Are You Smarter Than a 4th Grader?

This is a question from one of my school district's 4th grade classrooms.

Is it just me, or is this a really hard question? (click to enlarge)

(Scroll down for the answer.)

There are different ways to approach this, but here's how I did it.

[Note: I'm embarassed to say how long it took me to do so.]

If there are 1,000 meters in a kilometer, then the question is asking how much more of 7.5 kilometers would the athlete have to go. This is the most difficult part of the problem--figuring out what they're asking.

Next, 7.5 km divided by 1.5 km = 5km

It will take five complete laps to reach 7500 total meters, and the athlete has already run three times around, so two more laps are needed to reach 7500 meters total.

I'm pretty sure I wasn't doing anything like this when I was in 4th grade.