The four-minute mile.

Even those people unfamiliar with track know that it's a good time, a decent time even today when the world record stands - almost incomprehensibly - at 3:43.13.

Two-hundred-fifty-six Americans have broken 4 minutes since English miler Roger Bannister became the first man under the barrier almost 50 years ago.

Fourteen of them are Illinoisans. From 1963, when Loyola miler Tom O'Hara became the ninth American and first Illinoisan to crack 4:00, to 2002, when Stanford's Donald Sage became No. 248, the list is a who's who of Olympians, national champions and all-Americans.

And while breaking the once seemingly unbreakable barrier isn't what it used to be - in fact, the mile is almost never run in high school meets and seldom in college - there is a cachet to the four-minute mile that transcends track and field.

It is, these milers admit, something that stays with you and defines you as one of the best. Like making an Olympic team, breaking 4 minutes is something that can never be taken away. An athletic epitaph, if you will.

O'Hara, who prepped at St. Ignatius High School, was a gangly red-haired kid who ran 3:59.2 at New York's Madison Square Garden in 1963. He later ran 3:56.4 on March 7, 1964, in the old Daily News Relays at the International Amphitheater, still the fastest ever run in Illinois.

Seven years would pass before the feat was again accomplished. Lee LaBadie, a 21-year-old junior at Illinois, became the first Big Ten runner under 4:00 when he ran 3:58.8 at a meet at Carbondale on May 11, 1971.

"Oh, do I remember," said LaBadie, now 53 and a real estate agent in Columbus, Ohio. "The goal was to go out there in 60-60-60, but I was 2:03 at the half, and (thinking) 'what the hell, LaBadie, are you some kind of idiot?'

"All I did was keep on going," he said. "I really didn't think I was going to break it. I had already jogged 250 yards after the race before I heard the time."

Through coaching stints at Bowling Green and Ohio State, the Des Plaines native and Maine West grad said the time has meant something. "As far as coaching goes, it sort of gave you instant credibility because you could tell athletes and they'd pay attention because you had done it."

Ken Popejoy ran his first sub-4 race as a junior at Michigan State in finishing second to one of his heroes, Jim Ryun, when he ran 3:59.7 at the Vons Classic in Los Angeles in May, 1972, two months after winning the NCAA indoor mile championship.

Glen Ellyn native Popejoy, 52, now a DuPage County associate judge, remembers Ryun congratulating him and then treating him to a steak dinner.

"We were all like Roger Bannisters when approaching 4 minutes," Popejoy said. "Back then it was really something. There was still a magic to it in the 1970s. It's still a time that's known to the general public."

For Rick Wohlhuter, now 54 and a financial consultant in Wheaton, his 3:58.8 mile at Wichita, KS., in 1973 was not such a big deal. Primarily a half-miler, the St. Charles native and Notre Dame graduate had already made the 1972 Olympic team in the 800 and knew that he had the speed to break 4 minutes if he could just get in the right race.

"I was primed to do it there," he recalled. "It was 70 degrees and calm, an 8 p.m. race, almost ideal." The track was one of Wohlhuter's favorites - he ran 3:55.0 a year later and in 1975 posted his best time there, a 3:53.3. He also won the bronze medal in the 800 meters in the 1976 Montreal Olympics.

Also in that 1975 race was Mike Durkin, an Illinois senior running his last collegiate mile, one that would be his first sub-4 and, at 3:56.7, one of the fastest first such efforts ever. But Wohlhuter went out really fast and Durkin remembers feeling as if he were in another race.

"I don't think I was within 20 yards of him after the first quarter," he said. "I was used to sitting on people and waiting to kick, but this was like running a time trial. I had a significant level of discomfort at the end."

River Grove Holy Cross grad Durkin, now a 50-year-old Rosemont attorney, said that when people ask what he ran the mile in, "you tell them under 4 minutes and people still relate to that." Durkin was a member of the 1976 U.S. Olympic team.

Jim Spivey, a Wood Dale native who ran at Fenton High School and then at Indiana, is the fastest Illinoisan ever with his 3:49.80 time run in Oslo in 1986. He won two NCAA titles and made three Olympic teams, but his 3:58.9 at the Mason-Dixon Games in Louisville in 1980 at age 19 is still memorable for Spivey, now 43 and the women's cross-country coach at Vanderbilt.

"Workouts and relay legs had showed me I could do it," Spivey said. "I went there for the opportunity to run against (New Zealander and one-time world record-holder) John Walker. Walker and Ray Flynn pulled away from me and I leaned at the wire trying to get Ray. I was the first Big Ten runner to go under 4 indoors."

Rich Harris, a Lake Forest native who ran at Colorado State, has a best of 3:51.39 for the event but recalls fondly the 3:58.2 race when he broke 4 for the first time.

"A college teammate set up the race for me at a high school track at Tilsonburg, Ontario, on July 4, 1980," said Harris, now 46 and owner of Bandanna Running and Walking in Boise, ID. "They packed the place. The crowd really carried me along, yelling, screaming. I've never had that before or since.

"Four minutes had not been broken in Canada in eight years so that made it a bigger deal. It was nice that a college teammate set it up for me and I came through for him."

He sees the effect of the four-minute mile in his store nearly every day, when people ask how fast he ran. "It always gives me a good feeling to say that I ran that fast."

Darryl Frerker, now 39 and the track coach at SIU-Edwardsville, knew he had an opportunity to get a sub-4 at Notre Dame in 1988. The Illinois State graduate and downstate Highland native figured the race on Notre Dame's one-fifth mile track would offer a good chance.

"As the race unfolded, I knew I could take advantage of it," he said. "I have a pretty good memory of the race," where he was nipped at the wire but still ran 3:58.1.

"After the race, the physical part, running faster than ever before, was worth it. I love the feeling."

Frerker had 10 or 12 other sub-4 races in his career and sees those times as coaching advantages. "If you have the experience at a very high level the kids tend to look at you differently as opposed to getting it out of a textbook."

Another Loyola runner, Hinsdale South H.S. grad Eddie Slowikowski, cracked it in 1990 when he ran 3:59.36 in Boston.

"It was set up for me to break 4," he said. "We went through the half in 1:58.9 and I knew going into the last quarter that it was going to be really good, really close. With a lap to go I just had to dig down deep."

Slowikowski, now 35 and a Bolingbrook-based professional speaker, said it solidified his belief in himself as a great runner. "It was like all the years of hard work and running made it all worth it in one moment. In a sense it's like an Olympic gold medal, no one can take that away from you."

Mark Deady, a northwest suburban Stevenson High School graduate who ran at Indiana, had already made the 1988 Olympic team when he broke 4 for the first time in 1991. His 3:58.65 at Boston, he says, "honestly, doesn't mean that much."

"Three years after the Olympics, and having run 3:35 for 1,500, looking back, it's a notch in the belt type thing," said Deady, now a 35-year-old Indianapolis insurance executive.

Len Sitko was unhappy with his 3:59.29 effort at Birmingham, England, in 1992. The graduate of Illinois and Niles Notre Dame figured he could run at least 3:57. "The track was fast and the race was fast so I was disappointed with my race," he said. "But I got over it. It was sub-4 and a PR.

"It is THE barrier," said Sitko, now 34 and an athletic shoe sales rep. "It's one of those things in sport that people know."

Scott Anderson knew he would break 4 eventually off his good 1,500 times, but his 3:59.80 in 1998 wasn't one of his best races, he says. The 29-year-old Whitney Young H.S. and Princeton grad, who runs for adidas/Universal Sole Racing Team in Chicago while pursuing an MBA, said "it wasn't a good race at all."

"I knew I was in shape to do it, but we went through in 3:01 and the last 100 meters I just died and everyone passed me. My initial reaction is that I had blown it. It definitely was a weight off my back."

East Peoria native Tim Broe, like many of the other younger runners, found breaking 4 not so meaningful, primarily because the Alabama graduate isn't truly a miler; he was the NCAA steeplechase winner in 2000 and a two-time U.S. champ in cross-country and the indoor 3K. His 3:59.38 came at Notre Dame in 1999.

"It was never a mark I was chasing, but the fact that I did it, I was kind of in shock," said Broe, 25, a professional runner training in Ann Arbor, MI. "I never knew I had it in me. There's not the incentive to run the off races now. But to be at the level we're at, you've got to have the speed to do it, so it's good for me to know I have it in me."

Don Sage became the latest member of Illinois' sub-4 club a year ago when he ran 3:59.49 at Seattle.

"You're always asked if you're a sub-4 minute miler," said Elmhurst native and York H.S. grad Sage, now a 21-year-old junior at Stanford and the 2002 NCAA 1,500-meter champion. "I wanted to have the opportunity to break it. I feel privileged to be up there with the others."

His sub-4 race, Sage recalls, had him kicking as hard as he could with 300 meters to go, and the Washington crowd loudly cheering, which Sage thought was cool.

"I thought, 'this is great, these people want to see a sub-4 mile and are cheering for me.' When (Washington's) Eric Garner (caught and) beat me, then I realized they were cheering for him."

Don Kopriva of Lisle is a true track and field fan. He hasn't run a 4-minute mile, but he can tell you who has.