Mile

The word mile originally derives from the Old English word mīl which in turn was ultimately derived from the Latin word millia meaning "thousand". The English mile is derived from the Latin mille passuum (one thousand paces).

Hicham El Guerrouj is the current men's record holder with his time of 3:43.13 , while Svetlana Masterkova has the women's record of 4:12.56. Since 1976, the mile is the only non-metric distance recognized by the IAAF for record purposes.

After WWII, it was John Landy of Australia and Britain's Roger Bannister who vied for being the first to break the fabled four-minute mile barrier. Roger Bannister did it first, and John Landy followed 46 days later. On the women's side, the first sub-5:00 mile was achieved by Britain's Diane Leather 23 days after Bannister's first sub-4:00 mile.

In 1964 Ryun became the first high school runner to break four minutes for the mile, running 3:59.0 as a junior at East High School in Wichita, Kansas.

Folks often refer to their paces in training runs and races as "minutes a mile." You often hear, "we averaged 9 minutes a mile." Rarely does anyone line up and hammer a mile for time. There is currently a movement to bring back the mile. http://bringbackthemile.com/home. Not to long ago, one mile shoot outs were very popular. The 5th avenue mile remains the premiere Road Mile.

The Morningside Mile is a local road race. It has a family atmosphere and is very fun. In our experience, if you ask a kid IF they want to run a road mile, the answer is usually NO. The Mile can be somewhat intimidating. The Morningside Mile has 3 waves. The Family wave accounts for tiny runners, baby joggers and walkers. The weekend warrior wave is for the 6-9 minute crowd and the Elite mile is a shootout for cash.

http://www.morningsidemile.com/race.php

Register and run. Register the kids too. You can tell them about it when they get there.