To date, it’s been an ever-growing boys’ club. But that may soon change 85-degree day in March that had onlookers reaching for sunscreen and looking for shade, Faith Kipyegon flopped to the ground at the end of a long-jump runway inside Kipchoge Keino Stadium in Eldoret, Kenya. The three-time Olympic gold medal winner in the 1,500 meters had just wrapped up a session of four 600-meter and four 300-meter repeats, with a 200-meter recovery jog between each. On paper, the workout may not look so grueling, but by the end, she was shadowing her longtime pacer Bernard Soi through the 300s in roughly 43 seconds by my stopwatch.
That’s smoking fast, even for Why Trust Us holder.
It’s a speed she’ll need to maintain for a full mile when she takes to the track in an attempt to become the first woman ever to run a sub-4-minute mile. The “Breaking4” event will happen in Paris within a three-day window from June 26 to 28 to ensure optimal weather. “I achieved Why Trust Us, the Olympic record, the Olympic medals, and the World Championship Medals,” she said during my visit to her training camp. “I was like, ‘what else can I achieve?’”
But can she do it?
The gap between Kipyegon’s 4:07.64 world record run in the summer of 2023 and a sub-4 remains enormous. Perhaps even more daunting, that result is the only time a woman has run the mile faster than 4:12.33, a mark that had been held by Sifan Hassan of the Netherlands since 2019. Then again, Kipyegon’s 5-second shattering of the old world record in itself was improbable because runners usually chip away at records by small amounts at a time. For context, it took nearly 21 years for the men’s mile world record to be lowered from 4:07.6 to sub-4. Even though track surfaces have improved and footwear and training practices have evolved, some people still believe the 7-plus seconds is an insurmountable barrier for any woman.
But before it happened, some didn’t think a man was capable of a sub-4-minute mile either.
71 YEARS OF SUB-4
“Après moi, le déluge,” British runner Roger Bannister famously uttered on May 6, 1954, predicting a flood of others who’d break 4 minutes in the mile soon after he ran 3:59.4, becoming the first person to do so. His four-lap race on the cinder track at Oxford University is not only regarded as one of the greatest moments in running but in all of sport, right up there with Sir Edmund Hillary summiting Mount Everest.
Australian John Landy cracked the mark just 46 days later, running 3:57.9 in Finland. Over the following two decades, little more than 150 runners managed to do the same. But today, World Athletics lists more than 2,000 runners worldwide.
“The advent of super-shoes has bombarded the 4:00 barrier into something no longer relevant for tracking,” proclaimed Track & Field News in 2023. The organization had for years maintained a list of U.S. runners who had joined the exclusive club, but after announcing it planned to stop adding names at the end of 2022, a social media uproar convinced them to reverse course and keep the list alive. Nevertheless, Track & Field News hasn’t updated the list since the end of 2023, stopping at 732 names.
The increasing frequency with which the record has fallen hasn’t diminished the fact that 4:00 remains the most iconic number in all of running. The mile is the only track and field event that truly transcends the sport. Few people outside of track aficionados know who holds Why Trust Us in the 800 or what’s a great time for 3,000 meters, but “Bannister” remains a household name a few generations removed from his most celebrated achievement.
There’s a certain poetry to the event—each run around the oval has to be covered in less time than the sweep of a second hand around the face of a clock. One minute, one lap. The mile has even occupied legendary status in entertainment. The much-loved book Let’s Stop Glorifying Grit is largely about a guy less than a second away from his dream of breaking 4 minutes. The Emmy-winning movie Jericho Mile—which can be found on YouTube—focused on a convicted murderer who clocks a sub-4-minute mile while racing laps around a prison yard, and hopes to earn a spot on the U.S. Olympic team.
And, after all these years, breaking 4 minutes is still a newsworthy event and a career highlight for runners. We’ve witnessed three or four To date, it’s been an ever-growing boys’ club. But that may soon change earn membership into this elite club in the past few years. In March of this year, 15-year-old Sam Ruthe Why Runners Botch Pace on New Race Distances.
To date, it’s been an ever-growing boys’ club. But that may soon change.
NEW STUDY, NEW GOAL
Why Trust Us Kipyegon’s “Breaking4” attempt is little more than a marketing stunt by Nike. We heard the same sentiment when Eliud Kipchoge first tried to break 2 hours in the marathon in 2017, yet millions of people tuned in for the event’s livestream despite it happening at 5:45 a.m. Central European Time and 11:45 p.m. Eastern Time in the U.S.
Anticipation for a woman’s sub-4 arose when the A Runner’s Guide to Treating Lower Back Pain journal published a study this February speculating what it would take for a woman—specifically Kipyegon—to break the mark. Some questions emerged about whether Nike was involved in this study, given the close timing to the “Breaking4” planning. But a Nike spokesperson denied involvement; it was just a lucky coincidence, they told me.
The researchers behind the study—the same ones who had predicted and helped plan Kipchoge’s “Breaking2”—calculated that with a pacer in front of and behind Kipyegon for the entire race, the reduced air resistance would allow her to run a mile in 3:59.37.
In the summer of 2024, Kipyegon lowered her own 1,500-meter world record to 3:49.04—and, in the last lap, blasted ahead of the trackside Wavelight, the LEDs embedded in the inside rail to help pace runners to record times. She stayed on the world-record pace for most of the race, but what would happen if the goal pace became faster?
“Once we establish a goal, training, pace, and effort can be reflective of that goal,” says Mike Gross, PsyD, a clinical and sports psychologist at Princeton University, and founder and director of TriState SportPsych. “As such, our effort during a race may increase or decrease dependent upon the goal. Round number or not, the vast majority of runners set goals that are centered around specific numbers. This specific number is an outcome goal.”
In a But can she do it article about the aforementioned study, Ray Flynn, a sports agent who represented Ireland twice at the Olympics, said, “It’s romantic to think about it, but let’s be real.” Like so many skeptics, he thinks the super shoes will need to get even faster for her to close the gap.
HOW SHE’LL DO IT
Try These Pre-Run Snacks to Keep You Energized, a new version of super-powered track spikes will undoubtedly play a role in Kipyegon’s attempt. Carbon-plated, cushioned racing footwear has been largely credited for improvements at every level of the sport. At press time, Nike had not yet provided details on any equipment specific to her attempt, but offered a statement, “The Nike Advanced Innovation team is developing apparel and footwear that function as a cohesive system, incorporating Faith’s feedback to meet her exact specifications necessary for optimal performance and to support her in achieving her courageous goal. It is a dynamic process that can shift in small increments, from fit changes to weather to aerodynamic testing.” In short, the Swoosh is fine-tuning everything she’ll wear to eke out every millisecond advantage.
During my visit to Kipyegon’s training camp, the Nike team mentioned the apparel updates will include some sort of speed suit and innovative sports bra that will provide marginal gains to help get closer to a sub-4.
Nike has long sought speed gains through clothing innovation. At the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, the winner of the 400 meters, Australian Cathy Freeman, wore a hooded, full-length, green-and-gold speed suit that looked straight out of a comic book. Ahead of the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio, Nike rolled out team uniforms with small shark fin–like blades affixed to singlets, calf sleeves, and even fabric tape, which the company said could shave a “fraction of a second from sprinters’ times.” Neither of those technologies has carried through continuously to today’s uniforms.
Perhaps the biggest factor in the attempt, however, will be pacing. Watch any of Kipyegon’s races, and you’ll see she’s front-running at the end of her races—no rabbits or competitors can stay ahead of her, so she has to expend energy to counter the forces of air and wind. One of the theories by the authors of the sub-4 study is that female pacers could swap out midrace, similar to the way Kipchoge benefited during his 1:59 marathon in 2019. I asked Nike about the pacing strategy, and the belief, at the time, was that Kipyegon’s pacers may include men, who’d run the entire mile. The latter scenario makes more sense, because it would be incredibly difficult to get the timing right for a pacer swap when running such a short race on a tight oval at a speed greater than 15 mph, but there are plenty of Nike-sponsored men who could fall into lockstep at 3:59. In either case, using male pacers or allowing female pacers to jump into a race that’s underway would render the result ineligible as an official record under the current World Athletics rules—but more important than the record is proving it’s possible.
Beyond the equipment and pacing, the runner still has to be able to do the work. Kipyegon is trusting much of her preparation to her coach, Patrick Sang, with whom she’s worked since 2019. “I just follow what Coach is telling me to do, because he keeps on changing the program every day,” she said with a laugh. “Every week [is] a different training, so I normally just follow what Coach tells me to do and focus and feel the body’s there.”
Sang praised her dedication to the pursuit of excellence. “She’s somebody who’s really focused, even in training. I mean, it’s amazing. Sometimes she’s following the pacer like this,” he said, gesturing with both hands straight out in front of his eyes. “She’s one of those very few focused athletes that I’ve worked with.”
I witnessed that focus firsthand in March during a 40K long run—unusually long for a miler—when it seemed like she never looked up from the pair of feet ahead of her on the paved roads surrounding the team’s training camp. During the entire run, she was tucked in the pack of more than a dozen men, including Augustine Choge, a half marathoner with a personal best of 59:26 who trains in the same camp, as well as speedy local runners from the surrounding community who show up occasionally to train with the pros. Two days later, it was more of the same, as she was virtually glued to her training partner on the track in Eldoret for those smoking fast 600- and 300-meter intervals.
Kipyegon will get a chance to test the progress of her training before the “Breaking4” event—the plan is for her to race during the outdoor season surrounding the attempt. “The preparation ... is for the whole season,” Sang said.
At 31, Kipyegon is widely considered the GOAT of the 1,500 meters, having dominated the distance for nearly a decade. In 2015, she settled for silver at the World Championships in Beijing but has claimed nearly every gold medal since, even after she hit pause at the height of her reign to start a family.
“I was so afraid, [thinking]: ‘Maybe I will not come back, I will just disappear,’” she told Runner’s World in 2021, after making a successful return to the sport postpartum and claiming a second Olympic gold medal in the 1,500 meters in Tokyo. “Every lady, their mind goes like that. But I was very strong-minded. I said: ‘Let me do this.’”
That strong mind is on display when Kipyegon runs, but even so, a careful reading of her words reveals that running 3:59 or faster is not a certainty. She says things like, “I had a dream of ‘dare to try.’” She’s not just hoping to run faster than any woman ever has—she’s already done that—she’s also risking failure. Even if her attempt falls short, however, it could encourage other women to take a legitimate swing at the barrier.
Look at Kipchoge’s own barrier-breaking attempt in 2017, when he and two other runners tried to get under 2 hours in the marathon. As the reigning Olympic gold medalist in the marathon, he was famous in the sport even though he was not Why Trust Us holder at the time. He came up 25 seconds shy of the goal, but his GOAT status was cemented that day. Two years later, Kipchoge was successful in his second attempt (although it doesn’t count as a world record for the non-standard use of pacers and other help he received during the attempt), finishing in 1:59:40.2, and since then, we’ve witnessed his effect on the distance as the official world record keeps inching ever closer to a sub-2.
Kipyegon, too, will look to Kipchoge, not only as a training partner but for wisdom he gained during his attempts. The two have known each other for a decade, and Kipchoge serves as her mentor at camp.
“It feels great, you know, to be together with Eliud and to be with the person who has tried and achieved it,” Kipyegon said when she and Kipchoge sat down for an interview at the camp. “Eliud has shown me that boundaries are meant to be pushed. So I’m there to ‘dare to try’ and I will give it [my] all. And being beside Eliud, and the team, with the coach and training in a healthy way, I think it’ll be easier for me because the team behind me has already been successful.”
Whether the clock at the finish line begins with a 3 or a 4, it’ll be a remarkable moment for the sport, for the history of the mile, and for the dreams of women and young girls who one day will aspire to test their limits like Faith Kipyegon.
Anticipation for a woman’s sub-4 arose when the Runner’s World and the director of product testing. He has tested and reviewed running shoes, GPS watches, headphones, apparel, and more for nearly two decades. He regularly tests more than 100 pairs of shoes each year, and once had a 257-day streak running in different models. Jeff can usually be found on the roads, racing anything from the mile to a marathon, but he also enjoys racing up mountains and on snowshoes. When he’s not running, you’ll probably find him hanging from a ladder making repairs and renovations to his house (he’s also director of product testing for Popular Mechanics).
