Passage A Miracle Mile
A Miracle Mile
In the 1950s people compared running one mile in four minutes to scaling Mount Everest and nicknamed the feat a “dream mile.” Although such an accomplishment was considered humanly impossible, several elite runners aimed to break that supposedly impenetrable barrier. One of them was a twenty-five-year-old medical student named Roger Bannister.
Roger Bannister had tasted failure during the 1952 Olympics. There, he was favored to win the 1,500-meter competition, a distance slightly shorter than a mile, but he finished in a dismal fourth place instead. Bannister’s performance was a disappointment for him and his country, Great Britain. Determined to redeem himself, Bannister postponed his plans to retire from racing and focused on the ultimate prize—breaking the four-minute-mile barrier.
Bannister attacked the elusive milestone with a positive attitude and logical planning. The amateur athlete decided to use intensive interval training to develop endurance and speed. For these workouts, Bannister ran an interval of ten consecutive laps on a quarter-mile track, aiming for sixty seconds each lap. In between intervals, he let his body recover for two minutes.
By early 1954, Bannister had succeeded in lowering his quarter-mile pace to sixty-one seconds, but he had to shave off at least one more second in order to reach his target. Frustrated by the plateau he had reached, Bannister took a break from training and went mountain climbing for three days. The rest from running permitted his muscles to recuperate and left him feeling refreshed. When Bannister returned to the track, he completed ten quarter-mile-long intervals at fifty-nine seconds each. He finally felt prepared to attempt to break the world record.
As a member of the Amateur Athletic Association (AAA), Bannister joined the AAA team for a track meet against Oxford University. The event took place on a cinder track in Oxford on May 6, 1954. Bannister and his two AAA teammates, Chris Chataway and Chris Brasher, were close friends and frequent running partners. Chataway and Brasher agreed to help Bannister accomplish his goal by being his “rabbits.”
In track and field, rabbits are runners who enter the race solely to pace a teammate for a segment of the course. Typically, a runner settles in behind the rabbit and allows the rabbit to set an appropriate tempo. Additionally, by running behind the rabbit, the runner conserves about 15 percent of his or her effort. When the starting pistol fired, Brasher pounced into the lead, and Bannister followed behind his first rabbit.
Propelled by the excitement, Bannister lost his instinctive feel for his pace and shouted “Faster!” at Brasher. Brasher, however, remained composed and maintained his current steady but grueling pace, completing the first two laps in a desirable one minute and fifty-eight seconds. Then Chataway surged forward, leading Bannister at this same punishing rate for another lap and a half. At the beginning of the back straightaway of the track, Bannister bolted past Chataway. Bannister said, “I felt that the moment of a lifetime had come. There was no pain, only a great unity of movement and aim.” Bannister crossed the finish line in 3 minutes 59.4 seconds. The ecstatic crowd erupted the moment the timekeeper announced the word “three.”
Soon after Bannister’s achievement, four other athletes matched his performance. A new mindset had taken root among runners. Over the years, the record continued to fall. However, the current record, 3 minutes 43.13 seconds, has stood unbroken since 1999. Some question whether this record represents the limits of human ability. But perhaps there is another Bannister, an athlete who, with willpower and dedication, will accomplish the miraculous.
Question
The phrase “a new mindset had taken root” in paragraph 8 conveys the idea that
- Arunners recognized that running a mile in under four minutes was physically possible.
- Bbreaking the four-minute-mile barrier was no longer considered an impressive feat for elite runners.
- Crunners understood how hard they would have to train in order to run a mile in under four minutes.
- Delite runners entered races in an attempt to break the four-minute-mile barrier.
Show the answer
Correct answer: A
The question asks what idea is conveyed by the phrase “a new mindset had taken root” in paragraph 8.
A. CORRECT. After Bannister ran the mile in under four minutes, it became clear to other runners that this goal was within the realm of human ability, and “soon after Bannister’s achievement, four other athletes matched his performance” (paragraph 8).
B. Incorrect. While the passage states that runners broke the four-minute-mile barrier after Bannister initially broke it (“Soon after Bannister’s achievement, four other athletes matched his performance” [paragraph 8]), running a four-minute mile is still impressive and a challenge for elite runners.
C. Incorrect. Although runners most likely knew that the training needed in order to break the four-minute-mile barrier was difficult and intensive, the phrase “a new mindset had taken root” focuses on their belief in the possibility of breaking the four-minute-mile barrier, which had been viewed as a “supposedly impenetrable barrier” (paragraph 1), not the idea that the training was difficult.
D. Incorrect. Even though “four other athletes matched his performance” and “the record continued to fall” (paragraph 8), the phrase “a new mindset had taken root” does not refer to the idea that there was an increase in the number of runners entering races just to try breaking the four-minute-mile barrier.
Question analysis
This word-meaning question on “A Miracle Mile” asks what the phrase “a new mindset had taken root,” in the article’s final paragraph, conveys about runners after Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile in 1954. Students must interpret a figurative phrase about a change in thinking, and each choice proposes a different change among runners that sounds believable.
- Grade level
- Grade 7 reading and task
- Compared with grade 7
- At grade 7 Interpreting a figurative phrase from context is regular grade 7 work. The article is short and plain and the image of an idea taking root is familiar, but the passage never says what the new mindset is, so it must be inferred.
- Estimated difficulty
- Straightforward: two steps or one careful reading.
- Thinking it demands
- Depth of knowledge 2, skills and concepts · mainly understand
- What makes it hard
- Reading between the lines moderate
- Figurative or literary language minor
- Evidence in several places minor
- Evidence
- Answered from several paragraphs or stanzas
- Reading level
- Passage: about grade 10, 587 words; question and choices: about grade 10, 72 words.
- Students, last 30 days
- Not enough answers yet to show (it takes 10).
Why it is hard, traps and wrong answers (shows the answer)
Why it is hard
The phrase is familiar and the paragraph is short, but the passage leaves the mindset unnamed, so the choices offer four guesses about what changed. The tempting ones describe things runners might plausibly have done after 1954, such as racing for the record or training harder, rather than what they believed. Students who connect the phrase to the barrier everyone had thought unbreakable see that the change was in what runners thought possible.
Reading between the lines moderate Working it out
The article never says what the new mindset is; it must be worked out from the sentence before it, four athletes matching Bannister soon after, set against paragraph 1’s “humanly impossible.” (Graesser, Singer & Trabasso, 1994; Kintsch, 1998)
Figurative or literary language minor Understanding the question
“Taken root” likens an idea to a plant that has settled in and will keep growing, so the phrase describes a lasting change in belief rather than a single event or a new plan. (Graesser, Singer & Trabasso, 1994; Kintsch, 1998)
Evidence in several places minor Working it out
The old mindset is described seven paragraphs earlier, where the four-minute mile was “considered humanly impossible” and a “supposedly impenetrable barrier,” and the new one makes sense only against it. (Kirsch & Mosenthal, 1990; Gorin & Embretson, 2006)
Strategy: Think about what happens when an idea “takes root,” then reread the sentences around the phrase in paragraph 8 and decide what Bannister’s run changed for the runners after him.
Traps
- Reads too much in: A reasonable-sounding conclusion that goes further than the text allows.
- Wrong part of the text: A choice is true of another paragraph, stanza or speaker than the one asked about.
- Twists what the text says: Uses the text's topic and ideas but changes what it says: who did it, how much, when, or why.
The wrong answers, classified
B Reads too much in (Graesser, Singer & Trabasso, 1994)
Reads the four runners who soon matched Bannister as a sign the feat had become ordinary, though the article never calls it unimpressive and ends by hoping for another runner who will “accomplish the miraculous.”
C Wrong part of the text (Kirsch & Mosenthal, 1990)
Brings in the interval training and the rest from running of paragraphs 3 and 4, but the phrase describes what runners came to believe, not how hard they knew they must train.
D Twists what the text says (King et al., 2004)
Takes the new mindset to be racing for the record, but paragraph 1 says “several elite runners aimed to break” the barrier before Bannister did, so that aim was not new.
Working it out, step by step
Figure out what the question asks
This asks what a figure of speech means. A figure of speech is words used in a special way, not just for their plain meaning. The phrase is “a new mindset had taken root.” A mindset is a way of thinking. You need to decide what new way of thinking runners had.
Work out the plant image
A plant takes root when its roots settle into the soil. Then it stays and keeps growing. So an idea that has taken root has settled firmly into people’s minds. It is not a passing thought.
Find the old way of thinking
Paragraph 1 shows how people thought before Bannister’s run. A mile in four minutes “was considered humanly impossible.” It was a “supposedly impenetrable barrier.” Impenetrable means impossible to break through. So most people believed no one could do it.
See what changed in paragraph 8
Paragraph 8 says “Soon after Bannister’s achievement, four other athletes matched his performance. A new mindset had taken root among runners.” Bannister showed that it could be done. Then other runners did it too. So the new mindset is the belief that a mile in under four minutes is possible.
Check each choice
- A fits. Runners now knew a mile in under four minutes was physically possible.
- B does not fit. The article never says the feat stopped being impressive. It ends by hoping for someone who will “accomplish the miraculous.”
- C does not fit. Training comes up in paragraphs 3 and 4. The phrase is about what runners believed, not how hard they trained.
- D does not fit. Paragraph 1 says “several elite runners aimed to break” the barrier before Bannister did. So that goal was not new.
Watch out: D sounds likely, since runners kept racing for the record. But the word “new” rules it out. Runners were already trying before 1954.
Choose the answer
The new mindset was the belief that the four-minute mile could be beaten. So the answer is A.
Why this answer and not the closest wrong one
D is the closest wrong choice. It describes something runners did, racing to break the barrier. But in paragraph 1, runners were already trying, so that was not new. What changed was what they believed. After Bannister, they knew it could be done. That is A.
More questions like this
The original DOE question
The passage “A Miracle Mile” as printed (page 13)
