It all depends. I wouldn't call this wimpy treadmill training:
“Do you think you could come along and help me with an experiment?” Bannister had asked. Without much reflection or investigation, McWhirter had replied, “Oh, yes.”
McWhirter found himself in a small room crowded with a motorized treadmill and a frightening array of attachments: gas bags, meters, valves, pipes, tubes, and pumps. It looked thrown together on a tight budget and a prayer. The door closed swiftly behind him. Stripped down to a pair of shorts and running shoes, McWhirter winced as the assistant took his hand and shot a spring gun attached to a scalpel blad into his ginger to draw blood. His singled was already stained with blood before the experiment began. He stepped onto the treadmill and secured his moth around a rubberized tube that jutted out over the front of the adjustable platform. From what he understood, the experiment measured the effects that different oxygen mixes (from a normal level of 21 percent to as much as 75 percent) have on the body when running to exhaustion. By using the mouthpiece, he inhaled enriched air. His exhalation was then measured for a variety of factors too complicated to explain to every guinea pig.
Wearing a white lab coat, Bannister fired up the “diabolical machine,” as McWhirter referred to the treadmill, and the sprinter began to run. The whole contraption made a terrible clatter, but the noise was the least of his worries. From what Bannister had told him, the treadmill had a gradient steep enough to ascend the thirty thousand feet of Everest within six hours. Bannister had even tested the team members of the latest Everest expedition and discovered their fitness wanting. After a couple of minutes McWhirter was not only exhausted but hurting as well. Granted, he wasn’t a distance runner, but the treadmill’s speed and gradient were ridiculously harsh. His difficulties were worsened by the fact that he was running with a rubber mouthpiece attached to his face and the lab assistant was repeatedly taking his hand midst ride and shooting the blade into another finger to draw more blood. Oxygen-enriched air or not, he was struggling, badly. Wooden bars to his left and right kept him from pitching over the side, and a strategically placed electric fan prevented overheating.
Five minutes into the experiment, McWhirter was weakening. He was out of breath, his legs felt like they were buckling, and he experienced what one runner called the “black waves of nausea” from too much effort. At six minutes he was finished. His spine went to rubber, his chin fell to his chest, and his knees went up to his face. Suddenly he was shot from the treadmill into a pile of blankets and duvets positioned behind him. He was in a total state of collapse, barely able to lift his head. The assistant then set upon him once again with the spring gun. Breathless and splattered with blood, McWhirter finally pulled himself back together after ten minutes. His friend needed him for three more “damn near terminal” sessions. That was all.