Forty years after he did the impossible, it’s the early 1990s and we’re walking together across historic Franklin Field during the Penn Relays, with 40,000 fans yelling as runners circle the track.

“What did it feel like, to break the barrier?” I ask.

“It felt important, like I was leading something, something historic,” he replied.

Fourteen years before Bob Beamon’s long jump leap into history, it’s 6:00 p.m., May 6, 1954. In front of 1,200 spectators, a twenty-five year-old London medical student is preparing on a wet, blustery early evening at Oxford’s singularly unimpressive Iffley Road track. He is preparing to make history.

His opponent is a mystical barrier, as much psychological as physiological. The challenger is a tall, blonde, lanky athlete, with a forceful stride that makes his head bob along as if floating above the agony that comes along with this territory.

The relentless wind makes him think about calling it off to save energy for another try in ten days, but just before the race, the winds die down, and the challenger decides this is the moment. He has, after all, been preparing for six months, and this is his first contest in eight months. He’s ready.

The starter’s gun cracks the air. In this race, teammates Christopher Chataway and Chris Brasher are here only to help the challenger in his assault. Right away, Brasher sets the early pace, allowing the challenger to tuck in behind and rest his body and mind. The challenger comes through the first quarter mile in 57.5, the second in 1:58, and then it is Chataway’s turn to help the challenger rest and ready his own attack. The time at three-quarters is 3:00.7—almost, almost on pace. It’s time to change the game.

“The decision to ‘break away’ results from a mixture of confidence and lack of it. The ‘breaker’ is confident to the extent that he suddenly decides the speed has become slower than he can himself sustain to the finish. Hence he can accelerate suddenly and maintain his new speed to the tape. But he also lacks confidence, feeling that unless he makes a move now, everyone else will do so and he will be left standing.”

Time to break away. Body and mind know this. The challenger passes his two friends with 300 yards to go. And the final yards and the final seconds are “never-ending”—until: “I leaped for the tape like a man taking his last spring to save himself from the chasm that threatens to engulf him.”

The Oxford announcer bides his time after the finish, saying nothing as 1,200 spectators wait without knowing whether they’ve just witnessed history or nothing, change or status quo.

Finally, “Ladies and gentlemen,” crackles over the PA, “here is the result of Event No. 9, the one mile.” The announcer takes a beat, building to…something. “First, No. 41, R. G. Bannister, Amateur Athletic Association and formerly of Exeter and Merton Colleges, Oxford, with a time that is a new meeting and track record and which, subject to ratification, will be a new English native, British national, British all- comers, European, British Empire and world’s record. The time was 3…”

The crowd erupts, so that almost no one can hear the rest of the announcement. “…minutes, 59 and 4-tenths of a second.”

This is change. This is history. This is the future.

But the challengers and leaders of change do not run in place. It had been nine long years since a new world record in the mile, the day Roger Bannister broke the 4-minute barrier on May 6, 1954. After this, however, change flowed like a spring freshet. Just weeks later, John Landy, whom Bannister will later defeat in a famous head-to-head battle, breaks Bannister’s record by running 3:58. The following year, three more runners break the 4-minute barrier, all in the same race. Within two and a half years, 10 athletes run under 4 minutes, and within four years, Herb Elliot drops the world record all the way down to 3:54.5. In 1975, the 3:50-minute-barrier is broken by John Walker, and the current world record, set in 1999 by Hicham El Guerrouj, is 3:43.13—running at a pace more than 100 yards ahead of Roger Bannister. Change begets change.

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