"A man who has set out to become an artist at the mile is something like a man who sets out to discover the most graceful method of being hanged..." -- Paul O'Neil, "A Man Conquers Himself," Sports Illustrated, May 31, 1956.

I once had the good fortune of watching Mary Decker run in the Penn Relays. It must have been in 1979 or 1980, when I was an awe-inspired college freshman watching her first "Ben Franklin Mile" (a less-than-4-minute race) in the city of Philadelphia. By that time, it was clear that humans could run a mile in under 4 minutes, although women were assumed to be significantly slower. Still, Decker managed to pull off a 4 min. 21 sec. mile, breaking a world record for women, and elevating herself to "superwoman" status.

These days, when I'm out there fartleking for no reason other than fun, I think of The Perfect Mile -- a story about three athletes, with the goal of running a mile in under four minutes. The story takes place in 1952, with John Landy (the privileged son of a genteel Australian family), Roger Bannister (a young English medical student), and Wes Santee (a Kansas Farm boy), were all training to run a mile in under 4 minutes. There's Wes, ripping through cornfields in the middle of the night and Roger, running instead of taking a lunch break while a first-year medical resident.

Thinking about the discomfort & agony endured by those runners during that four minutes puts it all in perspective for me and makes my "fast" runs a little more tolerable. I can suffer for 30 seconds, but then ease up so that I don't feel like puking; I can feel the pain, but pause to catch my breath. Bannister, Santee, and Landy didn't have that luxury.

Have you read any good running books lately?