Also in 2025 Practice Test B English, question 14.
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
How did interval training affect Bannister’s performance?
- AIt helped him learn how to moderate his pace while running.
- BIt helped him conserve effort when running with teammates.
- CIt helped him improve his pace and stamina while running.
- DIt helped him decrease his recovery time after an intense run.
Show the answer
Correct answer: C
The question asks how interval training affected Bannister’s performance.
A. Incorrect. The moderation of his pace was achieved through the use of “rabbits,” described in paragraph 6, more than through his method of interval training.
B. Incorrect. Bannister worked individually during the interval training period and then paced himself with a two-person team of “rabbits,” which were introduced in paragraph 5 and explained in paragraph 6. It was the use of “rabbits” during the race that helped him conserve some of his effort, not the interval training.
C. CORRECT. As paragraph 3 states, the goal of Bannister’s training program was to “develop endurance and speed,” which are synonyms of the words “stamina” and “pace.”
D. Incorrect. Although Bannister “let his body recover for two minutes” (paragraph 3) during interval training, this was not the primary effect of the training on Bannister’s performance. Instead, interval training allowed him to develop greater endurance and speed.
Question analysis
This question asks how interval training affected Roger Bannister’s performance as he prepared to run a mile in under four minutes, according to “A Miracle Mile.” It tests finding a detail the passage states and recognizing it in a choice that may use different words. The passage describes several parts of his preparation and race, so students must keep track of which one the question is about.
- Grade level
- Grade 6 reading and task
- Compared with grade 7
- Below grade 7 Below typical grade 7 demand: the passage states the purpose of the training in a single sentence. A grade 7 student only needs to locate it and compare the choices with it, without inferring anything.
- Estimated difficulty
- Straightforward: two steps or one careful reading.
- Thinking it demands
- Depth of knowledge 1, recall and reproduction · mainly understand
- What makes it hard
- Evidence
- Answered from one paragraph or stanza
- Reading level
- Passage: about grade 10, 587 words; question and choices: about grade 7, 48 words.
- Corrected from the DOE handbook
- The DOE’s 2026 explanations appendix skips this question; the explanation and answer key here are the DOE’s own, from its 2021–2022 guide (question 40), relettered.
- 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
Paragraph 3 states what the training was for, so the task is to match that sentence and ignore details from elsewhere. The rabbits of paragraph 6, who set Bannister’s tempo and save his effort, supply two tempting effects that belong to the race, not the workouts. The two-minute rests sit in the training paragraph itself, so a student skimming for “recover” can mistake part of the method for its result.
A very close wrong answer minor Choosing the answer
The choice about moderating his pace and the right one both concern pace; only the right one matches the training’s stated aim, to “develop endurance and speed.” (Embretson & Wetzel, 1987; Gorin & Embretson, 2006; Ascalon et al., 2007)
The right answer is reworded minor Choosing the answer
The right choice turns “endurance and speed” into stamina and pace, while two wrong ones reuse the passage’s own words, “conserves” effort from paragraph 6 and “recover” from paragraph 3. (Freedle & Kostin, 1993; Kirsch & Mosenthal, 1990)
Strategy: Find the paragraph that introduces interval training, note what the training was meant to develop, and pick the choice that means the same thing.
Traps
- Wrong part of the text: A choice is true of another paragraph, stanza or speaker than the one asked about.
- Word match: Repeats striking words or phrases from the text, so it looks supported, but its meaning does not fit the question.
- 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
A Twists what the text says (King et al., 2004)
Sees the sixty-second laps as practice in holding a pace, but the training aimed to build speed and endurance, and in the race his rabbits had to hold his tempo for him.
B Wrong part of the text (Kirsch & Mosenthal, 1990)
Matches the saving of “about 15 percent of his or her effort,” which paragraph 6 credits to running behind a rabbit in the race, not to interval training.
D Word match (Freedle & Kostin, 1993)
Spots “recover” in paragraph 3 and picks the choice about recovery time, though the two-minute rest is part of the workout, and nothing says it grew shorter.
What was corrected from the DOE handbook, and why
- Explanation and answer key: The 2026 printable test includes this question (Passage Set 2, Item 6), but the explanations appendix skips it: it explains only five of the six questions on “A Miracle Mile.” The question is question 40 of the DOE’s NYC Guide to the SHSAT for 2022 Admissions (the 2021–2022 guide, page 165), with the same stem and options lettered E–H. The explanation is the guide’s (page 218) and its key is G; both are relettered E–H to A–D here, so the key is C.
Working it out, step by step
Figure out what the question asks
This asks what interval training did for Bannister’s running. So find the paragraph that first describes interval training. Look for what it was meant to build.
Find interval training in paragraph 3
Paragraph 3 says “The amateur athlete decided to use intensive interval training to develop endurance and speed.” In each workout he ran ten laps, aiming for sixty seconds a lap. Then he rested for two minutes and ran again. That is what an interval is here: a hard stretch of running between rests.
See what the training did
Endurance means being able to keep going for a long time. Another word for it is stamina. Speed is how fast you run, which is your pace. Paragraph 4 shows the result. By early 1954, he had lowered “his quarter-mile pace to sixty-one seconds.” He was getting faster.
Check each choice
- A does not fit. To moderate your pace means to keep it steady and not too fast. In the race, his rabbits did that for him. He even lost his feel for his pace.
- B does not fit. Saving effort came from running behind rabbits in the race (paragraph 6).
- C fits. Stamina and pace are other words for endurance and speed.
- D does not fit. He rested two minutes between runs. Nothing says that rest got shorter.
Watch out: D is tempting because paragraph 3 mentions rest: “he let his body recover for two minutes.” But the rest is part of the workout, not a result of it.
Choose the answer
Interval training built Bannister’s speed and endurance. So the answer is C, “It helped him improve his pace and stamina while running.”
Why this answer and not the closest wrong one
A is the closest wrong choice, because it is also about pace. But the training aimed “to develop endurance and speed,” not to keep his pace in check. In the race, Bannister “lost his instinctive feel for his pace,” and Brasher had to keep it steady. C matches what the training was for.
More questions like this
The original DOE question
The passage “A Miracle Mile” as printed (page 13)
