Mile[‘]s Off
If there’s one reason the Mile is no longer the premier (middle) distance in America, it’s the 1500 meters. When I was a high school runner, Jim Ryun was like a god, if not as handsome, and Marty Liquori and Dave Wottle were paragons of all the finest principles of sports, the latter even iconographic with that ever-present hat. We all of us patterned ourselves on one or another of them, even those like myself who didn’t train hard and had no real ambition to be among the Olympians. Later, in college, when I spent a semester at the Loughborough Institute of Technology, over near Nottingham, England, it was a point of some pride (but more humor) that this was the university attended by Sebastian Coe, who was at the time the fastest miler in the world. Now, outside of the Milrose Games, I can’t tell you if there is a competitive mile being run anywhere, and the 1500 just doesn’t have the romance for me. I’ll wish Alan Webb all the best for August in Athens, but even if he makes it, the dominance of the metric system has taken the heart out of the event for me.  Silly, isn't it?