Fifty years ago this month, Sports Illustrated honored Roger Bannister as the Sportsman of the year (see cover image above), The British athlete performed the remarkable, seemingly unattainable feat of running a mile in less than four minutes. I was impressed when this news was published in the U.S, because a relative of mine, Fred Lytle, had a good reputation as a miler, but was never even close to breaking four minutes. I have newspaper clippings from the 1940s featuring Fred running a high school race in Cleveland with a broken leg. “He won the mile in the very good time of 4 minutes 38 seconds” with “a complete fracture of his fibula” according to newspaper reports. Four minutes and 38 seconds is a long time away from four minutes. Prior to this event, we were given ‘scientific’ information in Health/Gym class that the human body wasn’t constructed for such physical activity as a four minute mile: the heart was incapable of pumping enough blood and might even burst from such strenuous activity; the lungs were not capable of taking in and providing sufficient oxygen to the blood, even if the heart could pump that much and that fast, for that long; muscles could be torn loose from the skeletal frame with that exertion; it might even be possible that leg and feet bones would be shattered by the pressure placed on them in such an endeavor. As an amateur runner, Roger Bannister had surely heard these tales and more, and as a medical student he probably heard them from his instructors who ought to know. Yet fifty years ago, this young man defied the professionals and scientists, his teachers and coaches, and on May 6th, 1954, (I remember it well since it was all the news on the day after my father’s 45th birthday), broke all the barriers that man had set in the way. Roger Bannister ran a mile in about a half-second under four minutes! A few years back, Zig Ziglar, a well-known motivational speaker, likened this feat to a career in ‘flea training.’ I’ve never tried to repeat the experiment, but Zig claimed that if you collect a handful of fleas and dump them in an old glass pickle jar, the fleas will leap out to freedom. If you place a lid on the jar, the fleas will still attempt to jump out. For a time, they will exert all their energy to hurl their tiny bodies up and over: but, they will soon discover the futility of the exercise, since each leap will earn them only failure. Indeed, if they leap high enough, it will also earn them a headache from banging into the lid. After a time, the fleas will become conditioned, and will quit jumping altogether, at which time, the dog won’t even mind if you remove the jar lid. The fleas will sit on the bottom of the jar and die, because even though freedom is within their grasp, it is not within their imagination! They will have closed their tiny minds to the possibilities of freedom and of life. Roger Bannister refused to accept the conditioning of those who “knew better than he did” about the human body and its limits. He was not willing to submit to man’s ’wisdom’ on this topic as generations before him had done, perhaps from the time of the first Olympic games right up to May 6, 1954. Within a few weeks of Bannister’s record- setting feat, Australia’s John Landy bested Bannister’s time by almost two full seconds and before the end of the summer both Bannister and Landy ran under four minutes in the same race! Since then, many milers have performed this ‘impossible’ feat. Once the first ‘flea’ realized he could jump out of the jar, others followed him rapidly. What things have ‘professionals’ been telling you can’t be done? Witness to your next door neighbors, speak in front of a crowd, teach a Sunday School class, tithe, drive a church van, visit a shut-in, finish college, pray aloud? What ever it is, don’t listen to the people who want to screw the lid down tight and trap you: keep jumping!

William Russell © 2005 Bible Center Church Back To Main Page / Archive of Previous Articles