It's amazing that more people have climbed Mount Everest than have broken the 4-minute mile.

May is a very early time in the year and the weather is usually bad. You cannot run a fast mile race if there is a strong wind, because it makes your running uneven.

No longer conscious of my movement, I discovered a new unity with nature. I had found a new source of power and beauty, a source I never dreamt existed.

Without the concentration of the mind and the will, performance would not result.

The essence of sports is that while you're doing it, nothing else matters, but after you stop, there is a place, generally not very important, where you would put it.

I was playing rugby and the other games English school children do, and there was an event which was planned in which races were run, and I simply just won these by a considerable margin

My introduction to track racing was through the background of cross country running, which is not a sport perhaps as popular in America as it is in England.