The practice of running may be carried to a great degree of perfection.
A quarter of a mile in a minute is good running; and a mile in four
minutes, at four starts, is excellent.
The mile was perhaps never run in four minutes, but it has been done in
four minutes and a half.[5]
[5] Half a mile was recently run in two minutes; but it was down a
fall as precipitous as a mountain’s side, and the performer was blind
in the last twenty yards.--ED. Fifth Edition.
A mile in five minutes is good running. Two miles in ten minutes is
oftener failed in than accomplished. Four miles in twenty is said to
puzzle the cleverest.
Ten miles an hour is done by all the best runners. Fifteen miles in an
hour and a half has never perhaps been done.
It is reported that West ran forty miles in five hours and a half.
This, it is said, was done by one individual in four hours and three
quarters, or less.
As to great distances, Rainer failed in two attempts to accomplish 100
miles in eighteen hours. West is said to have accomplished this.