On may 6, 1954, a twenty-five-year-old medical student, Englishman Roger Bannister, ran the first sub-four-minute mile in recorded history. His time of 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds, was achieved on a cinder track at Oxford University. Today, the world mile record is 3.44.39. It would probably be lower if top runners today were not focusing instead on breaking the world 1500-meter record.
In those days there were no humongous shoe endorsements or television contracts to lure athletes such as Bannister into the professional ranks. So, at the end of 1954, he retired from running and became a neurologist.
Later, when asked about the art of record-breaking, Bannister said modestly, "It's the ability to take more out of yourself than you've got." Gerald Holland, Sports lllustrated, January 3, 1955, quoted on http//sportsillustrated.cnn.com/features/1998/sportsman/1954. The strength of that statement lies in its spiritual meaning. Perhaps it could be restated this way: "It's the ability to take more out of yourself than you think you've got." Spiritually speaking, this points to the fact that men and women, created by God, are imbued with unending spiritual resources—resources that are not subject to the laws of materiality.
