A few minutes with Wes Santee

A few minutes with Wes Santee

My brother, Jeff and I took the bus over to the Eugene Running Company. He needed to get a new pair of shoes and when we got there Wes Santee one of the “Distance Legends” –
http://www.runohio.com/read_new/distance-legends was about to give a talk.

Wes Santee is one of the three athlete’s features in the book The Perfect Mile –
http://www.runohio.com/archive/news/10-13-04-book-PERFECT-MI...

RUNOHIO
Tell us about the your efforts to break the 4 minute mile barrier

Santee
Well it was at the Texas Relay. 4:00.07 before that. I had no competition. A couple of my teammates ran about a half mile with me. Then I ran all by myself. Big crowd, great atmosphere and I passed the three quarter mark in 3 minutes so I was right on it. You know, it is a little hard to push your self if someone is not breathing down your neck. When I finished the race I was just a half of a tenth of a second over 4 minute. One of my teammates said I walked a couple of steps and turned around and I said what did we get? I a little bit left which I hadn’t used. It was a great thrill to run there. Probably right before there I had run Josey Bartell, the Olympic Champions from Luxemburg, in the Coliseum And we had hit the third lap in 3 minutes. He took over on the 4th lap and going down the back stretch. I thought this crazy guy is trying to beat me and so I took off really hard with about 200 yards to go and past him going into the curve not realizing he didn’t have anything left, so I ran 4:00.07 that night. I had run so hard on the back stretch that I started to tie up coming in. I realized he wasn’t going to be a contender at the finish line and that I gone straight on I think I could have been under 4 minutes on that night. I had a lot of great, great races.

RUNOHIO

The Distance Legends get together that Bob Schul has put together, is this the first time you have seen some of these guys in a while.

Santee
Well yes, Jim Grill and I have gone down to Bermuda and ran a senior race about 12 years ago. I saw some of the guys then, Jim Ryun has been there and of course I see Jim all the time back in Kansas. But, this is the first time since I quite running to see these guys. This has been a fantastic thing. His idea of getting the so called Legends together, I think it is a great idea. I think we should keep on trying to do stuff like this. Yesterday, several of the guys said I had set the pace for them, doing what I did and of course the ten years after I quite we changed the training technique. The track became different, weight training, you know I didn’t have nay of that stuff. And they started training together more like the European did. I didn’t have anyone to train with. A bunch of nice guys on the team, but they couldn’t keep up. Most of the guys contend that for the mile the new track surface would be worth 2 seconds per lap. Well, think what we would have been running with the same effort. Another interesting story, in 1952 we were left at Lawrence for a whole week before going to the National Cross Country Championships. The coach said, you know I have been thinking of about twice a day workouts, so we did. We got to the National meet and we did not do well. We got back and no one wanted to do twice a day. Had we done that for a month, which it take the body to adjust to that the World would have thought we were really crazy. Twice a day workouts lowered the mile time by 5-8 seconds with the same effort. If you had the twice a day workout, the hard surface of the rubberize track you got ten seconds or more right there. So, there is quite a difference in the training.