Darren Worlock of Bristol, England, is raising a ruckus in the pages of Athletics Weekly, we learn from the Telegraph newspaper. The issue? Darren, now 36, has a best of 4:20 for the mile. And he insists he will improve 5 seconds a year and be the first human to break the 4-minute barrier outdoors when he turns 40. Okey-doke. I haven’t seen the coverage in Athletics Weekly, but it may have something to do with Darren’s disrespect for the mile — to think that he can go where no 40-year-old has gone before. Of course, Eamonn Coghlan ran sub-4 indoors. But so far, the outdoor sub-4 has defied the likes of Steve Scott and Tony Young. Best of luck, Darren. But be a little more modest in your pronouncements.

Here’s the Telegraph report:

In torrential rain on July 26th 1852, Charles Westhall ran twice round an 880-yard track in London and clocked the first ever official world record time for the mile. Four minutes 28 seconds may not sound much these days, but the track was made of gravel, and just imagine the shoes he had. He was probably wearing a deerstalker and as the Victorian equivalent of listening to his iPod, was reading a copy of Oliver Twist, although history doesn’t record that.
So ‘Charlie’ is the first name in one of sport’s greatest record books, followed by Nurmi and Wooderson and Bannister (of course) and Elliott and Snell and Coe, Cram and Ovett and El Guerrouj and all the rest whose places in athletic folklore are assured for as long as man is able to run. In 147 years, the world record has fallen by 45.87sec, but no-one over the age of 40 has ever managed, during that time, to break the magical, mythical four-minute barrier outdoors.
Enter Darren Worlock from Bristol. As a trainee plumber, you wouldn’t have heard of Darren until recently unless you’d had your drains blocked. Now though, he’s a runner who has sent athletics’ historians, coaches and fans into a state approaching meltdown, with his claim that he can be the first man to run ‘sub-four at 40.’
Steam has been rising from the letters page of the track and field bible, Athletics Weekly, with one veteran athlete saying he would “eat his spikes” if Darren achieves his unlikely ambition. A bit of human internal plumbing might be required in that eventuality.
Darren is 36, and has run 4min 20sec for the mile. He needs to knock 20 seconds off that time in the next fours years (OK, so you’d worked that out) and his goal is to do it systematically, five seconds every year. The men in the know say it can’t be done. “At the moment I’m a laughing stock,” he admits. “But I’m glad everyone says I need my head examining, because it’s just spurring me on to train even harder. Why don’t people encourage instead of criticising all the time. The reason why I’m going for this is to show everyone who’s an athlete approaching pre-middle age that it needn’t be the end of their running lives. There are still mountains that can be climbed.”
But this is Everest and beyond. In fact – and this may amaze you to know – more people have scaled the summit of Everest than have run a sub-four mile. Dave Moorcroft, did it many times in his youth, but his world record in the over-40 age-group is outside that mark.
“The most important factor here is that as you get older, not only do you tend to get slower, but you tend to get more injured,” says Moorcroft.
“That means that training programmes are so much harder to stick to. The other thing to take into account is that if your personal best time is 3min 50sec, you can get 10 seconds slower and still do it. If it’s 4min 20sec, you have to get 20 seconds quicker. That’s close to impossible, but I wish him all the best. The great thing about sport is that it’s littered with people who were unlikely to do something and then went out and did it.”
As editor of Athletics Weekly, and a 4.12 man himself, Jason Henderson has been sifting through all the letters of scorn and derision. “Even though they won their gold medals last weekend, if you asked most people who Nicola Sanders or Phillips Idowu are, they wouldn’t have a clue. But everyone knows great milers from the past, and the four-minute mile is the most perfect symmetrical challenge… four times round and each lap in a minute.
“It’s lost its place of pre-eminence in the international athletic calendar these days, so if nothing else, I’m glad Darren is making it news again.”
But Jason, like almost every person in the sport, would give you very long odds against him making it into the record books.
Our trainee plumber remains undaunted. “It has to be possible for someone to achieve this landmark, even if it isn’t me,” he says.
“I have it in my head that in about three years’ time, I’ll be running 4.04/4.05,” says Darren. “What keeps me going is the knowledge that all the people who are knocking me now, will be throwing their hands up in the air, shouting ‘Oh my God, he’s going to go and do it.'”