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 understand the importance of running with a team.
- 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. During the interval-training process, Bannister “let his body recover for two minutes” (paragraph 3).
Question analysis
Using “A Miracle Mile,” the story of Roger Bannister’s quest to run a mile in under four minutes, this key-details question asks what effect interval training had on his running. The article also covers his rest days, his pacers and the 1954 race, so students must keep the training apart from those other parts of the story.
- Grade level
- Grade 6 reading and task
- Compared with grade 7
- Below grade 7 Grade 7 readers are expected to trace how ideas develop and connect across a text. This asks only for the effect of a training method, which the article states in one sentence, so it sits below that level.
- 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, 50 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
Paragraph 3 names the purpose of the training outright, so the task is to match that sentence and keep the rest of the story out of it. Race day supplies the distractions: the rabbits who set Bannister’s tempo and the friends running beside him belong to the meet at Oxford, not to the workouts. The rest between intervals sits inside the training paragraph, which lets a skimmer mistake part of the method for its result.
A very close wrong answer minor Choosing the answer
The choice about learning to moderate his pace shares the key’s subject, pace; only the key matches what paragraph 3 says the workouts were for, 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 key turns “endurance and speed” into stamina and pace, while wrong choices lean on the passage’s own material, the teammates of paragraphs 5 and 6 and the two minutes to “recover” in paragraph 3. (Freedle & Kostin, 1993; Kirsch & Mosenthal, 1990)
Strategy: Reread the paragraph on Bannister’s workouts and ask what the laps and rests were designed to build, then look for an option that says the same thing in other words.
Traps
- 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.
- Word match: Repeats striking words or phrases from the text, so it looks supported, but its meaning does not fit the question.
The wrong answers, classified
A Twists what the text says (King et al., 2004)
Sees laps aimed at sixty seconds each as practice in holding a steady pace, but the training was meant to build speed and endurance, and on race day Brasher held the pace for him.
B Wrong part of the text (Kirsch & Mosenthal, 1990)
Brings in Chataway and Brasher, who paced him on race day in paragraphs 5 to 7, though the interval workouts of paragraph 3 mention no partner and teach nothing about teams.
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 the article never says it got shorter.
Working it out, step by step
Figure out what the question asks
This asks what interval training did for Bannister’s running. It is a question about a key detail. So find the paragraph that describes the training. Then look for what the training was meant to build.
Find the 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 in a row, aiming for sixty seconds a lap. Then he rested for two minutes. An interval here is a hard stretch of running between rests.
Put the goal in plain words
Endurance means being able to keep going for a long time. Another word for it is stamina. Speed is how fast you go, and your pace is how fast you run each lap. Paragraph 4 shows the training worked. His lap time dropped to sixty-one seconds, then to fifty-nine. He got faster, and he could keep up that speed.
Check each choice
- A does not fit. To moderate your pace means to keep it steady. The training aimed to build speed, not to hold it back. In the race, he even “lost his instinctive feel for his pace,” and Brasher kept it steady.
- B does not fit. The workouts in paragraph 3 mention no teammates. Teammates come up only for the race, in paragraphs 5 to 7.
- C fits. Pace and stamina are other words for speed and endurance.
- D does not fit. He rested two minutes between runs. Nothing says that rest got shorter.
Choose the answer
Watch out: D is tempting because paragraph 3 says “he let his body recover for two minutes.” But that rest is part of the workout, not a result of it. The training built Bannister’s speed and endurance. So the answer is C.
Why this answer and not the closest wrong one
A is the closest wrong answer, because it is also about pace. But to moderate a pace is to keep it steady, and paragraph 3 says the goal was “to develop endurance and speed.” On race day, Bannister even wanted to go faster, and his rabbit held the pace. C matches what the training was for.
More questions like this
The original DOE question
The passage “A Miracle Mile” as printed (page 13)
