Jack Pinho desperately dove across the finish line, knowing that if he didn't do so, he'd probably regret it for the rest of his life. The 26-year-old had been gunning for a sub-4:00 mile since he graduated college in 2018. Lifting himself off the synthetic carpet-like surface, he stared at the scoreboard, the next 10 seconds feeling longer than the race itself. When his name finally appeared next to 3:59.54, he tossed his hands in the air.
"I've seen people do it so many times," he says. "But now, it was finally me that was on that board."
Pinho was the very last man to break the 4:00 barrier that night, February 11, at the Boston University David Hemery Valentine Invitational. Fifty-one men had already done so that day-a number that, when compared to previous years, is eye-popping. In 2022, 12 men broke 4:00 at the meet. Five years ago, only seven did.
For the last decade or so, it was typical to see only 15 to 25 American men break 4:00 for the first time in any given year. At this year's Valentine Invitational, a single indoor track meet, 18 Americans notched their first. Such a significant jump led the sport's stat-keeper, Track & Field News, to declare that super shoes have "bombarded the 4:00 barrier into something no longer relevant for tracking." The once-elastic list of every sub-4:00-miler was now finite-all thanks to a few ounces of mesh and foam.
Despite such claims, sub-4:00 is still an important barrier in track & field-just maybe not in the same way it used to be.
SUPER SHOES, OF course, refer to the newest generation of athletic footwear heralded by Nike back in 2017. Nike hoped that the Vaporfly 4% road-racing shoe would fundamentally change running, as evidenced by the blowout marketing campaign that featured Eliud Kipchoge chasing a sub-two-hour marathon.
This story is from the Issue 04, 2023 (Fall) edition of Runner's World US.
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This story is from the Issue 04, 2023 (Fall) edition of Runner's World US.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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