are necessary for this massive goal. One of the most important ideas he touches on is motivation.

A major theme in The Perfect Mile is that of motivation or inspiration. Each of the runners has individual reasons for embarking on their quests. Of course, there are common minor motivations like glory for their countries, but the inspirations are largely unique. Bannister, for example, sought to prove the idealized amateur athlete still had a place among the growing commercialization of professional sports. By balancing his running with medical school, Bannister wanted to show that financial incentive is not necessary to be a great athlete. On the flip side, Santee chased after the fame and admiration that would come with such a monumental achievement. Growing up, Santee dealt with a father who largely ignored him and beat him when paying attention, so Santee pursued the attention that he lacked as a child. Landy, however, had a completely different motivation. Of Landy, Bascomb wrote, “The pursuit of the mile record was about proving how good he was, not about being the one to cross the four-minute threshold first. He was running for himself,” (128). Individually, these motivations were strong enough to propel each runner to dedicate himself almost exclusively to the task of the four-minute mile, impressive because they were forging new territory. Each had to essentially create innovative, unique workouts and experiment to reach the physical state to be able to achieve such an impressive athletic feat. To express the significance of this kind of purpose Bascomb quotes the poem “If” by Rudyard Kipling:

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two imposters just the same…

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run¬

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And-which is more-you’ll be a Man, my son!

With a strong enough reason no adversity is strong enough to divert one from his chosen path.

Overall, the cumulative story is very inspiring, especially to me as a runner, and it is obvious that Bascomb has a passion for what he has written about. The book is an inspirational tale, full of humorous anecdotes. However, it includes a lot of trivial details, causing the story to move slowly and feel uninteresting at times. In conclusion, competitive or even casual runners will enjoy this book more as they will be able to relate to it, although I would still recommend it to anyone who enjoys a story of the awesome achievements capable by human beings.