It was with distance running, and making my best effort at it, that I discovered (that) at the end of the day, maybe biology is destiny. In other words, there was a limit. There is no question, there was a limit in me and, I think, others — some very high, some in the middle, and some quite low — in any kind of physical effort, and it may turn out eventually in any kind of a mental effort where then achievement in mental effort depends substantially on context and opportunity and other character traits. But in the late ’40s, I was spellbound by the notion of — you know, I was just a kid, I was a teenager still — I was spellbound by the notion of the four-minute mile, the unattainable goal, that humans couldn’t break it. It was a period when there was a Swedish runner named Gunder Hagg, who was coming up for the ’48 Olympics, who had come up within a second of it. He was my hero, because here was someone who had made supreme effort to attain the ultimate and may be on the edge of doing something historic like that. So I believed at that time, quite contrary to being a genetic determinist, that there was something about excellence in athletics — in some forms of athletics, but particularly in this one — that depended upon character and self-determination and ability to endure pain, and I always wanted to be an athlete.