What explains growth miracles? We argue that growth miracles are driven by a fundamental race: as the economy tries to catch-up to its steady state, changes in the economic environment move the steady state itself and provide new potential for catch-up growth. We quantify this race over the course of development using 40 years of plant-level manufacturing panel data from Indonesia and a structural model of plant dynamics. We estimate the model on the micro data along the observed growth path without assuming that the economy is ever at a steady state. While catch-up growth starting from initial conditions in 1975 accounts for 42% of Indonesia’s subsequent industrialization, new changes in the economy induce new catch-up growth. In the end, the economy never catches up.