Sub 4-minute milers live for longer – study

THE long lives of sub four-minute milers show that “extreme” exercise doesn’t reduce lifespan, according to new research.

A study of the first 200 athletes to run a mile in under four minutes – including Batheducated Sir Roger Bannister who was the first to achieve the landmark feat – shows they outlive the general public by around five years.

The study, published online in the

marks the 70th anniversary of Bannister’s world record-breaking run at Iffley Road athletics track in Oxford on May 6th, 1954, right.

Bannister, who was later knighted for his services to sport, died of pneumonia in March 2018 aged 88, just 20 days short of his 89th birthday.

While regular moderate exercise is considered a pillar of healthy ageing, researchers say it has long been thought that exposing the body to bouts of extreme endurance exercise may push it too far and shorten life expectancy.

Study author Professor Mark Haykowsky, of the University of Alberta, Canada, said: “The repeated bouts of near maximal to maximal exercise performed by mile runners makes them a unique group in which to test the potential impact of extreme intense exercise on longevity.”

The research team scrutinised the list of 1,759 athletes who had run a mile in under four minutes as of June last year. They extracted the details of the first 200 to do so, on the grounds that they would be at an age that would either match or exceed the average life expectancy for their generation.

The athletes’ longevity was tracked from the exact date of their first successful attempt at breaking the four-minute barrier to either the age of 100, the end of 2023, or death, to find out the average difference in life expectancy between them and the general population, matched for age, sex, and nationality. This difference was calculated as the observed life years for a runner minus their population-matched life expectancy. This number was then averaged across all 200.

The first 200 athletes to break the four-minute mile spanned a period of 20 years from 1954 to 1974. They came from 28 different countries across Europe (88), North America (78), Oceania (22) and Africa (12). They were born between 1928 to 1955, and aged 23, on average, when they ran the mile in under four minutes.

Prof Haykowsky said: “The analysis revealed that the under four-minute milers lived nearly five years beyond their predicted life expectancy based on sex, age, year of birth, age at achievement, and nationality.”