Those who enter marathons soon learn that, to succeed in these gruelin

Question

Those who enter marathons soon learn that, to succeed in these grueling competitive events, runners must be in excellent condition, have unshakable self-confidence, and, most important of all,  know how to pace yourself .

(A) know how to pace yourself
(B) is knowing how to pace yourself
(C) know how to pace themselves
(D) you must pace yourself
(E) they must know how to pace themselves

sampriya · Answer

Those who enter marathons soon learn that, to succeed in these grueling competitive events,  runners must be in excellent condition, have unshakable self-confidence, and, most important of all,  know how to pace yourself.

the bolded part of the sentence contains all the elements that are supposed to be parallel (list of things a person llearns when they enter a marathon)

(A) know how to pace  yourself 
(B) is knowing how to  pace yourself 
(D) you must  pace yourself 
"yourself" is wrong when we are referring to a group of people who are entering a marathon

(C) know how to pace themselves
is the correct option!

(E)  they  must know how to pace themselves
they distorts the parallelism

chetan2u · Answer

Those who enter marathons soon learn that, to succeed in these grueling competitive events, runners must be in excellent condition, have unshakable self-confidence, and, most important of all,  know how to pace yourself .
 Parallelism.. 
 runners  must be in excellent condition ,  have unshakable self-confidence , and, most important of all,  know how to pace yourself .
 Pronoun.. 
The  reflexive pronoun  in the end should be  themselves

(A) know how to pace yourself
 Pronoun error 
(B) is knowing how to pace yourself
 Both parallelism and pronoun error 
(C) know how to pace themselves
 Correct 
(D) you must pace yourself
 Both parallelism and pronoun error 
(E) they must know how to pace themselves
 Parallelism error

C

ShankSouljaBoi · Answer

must x, y,z and most important of all must Q. Via parallelism must is applied to all arms. Hence, must x, must Y ... and most important of all must know-----

Between A and C runners are plural . Hence , C is correct

CrackverbalGMAT · Answer

Let’s try to simplify this sentence first : 
Those who enter marathons …. learn that, to succeed …, runners must be (1) in excellent condition (2) have unshakable confidence, and … (3) know how to pace …

Here we see that  items are in a list  and so they must be parallel in structure.

Keeping this in mind, let’s look at the  reflexive pronouns  ‘yourself’ and ‘themselves’. 
Looking at the simplified sentence we know that it is the  runners  who are learning these 3 things. 
Therefore, you  cannot use the singular reflexive pronoun ‘yourself’ to refer to the plural runners .

Using this logic, we can  eliminate Options A, B, and D. 
 
 Option D  adds the pronoun  ‘they’  and changes the structure.  Eliminate.

Option C  is the best choice.

Hope this helps!

gmat8055 · Answer

Hi,

Be in excellent condition ( is phrase)
Have unshakable....( Verb)
Know how to pace yourself ( phrase)
How are these three are parallel,two are phrase and one is verb

Please clarify the doubt

Thanks in advance!

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Those who enter marathons soon learn that, to succeed in these gruelin

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