Sixty years ago, a Brit astounded the world by sprinting a mile in under four

"I had a particular fear of being trapped in a camp by bullies," he told the BBC. "And so I was quite fleet of foot."

I'll say. Bannister broke the four-minute mile barrier in 1954. He just barely did it, clocking in a time of 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds. His record only lasted a little more than a month. But that doesn't matter — it's not the second guy who walks on the moon that we remember.

May 6th, 2014 marks 60 years since Bannister's famous run and there's a new documentary about it, Bannister: Everest on the Track.

David Epstein is one of the experts in the film and wrote the "Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance." I wanted to know why Bannister's record still captures our imagination.

Epstein says it has to do with everyone running the mile in gym class. We understand the distance. Most of us can run it in about eight minutes. So he thinks we're able to understand and be wowed by someone running twice as fast.

Four-minute miles are equivalent to running at 15 miles per hour, or 24 kilometers per hour. "Most people have gone 15 mph in a car and they can think of someone running alongside it," says Epstein. "It's this barrier that is obviously reachable, but still sort of magical for most normal people and it was once thought to be impossible."