Speed suits & altitude rooms - how Kerr plans to beat mile world record

ByRichard Winton

BBC Sport Scotland

Every day, Josh Kerr writes down the time. Three minutes 43.13 seconds. And every day he is working to render it redundant.

That day will come, he hopes, on July 18 at the London Diamond League meeting, when the 28-year-old intends to beat Hicham El Guerrouj's world record for the mile.

Project 222 is what he and his team call it - 222 seconds being what he needs to target to usurp a mark that has stood for 27 years.

To say Kerr and his squad have taken a comprehensive approach to making history would be to underplay the level of detail involved in "winning our one per cents".

It is all in the minutiae.

Bespoke spikes designed to maximise his biomechanics. A similarly specially designed speed suit. Having his physio move in to his Albuquerque home. Parents John and Jill flying out from Scotland to stay with him. Ice baths lasting the exact duration of the race. And an 'altitude room' being rigged up in his bedroom.

All of it has been charted on YouTube as the countdown edges towards the big day. "A well-orchestrated zoo" is how he describes it.

Making a big noise about it before the event is bold but very much in keeping with Kerr's brand. He wants to draw more attention to athletics and have more people know about its personalities, its achievements and its rivalries.

Previously, it was his enjoyably antagonistic relationship with 1500m rival Jakob Ingebrigtsen. Now it is taking down one of the sport's longest-standing records.

"Everything's going extremely smoothly," Kerr told BBC Sport. "You know when you call your shot this far in advance, there's a lot of things that can happen and we're still three weeks or so out.

"It's definitely on, I just need to handle the variables that are going to come my way and, with a little bit of luck on my side, I'm sure I'll be in a really good spot."

Kerr chose London as a tribute to the history of the mile record. It has been broken by six British athletes in the past, including Roger Bannister's legendary first sub-four-minute mile in 1954. The Scot wants to be the seventh.

Already the fastest from Great Britain, he currently ranks sixth on the all-time list with his time of three minutes 45.34 seconds from two years ago.

"I just want to put my name up against some of the best Brits in the history of the sport and I want to be known as the best miler in history," says Kerr, somehow making an extraordinary achievement sound ordinary.

"It's not easy. I'm doing everything I can to find my margins, take that into London, then spread that through into the Commonwealth Games. I'm hoping to have a pretty successful couple of weeks."

Kerr was confirmed on Friday as part of Team Scotland for those Commonwealths, which will take place in Glasgow. He had to rely on a selection after injury stopped him securing his place sooner.

At Scotstoun stadium on 1 August, he will again run a mile - this time on the same track where he first learned to race as a junior athlete.

"My parents are here with me at the moment and we were talking about how fun it's going to be to go back to Glasgow and to go back to Scotstoun," Kerr says.

"The amount of times I've raced there and the memories I've got, it's like proper full circle stuff so that will be really fun as well."