On January 2, Samford University assistant track coach Patrick McGregor began running a sub-5:00 mile every day.
He wasn’t sure how long he’d stay at it, but he wanted to better the 104-day streak his high school coach, Devon Hind, set back in 1979.
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McGregor, 26, surpassed Hind’s mark on Sunday, April 16, when he ran his 105th sub-5:00 mile in a row on the Samford track in Birmingham, Alabama. Hind, 61, timed his former athlete’s run, with Hind’s wife, Mary, the only other spectator on hand. McGregor clocked a 4:12.99, his fastest of the 105 miles he ran.
“I didn’t think I could run 4:12, and my [quarter mile] splits were all over the place, like 60, 66, 66, 59,” McGregor told Runner’s World by phone. “I just went out there and ran as hard as I could.”
And running 4:12 didn’t feel as hard as the 4:49 he ran in mid-February, when he had a 103-degree fever, he said.
The satisfaction of making it to 105 sub-5:00s, McGregor has come to recognize, isn’t so much about running. “I actually don’t care that much about running fast, but I do care about what running can do in terms of making me a better person,” he said. “Anybody can get in shape and run pretty fast. But I wanted to do something different that would challenge me.”
His old coach’s record eclipsed, McGregor intends to continue adding to his string of sub-5:00 miles into the foreseeable future. He’s already increased the total to 108. “I’ll keep doing it,” he said, “until the juice is no longer worth the squeeze.”
