On May 27th, 2014, James Nielsen broke the five minute beer mile. Until then, the idea of running a sub-5 mile with four beers in your stomach was unthinkable. The feat went viral and even garnered skeptics--check out the comments on our original post. But two years later, the "unthinkable" has been repeated 14 more times by eight more people.

	Mark	Athlete	Country	Date
1	4:57.00	James Nielsen	USA	05/27/14
2	4:56.20	Josh Harris	AUS	08/07/15
3	4:55.78	Lewis Kent	CAN	08/08/15
4	4:54.38	Corey Gallagher	CAN	10/10/15
5	4:51.90	Lewis Kent	CAN	11/17/15
6	4:48.62	Corey Gallagher	CAN	12/01/15
7	4:47.17	Lewis Kent	CAN	12/01/15
8	4:59.70	Lewis Kent	CAN	07/03/16
9	4:55.53	Phil Parrot-Migas	CAN	07/03/16
10	4:54.50	Garrett Cullen	USA	07/09/16
11	4:47.72	Brandon Shirck	USA	07/17/16
12	4:39.56	Corey Bellemore	CAN	07/28/16
13	4:34.35	Corey Bellemore	CAN	07/31/16
14	4:47.39	Dale Clutterbuck	GBR	07/31/16
15	4:49.28	Brandon Shirck	USA	07/31/16

Sometimes it takes one person to simply make the "unthinkable" possible for others. Running--even in between chugging beers--is an incredibly mental sport. Breaking five minutes in the beer mile wasn't that hard after all, as eight more people did it in the 2+ years after Nielsen broke the barrier.

The spike in sub-five minute beer miles is similar to the deluge of sub-four miles after Roger Bannister dipped under on May 6th, 1954. Within 27 months of Bannister becoming the first person in the history of the planet to break four, eight more people had broken four minutes a total of fifteen times.

	Mark	Athlete	Country	Date
1	3:59.4	Roger Bannister	GBR	05/06/54
2	3:57.9	John Landy	AUS	06/21/54
3	3:59.6	John Landy	AUS	08/07/54
4	3:58.8	Roger Bannister	GBR	08/07/54
5	3:59.8	Brian Hewson	GBR	05/28/55
6	3:59.8	Chris Chataway	GBR	05/28/55
7	3:59.0	Láslzó Tábori	HUN	05/28/55
8	3:58.6	John Landy	AUS	01/28/56
9	3:58.6	John Landy	AUS	04/07/56
10	3:58.6	Jim Bailey	AUS	05/05/56
11	3:58.7	John Landy	AUS	05/05/56
12	3:59.1	John Landy	AUS	05/12/56
13	3:59.1	John Landy	AUS	06/01/56
14	3:59.0	Ron Delany	IRL	06/01/56
15	3:59.4	Derek Ibbotson	GBR	08/06/56
16	3:59.0	Istvan Rózsavölgyi	HUN	08/26/56

Check out this graph and notice the similar trend in performances.