“I’M JUST GRATEFUL I got these three great guys to run with,” quipped Conner Mantz after he erased Ryan Hall’s half-marathon American Record in a tightly competitive tussle in Houston. “When there were four of us at the end, they formed a V shape, and I was just running right behind it.”
Mantz is equally grateful that he got to the starting line, as his mentor, BYU’s Ed Eyestone, recounts. “We felt like the half-marathon record might be a little soft, and with the build towards Boston, this was kind of the perfect one.”
However, Mantz’s prep for the effort was closer to imperfect. “Two weeks [before Houston], we were making a decision as he had some pain in his quadriceps, which he had strained,” Eyestone explains. “He was in a good place, the workouts prior to that had been very good. It all came down to a workout [10 days ahead of the race]. If he could get through the workout and not have any pain, then we were going full steam ahead.”
Mantz zipped through a 3×3-mile effort with the final rep at 4:23 pace without issue, and headed to Houston with fresh legs and high hopes.
Not lost on Mantz is that his first AR comes in the event he began running as a schoolboy with his father — the gateway distance, as it were, to a pair of NCAA XC crowns, his Trials marathon victory early last year and his 8th-place showing at the Paris Olympics.
“That’s really cool,” Mantz says, “because I’ve known Ryan Hall’s time for the past 12 to 15 years or so. I expected it to be broken earlier as we’ve had we’ve had some great marathoners, half-marathoners, 10K runners, and so for me to get the record, that feels pretty good.”
Even with his 59:17 AR in hand and moving into the top 100 on the all-time performers list, Mantz holds himself to ever-evolving high standards admitting, “It’s probably not the time that 8th in the Olympics should run, but it was a stepping stone today, a good stepping stone for my future career in the marathon.
“I think that’s the biggest thing I’m taking away from this is to feel like I’m moving forward. It was also nice was that I was able to run fast and feel competitive.
“Now on to the Boston Marathon,” Mantz exclaims with some relief after hitting his goal at half the distance. “The focus of my build has been Boston since I was trying to figure out which marathon to run this spring.
“Do I go somewhere and try to run a fast time on a record-eligible course? If I go 2:04 in Boston, it doesn’t count. So, the plan was I could go for my fast time and American Record in Houston and then work on competing at Boston.
“There were a lot of bumps in the road that stopped me from thinking it was plausible that I would hit that American Record, but I’m grateful I went for it and it ended up working out.”
