Pryor and Suptic started working with Rob Pope, who invited college friend drummer Nathan Shay[4] to form the Get Up Kids in 1994.

After recording four songs, the group sent copies of them to rock-centic labels listed in the publication The Musician's Guide To Touring and Promotion.

[5] Four Minute Mile was recorded in April 1997[4] on a budget of $4,000[6] with Shellac bassist Bob Weston acting as producer.

[7] As Ryan Pope was still at school, the members went to a local music store to stock up on guitar strings and plectrums.

As a result, some of the songs featured the low quality production that the EP had; Pryor later stated they should have spent more time recording it, while Suptic said it "sounds like crap".

[4] Ryan Pope had planned to go to college, until Doghouse offered to fund a European tour,[17] which took place in February and March 1998 with Braid.

[19] Doghouse reissued the album, alongside The EP's: Red Letter Day and Woodson compilation, on cassette in 2017.

In a 2017 retrospective celebrating the album's 20th anniversary, Vice Media called Four Minute Mile "a snapshot of a young band with their career ahead of them," that "[t]he earnest candor of the lyrics coupled with the innovations in bridging punk and emo make this album a staple in emo's history," and calling it a "near-masterpiece.

[12] The Get Up Kids' 1997 debut album Four Minute Mile combined the driving, hooky indie-punk of Superchunk and the more tangled sounds of Midwest emo and helped create the blueprint for early/mid 2000s emo-pop in the process.Four Minute Mile is considered a benchmark album of the emo genre,[17] influencing the likes of Saves the Day, the Early November, Midtown and Fall Out Boy.

[26][27] In a 2005 interview with Alternative Press, Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy remarked that the album had a major influence on the band as a whole.

In 2020, BrooklynVegan included Four Minute Mile on its list of the best punk albums of 1997, alongside Blink 182's Dude Ranch, and Nimrod by Green Day, writing that "The Get Up Kids' 1997 debut album Four Minute Mile combined the driving, hooky indie-punk of Superchunk and the more tangled sounds of Midwest emo and helped create the blueprint for early/mid 2000s emo-pop in the process."