IELTS Reading Practice Test 65 with Answers

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 29-40 which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.

Colorado Desert

A

Particularly in the summer, California’s lower Colorado desert is a harsh place. It’s a barren landscape of rocks and rattlesnakes that little grows in but creosote bushes and cactus. Midday temperatures can reach 43oC and searing winds and afternoon sun combine to suck moisture from the body. This is not the place for a midday march, but that is precisely what Edward Adolph had in mind when, in the summer of 1942, he took a group of soldiers and researchers there. Adolph, a physiologist at the University of Rochester in New York state, wanted to investigate how people could live and work efficiently in the desert and how to get the best out of them.

B

He wasn’t the first to consider the effects of hot, dry conditions on the human body. The image of the traveler lost in the desert, crawling towards a shimmering mirage, is probably as old as desert travel itself. But earlier researchers mainly focused on survival. According to Timothy Noakes, an exercise physiologist at the University of Cape Town and master of some of the world’s toughest ultra-marathons, “They never looked at performance.” Adolph was the first to test the presumptions most of the people still have about what to do if forced to make any sort of effort in unbearable heat. What he discovered most were myths. For example, stripping to T-shirt and shorts is not the best way to treat dehydration. Although long sleeves and long trousers may feel hotter, they’ll slow the loss of water. Nor is there any point in rationing water when supplies are low. Postponing drinking it only makes you unhappier sooner. Adolph wrote, “It is better to drink the water and have it inside you than to carry it.”

C

The most critical of Adolph’s discoveries was the simplest: drinking during exercise enhances performance. Nowadays, we take this for granted, but generations of coaches and distance runners were taught that drinking during exercise was for wimps. Some claimed it would only make you thirstier. Others said it could even trigger a heart attack. The author of Marathon Running in 1909 advised, “Don’t buy into the habit of drinking and eating in a marathon race,” “Some outstanding runners do, but it is not helpful.” Adolph tested these old assumptions by splitting his soldiers into two groups. When the average afternoon high was up to 42oC, both marched through the desert for 8 hours. The soldiers in one group were allowed to drink as much water as they needed and the others weren’t allowed any water. The results were obvious, the drinkers outperformed the non-drinkers, but the men in both groups backed out once they had sweated off 7 to 10% of their body weight.

D

To Adolph, this made perfect sense. On days when the temperature is hotter than the average person’s skin temperature – approximately 33oC – the only way for the body to cool itself is by the evaporation of sweat, and he could estimate how much moisture that required. A brisk walk could easily need three-quarters of a litre or more of evaporative cooling each hour. Adolph’s research was launched by the North Africa campaign, and he finished in 1943. But he came back to the desert every summer and supplemented his experiments with tests in his heated lab. His discoveries stayed secret until 1947 when he published Physiology of Man in the Desert. It went almost entirely unnoticed. In the late 1960s, marathon runners were still advised not to drink water during races. Until 1977, runners in international competitions were prohibited from drinking water in the first 11 kilometres and after that were allowed water only every 5 kilometres.

E

However, there was a complete reversal of opinion. A study began to warn of the dangers of running a marathon without enough water and suddenly runners were told they must drink during the race – and if they didn’t feel like it, they should force themselves or risk heatstroke. In 1978, Alberto Salazar, one of America’s great distance runners, ran a 7.1-mile race in temperatures of 29oC. At mile six, he was in second place. He said later, “The last thing I remember, and I was watching Bill Rodgers pull away from me. It was dreamlike. Bill was floating away, and I wasn’t able to follow the energy to go after him. In the next mile, I faded from second to tenth, but I do not have any memory of being passed by anyone.”

F

Salazar almost died. At the finish, his body temperature was 42oC and he was saved only as a result of a quick-thinking member of the medical crew promptly dumping him into a tub of iced water. Everyone “found” what Salazar had done wrong: Salazar hadn’t drunk enough before or during the race. He, therefore, became dehydrated and nearly killed himself. Even Salazar accepted this. “Dehydration is insidious,” he would later say. At first glance, Adolph’s discoveries seem to support this. His notes about his dehydrated soldiers are a litany of sorrow. “Their only desire is to stop and to rest,” he wrote of one man, after 13.4 waterless kilometres in 40oC heat. “He had an unsocial attitude, began to lag and finally stopped,” he wrote of another, who managed 29.8 kilometres at 34oC.

Both 1970s and 1980s runners and coaches assumed that collapsing athletes like Salazar were simply extreme cases of the same thing. Dehydration and heat collapse were virtually synonymous in many minds. “Drink early and often,” athletes were told, “and not just when thirsty.” However, as Noakes points out, none of Adolph’s dehydrated soldiers suffered heatstroke. “They just got very angry and stopped walking.” What’s more, they recovered quickly when allowed to rest and drink. “They were able to walk almost immediately after drinking water,” Adolph wrote in one case. In another: “exhaustion relieved by water.” Salazar’s brush with death wasn’t the result of drinking too little: on a very hot day he had simply tried to run a world-class race. Under these kinds of conditions, heat is the enemy, not dehydration.

G

Adolph had accepted this but thought it too clear to guarantee more than a few lines in his book. He had conducted most of his tests on marches, not because he wasn’t interested in the effects of running in the heat, but because when he made his soldiers run, even at a slow jog their body temperature soared by 2.5oC in 30 minutes. “There is no doubt that men are limited in the physical work they can do in the desert,” he wrote. The advocates of drinking-early-and-often had also overlooked Adolph’s discovery that even soldiers who were able to drink what they wanted still tended to dehydrate, and only made up their deficiencies at mealtimes. Adolph disregarded this as a “peculiarity of dehydration,” but Noakes believes he had stumbled upon a quirk of human evolution.

H

Humans, Noakes observed, are “delayed drinkers.” He supposes that this is a consequence of early humans hunting and chasing game for long distances under the African sun. There are good reasons for not stopping to drink during a hunt, not least the expectation of the prey escaping. There’s also the fact that we are not built like camels and other animals that are able to drink deeply and quickly. That makes us better runners – and running hunters – but means we cannot drink as much as we can sweat, so we delay our thirst until it’s comfortable to drink, says Noakes. Adolph never used the word evolution in his book but he would have understood Noakes’s point.

Questions 29-35

Reading Passage 3 has eight sections, A-H.

Choose the correct heading for sections B-H from the list of headings below.

Write the correct number, i-viii, in boxes 29-35 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings

i           The opposite of Adolph’s view

ii          Adolph’s studies to guarantee in the book

iii         The utmost limits for survival

iv         Positive evidence of Adolph’s research

v          A barren landscape for marching

vi         Noakes’ stance on humans of drinking

vii        A simple solution for developing performance

viii       Misjudgment of Salazar’s thought

            Example          Answer

            Section A         v

29   Section B

30   Section C 

31   Section D

32   Section E

33   Section F

34   Section G

35   Section H

Questions 36-40

Complete the sentences below.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 36-40 on your answer sheet.

36   Adolph found out that a critical way for improving a marathon race is……………………. during a performance.

37   During walking, the body needs approximately………………………. of a litre of moisture per hour.

38   International competitions didn’t allow water within racing………………………….. kilometres.

39   Salazar nearly died at the end of the race as a result of…………………………..

40   In the final section, Noakes indicates humans are part of the concept of……………………….