![]() His time was better than his 3:59 Mile: 3:39.0. Showing no signs of fatigue from an already long season, he ran a brilliant fourth in the AAU 1,500 behind winner O’Hara, almost beating Grelle and Burleson. Was it possible that this high-school kid, who still had a newspaper delivery round, could qualify for Munich? He thus became the first schoolboy to break the 4:00 barrier-just ten years after Bannister’s 3:59.4. And although he finished back in eighth position, he was timed at 3:59.0. ![]() In his next race at Compton, the field was even stronger with Jim Grelle entered. At Modesto he showed he could run with them, finishing third behind O’Hara and Burleson with a huge PB of 4:01.7. ![]() This performance qualified him for the big California meets to race the top American milers. Ryun progressed gradually through 1964 high-school track season, ending up with a 4:06.4 Mile, a 1.4-second PB. The very backbone of his program was rooted in goals.” (Jim Ryun, In Quest of Gold, p.19) Timmons goals for Ryun were very high, much higher than Ryun thought possible: “But I was willing to go along,” he wrote later. Ryun later described Timmons’ approach as “centering…around thorough planning, determined sacrifice and hard work-all given direction and purpose through the use of specific goals for each runner. It’s a miracle I didn’t get seriously injured in my first three years of running.” ( Bannister and Beyond, p.91) In an interview published in 2008, Ryun told Jim Denison, “Those workouts were incredibly intense, and probably far beyond what was necessary to be a miler…. All this was an incredible workload for a 16-year-old. One famous session was 40x440 in 69 with a 90-second rest. And he pushed him even harder the following winter with twice-a-day sessions building up to 110 miles a week. Timmons was already working Ryun really hard in training. He finished off his incredible first track season with a 9:13.8 Two Miles, the fastest ever by a US schoolboy. His speed was improving too: 1:53.6 and 50.5 for 880 and 440. The next month he ran 4:16.2 and then a stunning 4:08.2 followed by a 4:07.8. Five days before he turned 16, his time came down again to 4:19.7. His rate of improvement continued to amaze. Nevertheless, Coach Timmons insisted that his new star was winning because of his cross-country stamina, not his speed. Ryun improved again to 4:21.7 and ran the same time again for a victory in the Kansas Relays, covering his last lap in 60.7. Next he ran 4:26.4, winning with an impressive kick. In his first track meet he almost won the Mile, clocking 4:32.4. Ryun continued training under Timmons through the winter of 1962-3. Coach Timmons was impressed and watched the young 15-year-old improve to become the school’s top cross-country runner. After this, Ryun was put in the A team and ran a 10:36. He dropped his time to 11:23 and then won a B competition. An 11:51 Two Miles finally gave him some encouragement. In his first time-trial for a Mile he was 13 th in 5:38-not good enough for even the B team. Inspired by Timmons’s claim that hard training would pay dividends in cross-country, he decided to try out for the team. Later, at High School in 1962 he heard an inspirational talk by the school coach Bob Timmons. But he was unable to make the school team in either the hurdles, sprints or 440. After watching athletes on the track at Southeast High, a block from his home, he tried track when he went to Junior High. ![]() ![]() He joined the Little League in Wichita, Kansas, as soon as he was old enough, but he never excelled. In his three Olympics his best was a silver medal.Ī frail, gangly child with allergies, Ryun was nevetheless attracted to sports. Only in the Olympics did he fall short of his expectations. In his five years at the top, he consistently performed at the highest level, breaking four world records. Today, almost 50 years later, he still holds five of the six fastest mile times in U.S. At 18 he ran 3:55.3, breaking the American Mile record. At 17 he broke the 4-min barrier and represented the USA in the 1964 Olympics. Once every generation or so, a prodigy appears on the running scene with a talent far above his contemporaries. ![]()
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