Longtime running buddies are poised to compete in the streets of Paris

JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:

I'm Juana Summers at the Paris Olympics, where, in a few short weeks, the fastest marathoners in the world will congregate at the Grand Hotel De Ville. That is Paris' City Hall, sitting on the banks of the Seine, and runners will follow the river's winding path through the city before sprinting out to Versailles and back again. Six U.S. marathoners will be running that course, three men and three women. And before they took off to Paris, I caught up with the two fastest U.S. men, who also happened to be longtime training partners and friends, Clayton Young and Conner Mantz.

CLAYTON YOUNG: There's very few people that know me as well as Conner does just because we've run thousands, if not tens of thousands, of miles together. And so we have lots of time to have great conversations.

CONNER MANTZ: It's just so beneficial to just have somebody I can talk to, and if I have a bad workout or a bad race but then Clayton does well, it's very motivating.

YOUNG: I often joke that, you know, I don't have any friends. I just have my running friends because my social cup is filled.

SUMMERS: The two friends first met on a run at Brigham Young University in 2017. And as Clayton Young remembers it, it was far from a race among equals.

YOUNG: I remember looking back on this run as we were a pack of 15 to 20 guys. He had just come back from serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and he was probably, you know, 20 to 30 pounds overweight, but he was just hanging on for dear life.

MANTZ: And I stayed up with them for about 4.5 miles before I was like, there's no way I can hold this pace.

YOUNG: And I think that's when I first really started to discover, like, how gritty Conner is.

SUMMERS: Fast-forward seven years, and the two finished the Olympic trials marathon in February within a second of each other, running at a blazing pace of four minutes, 56 seconds per mile on average. And even racing at those incredible speeds, their friendship and camaraderie during that marathon was hard to miss.

YOUNG: In fact, there's this moment on the NBC broadcast where Conner turns around and he kind of holds out his hand. And I'm thinking, what the heck do you need, Conner? Like, do you want, you know, one of my water bottles? Do you want something else? And I finally realized that he wants a high-five. And so I give him this high-five, and it's probably the sloppiest high-five you'll ever see on national television.

MANTZ: I took the lead because I was like, OK, if I feel good enough that I think I'm going to go to the Olympics...

YOUNG: And so it's just Conner and I at about mile 22, only four miles to go.

MANTZ: It was kind of this - I don't know - fun moment. It just kind of felt like a run with Clayton, and that was pretty special.

YOUNG: And that's when, in Orlando, the crowds got so loud. And we were running side by side down this home stretch, this last half-mile to the finish line.

MANTZ: Clayton was just motivating me the whole way, just yelling things, cheering me on.

YOUNG: With about 30 meters to go, in desperation, Conner puts in this little surge.

MANTZ: I did surge at the end, trying to beat him because it was a race.

YOUNG: And I put my hands out, and Conner crosses the line first. And...

MANTZ: You see us cross the finish line and then hug, and it was...

YOUNG: And it was just - you know, it was just this unreal moment.

SUMMERS: Their next big moment, of course, will be in Paris on that epic tour of the city, racing past the Tuileries Garden and the Eiffel Tower.

MANTZ: We get the grand tour. It's pretty incredible. In fact, I actually got to take my first international flight ever out to Paris to be able to train on the course. I had run all the way out to Versailles, up these beautiful kind of streets through these little, quaint towns all the way out to Versailles and then run all the way back, go loop around the Eiffel Tower and then finish at the Hotel De Invalides. But the course is going to be tough. I'm not going to lie. Like, I trained on that course for five or six days straight, and it's really hot. It's really humid in August in Paris. But more than anything, the course is really hilly and quite technical.

SUMMERS: How much of a challenge is that heat going to be? I mean, this is a scenario where it could be hotter and more humid than the trials back in February in Orlando. How much of a concern is competing in conditions like that?

MANTZ: For me, I'm pretty concerned about it because heat and humidity can be devastating for 99% of us runners, but Clayton probably won't probably have any issues because he just seems like he could run in the hottest conditions and be just fine. It doesn't affect him.

YOUNG: When I think back to the trials and just how hot and humid that was and - you know, there's supposed to be similar or worse conditions in Paris. And it can be nerve-wracking, but honestly, the more hilly it is, the more humid it is, the more hot it is, I think the better and better Conner and I's chances are of competing. We prepared so diligently for the Olympic trials, and we have a method to our madness, to be honest, and we did a lot of sauna and heat acclimization training. And I think we've only upped our game since then, and I think, honestly, it only plays to our strengths.

SUMMERS: I'm curious, though. Why do you think that is? Why do you think a course like the one in Paris is something that plays to your advantage in such a competitive field of men's marathon runners?

YOUNG: You know, Conner and I are ranked in the 60s. And so lot of people will look at that, and they'll say, well, you know, Conner and Clayton don't really have a shot. But when you really do some digging into how those rankings are made based off of time - and a lot of those times are set on courses that are pancake-flat, in perfect and ideal conditions. But to be honest, you know, that's far from what Paris will be like.

MANTZ: Yeah. The hills play to my advantage. But the heat and humidity will play a lot to Clayton's advantage, and I think that's why we're in such a good spot compared to a lot of our competitors.

SUMMERS: As you've mentioned, you've logged thousands, if not tens of thousands, of miles running together over the years. For all of those miles that you have run together, what are the two of you talking about? And I have to ask, just thinking about the speeds that you were running at, how can one even maintain a conversation when you were moving so fast?

YOUNG: When you're training for a marathon, maybe 20% of our miles are weekly miles, you know? Conner and I run anywhere between 100 and 120 miles every week. And probably only 20 of those miles are at marathon pace or faster. So you could say that we run about a hundred miles that are just at an easy, slow, moderate pace that, you know, is conversational. And so we have lots of time to have great conversations.

And, you know, most of the time it is about what's happening in terms of running. So it's, you know, what's the next race? What's the next workout? How are we recovering? How are we feeling? But, you know, Conner and I also share a lot of other passions in life. You know, we're both - went to Brigham Young University and got degrees in mechanical engineering, and so we talk a lot about engineering. We also obviously have shared faith as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and so we talk a lot about faith and trials and things that we're working through in terms of our relationships with our families and other things.

SUMMERS: I'd love to know a bit about how your faith informs the way you approach the way that you run.

MANTZ: Having that knowledge and that faith - it definitely helps in running because then you know that, you know, running is just a sport. It's just something for fun, but, you know, there are things that are so much more important. I think having that grounding is so necessary when you have, like, a bad workout or a bad race. Or for Clayton, he had surgery just over a year ago. And I think, you know, when trials and tribulations come upon us, we're able to really lean on our faith in Jesus Christ and lean on his atoning power and his grace.

SUMMERS: We've been speaking with Conner Mantz and Clayton Young. Both men will represent the United States at the Paris games. Thanks to both of you, and good luck in Paris.

MANTZ: Thanks for having us, Juana.

YOUNG: Thanks for having us.

(SOUNDBITE OF RHIANNON GIDDENS' "MOUNTAIN BANJO") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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