What makes this former BYU runner one of the best in the country? ‘He’s a grinder’

With the Olympic marathon one month away, Conner Mantz is running intervals on the BYU track under the hot morning sun with his training partner and fellow Olympian, Clayton Young . They run a race-pace mile in 4 minutes, 47 seconds, followed by a two-minute rest, then run a half-mile in 2:06, followed by a four-minute rest, and begin the next set.

“It’s a recovery workout,” says their coach, Ed Eyestone , who times the duo with a stopwatch and notes the times of each rep in a battered notebook. “We went hard two days ago.”

Mantz rips through the second set of the workout, running with his distinctive gait — high back kick, pigeon toed, left arm punching across his chest. A few young fans — who are on campus for various athletic camps — skipped breakfast to watch along the fence on the backstretch. Mantz and Young cover the second mile in 4:40, then come back two minutes later with a half-mile in 2:07. They finish the workout with another 4:40 mile, followed by a 2:02 half-mile.

“Today was a good day,” says Eyestone. “Marathon pace at altitude. That’s worth about four seconds per-mile at sea level.”

A short time later, after a brief cool-down, Mantz is equally upbeat about his preparation. “I’m excited to compete,” he says. “I’m in a perfect spot. If the race were next week, I would wish I had more time, but if the race were in six weeks, I’d be too tired by then.”

A scenic, but challenging, course

The Olympic marathon is set for Aug. 10. It will follow a route that honors the famed Women’s March on Versailles, one of the early events of the French Revolution in 1789.

Angered by the high price and scarcity of bread, the marchers spontaneously gathered at the Hotel de Ville in Paris. Arming themselves with kitchen knives and whatever could be used as a weapon, they marched in the rain to Versailles in about six hours while dragging a cannon. By then their ranks had swelled to 6,000 to 7,000 as others joined them on the way, a force sufficient to storm the castle, lop off a few heads and convince King Louis XVI to agree to reforms and a move back to Paris.

Marathoners will pass through nine arrondissements (boroughs) in Ile-de-France, past the Louvre, the Jardin des Tuileries, the Place de la Concorde and the Tour Eiffel as they race along the Right Bank of the Seine, eventually breaking away from the river and climbing to the Chateau de Versailles. From there, they will turn back toward Paris and eventually race along the Seine again, this time along the Left Bank, passing under the shadow of the Eiffel Tower before turning south away from the Seine and winding to the Esplanade Des Invalides and the tomb of Napoleon to the finish.

If not for the gut-wrenching effort of running 4:50 miles for two hours, it would be a nice sightseeing tour for the runners. It is a challenging course, but at least the marathoners won’t have to drag a cannon or remove a few heads.

The route will include a 436-meter climb (1,430 feet) and a 438-meter descent. The steepest climb is a dizzying 13.5% gradient.

Mantz has studied maps of the course repeatedly online. “It’s very hilly,” he says. “There are hills at 15K that last about 5K, then it’s downhill, then at 28K there’s a hill with a 13.5% grade. The 13.5 scares me. I found a hill here (in Utah) that’s close to 10% that I can train on.”

Altitude, saunas and a sports psychologist

Mantz moved to Park City 2 ½ months ago to live and train at 7,000 feet. It is believed that altitude training increases the body’s production of red blood cells, which carry oxygen throughout the body.

“I’m hoping it makes a difference,” he says. “We do a lot of things that have minimal gains, but when added up they make a difference.”

His preparations also include saunas — to prepare for the Paris humidity — and sessions with a sports psychologist — “He’s helping me develop the mindset to deal with whatever is thrown at me.”

Mantz — as well as six other current and former BYU athletes headed to the Olympics — will depart for Paris on July 24, hoping to get there early enough to adapt to the time zone change (eight hours) and settle into accommodations that are similar to his home environment.

“I’m not treating it like it’s the Olympics, but just another race,” says Mantz.

Mantz, who won two NCAA cross-country championships while at BYU , is in his third year as a professional runner. Distance runners earn their living through shoe company sponsorships — Mantz runs for Nike — and road racing prize money.

Mantz is one of the top road racers in the nation, if not the best.

In late May he won his second straight BolderBoulder 10,000-meter race, one of the nation’s biggest road events. He won the 2022 U.S. 20K road racing championship and placed seventh and sixth, respectively, in the last two Chicago marathons, the latter with a time of 2:07:47, making him the fourth-fastest American ever.

But what he has wanted most was to run in the Olympic Games. His bid to compete in the 2020 Olympic marathon trials fizzled. “I was in great shape, but got hurt and couldn’t race,” he says.

After the Olympics were postponed to 2021 because of the pandemic, Mantz tried to earn an Olympic berth on the track. He was fifth in the 10,000-meter run and eighth in the 5,000. The top three qualify for the Olympics.

“It was heartbreaking,” says Mantz.

Things were different this time around. In February, Mantz and Young finished one-two in the Olympic marathon trials, well clear of the field, to nail down a trip to the Olympics.

“Making the Olympics has been huge,” says Mantz.

An experienced voice

Since then, Mantz has been training for Paris. “It’s been a good (training) build,” he says. “Comparable to Chicago. My speed is not as good, but my endurance is smooth. Running 4:40s (for the mile) is smoother.”

Mantz can lean on Eyestone’s vast experience with the Olympics. He was a two-time Olympic marathoner himself, competing in Seoul in 1988 and Barcelona in 1992. He’s coached other Olympic marathoners — Jared Ward in 2016 and now Mantz, Young and Rory Linkletter (who will compete for Canada). Seeing Eyestone’s success as a coach — five of his runners have qualified for the Paris Olympics — other distance runners have come to Provo to train with him, including, most recently, Keira D’Amato, the second-fastest U.S. female marathoner ever.

Asked about his training program, Eyestone says, “It’s a complex combination of inflicting pain on these guys.” He chuckles — but he’s serious.

Two days after today’s track workout, Eyestone sent Mantz and Young on a 25-mile run in Heber Valley (altitude: 5,600 feet) at tempo pace with the exception of a four-mile segment in which they ran successive miles in 4:56, 4:57, 5 flat and 4:30. They did that same workout two weeks earlier and covered that same segment in 4:43, 4:48, 4:49, 4:30.

“All of them have a stinger at the end,” says Eyestone. “I want them to have to run marathon pace when they’re tired.”

Earlier in the week, Eyestone sent Mantz and Young on a 12-mile run at marathon race pace. Mantz averaged 4:48 per mile; Young, who kept up until the final couple of miles, averaged 4:50. Mantz was on 2:05:50 marathon pace, Young 2:06:44. As Eyestone noted, those times at that altitude would be about four seconds faster at sea level.

“If you hope to medal, you’ve got to be in 2:06 shape,” says Eyestone. “That doesn’t mean they’ll run 2:06 in Paris — it’s a hilly, warm course — but they’ve got to be in that level of fitness because there are a dozen or more guys in the field that can run that fast.”

As he neared the 12-mile mark of that workout, Mantz called out to Eyestone that he wanted to continue to run another mile to complete a half-marathon, but Eyestone shut him down. Enough was enough.

That’s been a recurring theme since Mantz began training with Eyestone. He’s an aggressive, intense runner, and Eyestone has had to preach patience and restraint to his young runner. He’s had to throttle him back at times. Mantz likes to go hard from the start, especially in races, as if he wants to end the mystery of the outcome in the first few miles.

“He’s a grinder,” Eyestone once said of Mantz years ago. “It’s fun to watch him run because he knows one way to run — just go out and pound it. He likes to be in the front of the race.”

Another gear

But there’s a fine line between aggression and prudence. Mantz used both effectively in Chicago and at the trials.

The hallmark of Mantz’s running career is his tolerance for pain and his ability to summon another gear when he’s hurting.

At the 2020 NCAA cross-country championships, he looked like he was done in the late stages of the race. After leading the race for a time, he fell back and looked like the fight was out of him, but he rallied and won.

Mantz likes to push out hard in the early stages of a race because he prefers an “honest race” — a full-out race over the entire distance, not a 400-meter end-of-the-race kick — and he’s willing to pay the price. Eyestone ran the same way.

“I’m willing to push through the pain because of my competitive drive — that desire to hit the mark (time) and win and go through the pain rather than be more comfortable and ease it through,” he said years ago. “People underestimate how much pain the body can tolerate.

“I remember somebody telling me once — and I’ve remembered this a lot — that you get to the point where no matter how much pain you have in that moment you know it’s temporary and the chances of dying from it is none. It doesn’t matter if I’m in pain for that moment. It’s the competition. I’m more concerned about beating the guy ahead of me.”

But in a championship race such as the Olympics, the tactics of rivals and the unique challenges of each course — i.e., the hills and humidity of Paris — require patience and correct decision making on the fly.

Plan of attack

“We’ll come up with a rough race plan — the plan will be different for Conner than the plan for Clayton — but Conner is going to have to make some calls along the way,” says Eyestone. “When to go hard and when to lay off. The best chance for success is knowing what you’re capable of doing based on training.”

In other words, if a rival decides to pick up the pace or blast a hill, Mantz will have to decide if his body can withstand the stress to go with him, or whether it would be more prudent to exercise restraint and conserve energy, hoping that his rival will fall back to him eventually.

“We’ll see how hard they (rival runners) attack those hills,” says Eyestone. “We might have to hold back a little bit and reel in the debris at the end because there will be debris. You have to have a good internal governor.

“It’s not that difficult to gauge when it’s flat. When you charge up hills you have to trust yourself — OK, what’s this effort going to do for me if I go hard and I’m not patient? They’ve got their work cut out for them. There’s a series of difficult hills starting at 16K — from nine miles to 12 miles — and then it plateaus and then there’s another healthy climb.”

Mantz, a 27-year-old who grew up in Smithfield, Utah, (pop. 12,000), has devoted half of his life to competitive running. He was introduced to the sport by his father, Robert, a former Weber State wrestler who took up marathoning to lose weight. Conner began riding his bike alongside his father during his training runs on the road.

“I saw him running and he loved it,” he says.

Early adapter

The conventional wisdom is to introduce promising young runners to shorter races and put off marathoning until their post-collegiate years when their bodies have matured and they are better able to withstand the rigors of higher mileage.

Mantz did the opposite. He ran a half-marathon at the age of 12. He covered the first one in one hour, 33 minutes, 27 seconds. A few months later he ran another one in 1:22:43. He continued to run half-marathons and other road races before he reached high school.

He won four high school state championships at Sky View High in cross country and track, but what really set him apart was his victory in the U.S. Junior National Cross Country Championships, which are normally dominated by 19-year-olds and college freshmen. Mantz was 18 and still in high school. That performance qualified him to compete in the world junior championships in China, where he placed 29th out of 118 runners.

“Conner and Clayton are excited. I used to think the hardest part was getting the qualifier. It’s more stressful. Then you come back and enjoy the Olympic experience. But they have their sights set on doing great things in the Olympics.

BYU coach Ed Eyestone

“That elevated him to superstardom,” Eyestone said. “He went to the top of everyone’s recruiting lists.”

At BYU, Mantz won two NCAA cross country championships and earned four first-team All-America certificates on the track at 5,000 and 10,000 meters, but there was little doubt he would return to the marathon as a pro. When collegiate runners sign a professional contract with a shoe company, they frequently leave their college coaches to train with their sponsor’s club coach. Mantz elected to continue training with Eyestone, and Nike supported his decision, well aware of the coach’s success. That has led to a trip to the Olympic Games.

“It’s an adventure,” Eyestone says of the Olympics. “Conner and Clayton are excited. I used to think the hardest part was getting the qualifier. It’s more stressful. Then you come back and enjoy the Olympic experience. But they have their sights set on doing great things in the Olympics.

“There’s a certain amount of ‘yippee, I’m at the Olympics,’ but you don’t want to be an Olympic tourist. At the same time, my philosophy is, you worked hard to get here and you’re probably only going to have one (Olympics) so have the experience but have it without becoming an Olympic tourist. Conner and Clayton are in a good place.”