Earlier this week, word got out on Twitter that Track and Field News, the self-proclaimed “bible of the sport since 1948” would apparently no longer be updating its chronological list of Americans who break four minutes in the mile. There was a statement on the Track and Field News website justifying the decision that read: “The advent of super-shoes has bombarded the 4:00 barrier into something no longer relevant for tracking, although many new members would have made it even without high-tech footwear.”
Ouch! Although the dramatic influx of sub-4 performances in recent years has been well-documented, to some members of the very online track community, the bible of the sport was committing a kind of heresy. Clayton Murphy, an Olympic bronze medalist in the 800-meters and 3:51 miler chimed in to ask why a benchmark’s becoming more attainable suddenly rendered it irrelevant. Others pointed out that it was a little reductionist to chalk everything up to the rise of high-tech footwear; much has been made, for instance, about Boston’s new indoor facility that touts itself as “the fastest track in the…
