86 Quotes by Roger Bannister

I found longer races boring. I found the mile just perfect.

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

I couldn't disappoint people. I did not want to fail and exhaust myself, because I was the kind of runner who trained so little that I couldn't race again within another 10 days.

It's a question of spreading the available energy, aerobic and anaerobic, evenly over four minutes. If you run one part too fast, you pay a price. If you run another part more slowly your overall time is slower.

My family actually lived in the same village for about 400 years. They had great stability until the last century. People lived and intermarried in small villages.

Life was very simple. My parents had come from the North of England, which is a fairly rugged, bleak, hard-working part of England, and so there was not the expectation of luxury.

You get very tired, and there was a certain amount of pain and you slow up. Your legs are so tired that you are in fact slowing. If you don't keep running, keep your blood circulating, the muscles stop pumping the blood back and you get dizzy.

If there was the opportunity to climb a mountain, or to go ballooning, or some adventurous activity, I would always be keen to do it. I loved the countryside.

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