Why It’s So Hard to Run a Sub-4 Mile at Altitude – runnersworld.com

For elite track athletes to run a mile in less than four minutes, conditions need to be just right. And on Thursday evening, August 15, at the University of Colorado’s Potts Field in Boulder, Colorado, they pretty much were.

The sun dipped behind the mountains, and the wind had died down to nothing. Bright lights illuminated a decent-sized crowd who had their eyes on the elite men and women who had shown up to run the , which was ending with what organizer Todd Straka had dubbed the “Mile High Mile.” It was an idyllic scene for a summertime track meet. Idyllic, even, for a sub-4:00 mile.

Except, of course, for the fact that Potts Field sits at 5,360 feet of elevation.

Since Roger Bannister first broke the four-minute barrier in 1954, it has become more common for someone to surpass the mark (544 American men have accomplished the feat as of August 5). None, however, have done it on Colorado soil. A handful of sub-4:00s have been broken : some in Albuquerque, New Mexico (which sits at about 5,000 feet), and one in Provo, Utah (4,549 feet). Tabor Stevens, 28, who ran for Adams State University, clocked the fastest men’s mile time in the state of Colorado, 4:01.27. University of Colorado runner Dani Jones, 22, owns the fastest women’s mile time in the state, 4:36.05, which she ran indoors in 2018.

“It’s the lack of lack of oxygen,” Mark Plaatjes, the 1993 world champion marathoner who’s now a retail store-owner and a sponsor of the Mile High Mile, told Runner’s World. At altitude, “You’re basically redlining and you’re not getting aerobic power. It’s anaerobic. You have so much less oxygen available.”

Plaatjes noted that sprinters actually have an advantage at altitude because of the lack of resistance in thin air. But for any race over two minutes, altitude produces a negative effect.

As cited by coaches like Jack Daniels, who has studied altitude training and racing for years, “the slight benefit a runner gains by moving through the less-dense air at altitude does not make up for the loss in aerobic power caused by lower amounts of oxygen being delivered by the blood to the exercising muscles,” Daniels wrote in the third edition of .

Still, the question remains: Why have there been sub-4:00 miles in other high-elevation states, but not Colorado? Plaatjes thinks that the extra few hundred feet Boulder has on Albuquerque may be a factor.

“We don’t have any air here, which is most of it,” Straka, who is a masters miler, told Runner’s World. “And the air is dry.”

Plus, added Straka, multiple other factors come into play in order for the four-minute mark to be broken. For one, runners have to be race-ready and focused on the mile in their training cycle. Secondly, they have to have companions—a deep field is crucial for setting the pace and allowing the eventual winner to draft before kicking it in.

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What will it take for all those things to align? “Big money. Fame and fortune,” Straka said. “Brands asking their athletes to do it, that kind of thing.”

At the Mile High Mile, as expected, the four-minute barrier stayed intact. The first place male, Matt Giannino, finished in 4:15:16, while Janelle Lincks took the women’s title in 4:44.08. Both runners were happy with their races on Thursday night, smiling while explaining that running that fast at altitude left them with “locked up” legs, and “a sweet headache.”

“Everything’s hurting,” Gianinno said after the race. “It’s good though.”

Who will be the first to go sub-4:00 in the Centennial State, and when will it happen? Lee Troop, an Olympian who also coaches in Boulder and is the race director of the Pearl Street Mile, told Runner’s World he thinks it will happen within the next few years.

“We’ve got some outstanding high school kids around here running 4:04, 4:08, 4:10,” Troop said. “They’re gonna be the guys in the next five or eight years that’ll come out here [and break 4:00] on a night like tonight.”