Conner Mantz Went from Breaking the 23-Year-Old American Marathon Record to a Devastating Injury. Now He’s Building Back Up.

It’s a frigid Friday night in February in small-town Utah, and Conner Mantz and his wife, Kylie, are doing what they do pretty much every night: padding around in sweats, making pasta, talking. Usually about running. Lately, also about pregnancy, as Kylie is a few months in with their first—as are at least two of their neighbors. But tonight’s riveting topic? Home warranties.Apparently, there is a crack in the ceiling of the couple’s new house. I don’t see it, but luckily, Kylie did, mere days before the one-year warranty on their four-bedroom, 4,500-square-foot new build in a master-planned community runs out.I can’t help but notice, though: It looks like they just moved in. The kitchen as bare as a hotel kitchenette. A stack of cardboard boxes still unpacked. The bright-white interior is blank, save for a wooden sign propped on a table that reads “as for me and my house we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15).And an “art TV” presiding over the living room. The only reason I know it’s an art TV is because I have one, too. “The Frame,” by Samsung. A wall-mounted, bordered box designed to look like a painting or photograph, which you can choose from an extensive library, in lieu of the otherwise invasive screen it actually is. It was Conner’s Christmas gift to Kylie. Even though three years into their marriage, they have rarely, if ever, watched TV. “Which makes it kind of funny that we bought it!” says Kylie, scattering a bag of frozen broccoli florets onto a sheet pan. It’s also kind of funny, I think, that they have yet to select any art for the art TV, which renders it just an ordinary screen that’s seen neither Claude Monet nor the 2026 Winter Olympic Games, which at the time is well underway.Maybe if it were the Summer Olympics?Then again, if all goes according to his training plans, Conner won’t be tuning into the 2028 Games from his gray Costco couch in Mapleton, Utah. He’ll be running 26.2 miles through the streets of Los Angeles. Winning a medal. And breaking his personal record—which is the American marathon record: 2:04:43.A record held for more than two decades by Khalid Khannouchi, until Conner declared last year that he would break it—and then, on a crisp October morning in Chicago, did. Only six seconds shy of third-place Kenya’s Alex Masai, knobby-kneed and nearly one minute faster than Khannouchi in London back in 2002, to a fourth-place—if otherwise undramatic—finish.Asa FletcherAt the 2025 Chicago Marathon, Conner Mantz broke the American marathon record from 2002.There was no collapsing on the asphalt. No kissing the sky. Conner barely bent over to catch his breath. He just stopped his watch, humbly shook his competitors’ hands, sipped some water, milling about in his Nike Alphaflys and wispy royal blue short-shorts, like it was no big deal he’d just made history.He felt a tinge of disappointment, he admits. With himself, with his time. Even, maybe, with his new title: Fastest American Marathoner. American.“I just felt like I had more in me,” he says, pushing Italian sausage around the pan, while Kylie spoons cottage cheese into a blender full of tomato sauce. Extra protein. “I was a little bit kicking myself.”What Conner really wants is a spot on the podium. Preferably, between the perennially placing East Africans, at the very top.When we meet up the next day at Ginger’s Garden Cafe, it’s clear Conner is nowhere near the top. In fact, he’s in the midst of climbing his way back from rock bottom: the biggest injury of his career. A sacral stress fracture that sidelined him for 12 long weeks and left him lapping the indoor pool, doing PT, enviously scrolling his running friends’ feeds, and getting depressed.“I got too excited,” he confesses. He’d never felt less sore after a marathon and jumped back into training too quickly. Eyeing a medal at the 2026 World Athletics Cross Country Championships in January in Florida, he wasn’t listening to his coach. Chicago became a distant memory, if not a mirage. “I actually don’t even feel like I broke the American record,” he says. “I get the record, and then I get injured? It humbles you.” He pauses. “It’s like: Just in case you think you’re the man, now you’re not even walking.”He had only just started running outside again two weeks ago. “That first time, I felt like I weighed a million pounds,” he says. “My legs just sank into the ground.” This winter morning, he managed 20 miles along the Provo River Parkway Trail, averaging 5:45 pace at 4,500 feet of elevation, according to Strava, where he often posts to his more than 60,000 followers. Today was a struggle. “My couch was calling,” he admits. I apologize for dragging him out. “It’s okay. Kylie drove,” he says, sliding into the table beside her. (Is too tired to drive a common level of exhaustion among elite marathoners, I wondered?) He musters a smile. “I’m just glad I get to sit.”Lunch wasn’t my ideal plan today, either. I’d hoped we might do something a little more exciting. But here in the foothills of the Wasatch Mountains, home to decorative rock supply yards, a disproportionate number of dentist offices, and a quilting shop, exciting it’s not. Grabbing a beer was out, as this is LDS country, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Coffee, too, is taboo. No matter what Jessi Draper and other “delinquent” stars of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives might occasionally imbibe, booze and caffeine are outlawed by the faith’s scripture. The local movie house was playing the 1986 hit Peggy Sue Got Married, and Clint’s Reptile Room was booked with a birthday party of small blond boys.I’d actually awkwardly asked Conner if I (a middle-aged Jewish mom) could sauna with him (a 29-year-old married Mormon man) instead. In part, because I was cold, but also because I knew Conner saunas for at least 20 minutes after every run. He politely turned me down. Clearly, coed naked saunas aren’t a thing at Brigham Young University, Conner’s alma mater, where he won two NCAA Division I Cross-Country Championships—and where he still works out, training under legendary coach Ed Eyestone. It’s also where he met his future wife, in a religion class his junior year. “What initially drew you to Kylie?” I asked on our first phone call. He’d laughed. “She’s a lot more interesting than me.”So here we are. Chatting fully clothed over organic salads and turkey clubs with “facon bacon.” I don’t know if Kylie is more interesting per se—but she’s more open, more off-the-cuff, less stilted. Which makes sense, as she’s not the professional runner on the rise to household name. (Although she did walk on to BYU’s track team, one of the best in the NCAA, her senior year. And then, last year, ran a 2:43:49 in her first-ever marathon, with her husband at her side.) Conner likes his sandwich fine, but it’s no jollof rice, his favorite dish during his two years in Ghana, where he served his LDS mission after graduating high school in 2015. Also fufu: a carb-load of cassava and plantains pounded into a dough and served in soup. “It’s one of the most delicious things!” he beams, biting into his facon.So delicious, soon his pants stopped fitting, he says. Conner gained 30 pounds in his first eight months living in Ghana, morphing from a slight, sculpted 120 into a soft 150. The food alone, though, wasn’t why. “I was stressed out,” Conner says. The regimented schedule; the demands of knocking on doors dawn to dusk; of hearing strangers’ stories, often of despair; of pounding the pavement in a different sense, took its toll.Asa FletcherWhen not injured, Conner runs anywhere from 100 to 130 miles a week.As did his literal change of pace. For the first time since he was a kid, Conner wasn’t running. There was no time. It didn’t help that his companion, whom he was mandated to stick with 24/7, wouldn’t run—it meant Conner couldn’t go for a run either. “He didn’t do anything!” Conner cries, looking at Kylie. She nods. Conner’s not the type to complain—about anything, let alone anyone— but they’d obviously discussed this dude before.Eventually, Conner settled into his missionary routine. Wake up. Don a white shirt, a tie. Walk. Knock. Talk. “Then you go to bed, and it just repeats,” he says. He loved the locals, their generosity, openness. The schedule, though, was a grind.“But it was also freeing,” he admits. Having a simple routine. A sole purpose. A singular goal to spread LDS doctrine. When you serve a mission, “you focus on this one thing,” he explains. Not on your finances or school, friends or family, as “you have no phone.” Nothing.“You’re not really aware of what’s going on in the world, either. You don’t know the news,” he says. “You come back two years later totally out of it.” Like an LDS Rip Van Winkle. “You’re still wearing jeans from two years ago.”Reentry was really hard, he admits. The culture shock of returning to America. Returning to running. Reclaiming his body. Resuming normal life—which, for Conner, would come to be no less rigid, no less focused, and no less repetitive: the life of a world-class distance runner.LDS is a religion, like most religions, guided by rules. The Honor Code. “It’s about living a clean, moral lifestyle,” explains Coach Eyestone. “No smoking. No alcohol. No, ah, premarital sex, which can be a real downside for college students.” He laughs. “A third of my student-athletes are married.” Mormons are not as parochial as people think, he says. “We’re not wearing bonnets and driving around in covered wagons!”Mormons do, though, live day-to-day in a way that suits elite athletes. “Once people realize it’s very doable, that it can actually enhance not just their running life but their overall life, it can be a really positive thing,” says Eyestone. This makes both the BYU program and the Provo community increasingly attractive to runners, religious or not, who want to compete at the D1 or professional level. It eliminates all the negative distractions, he says. “Keeps things simpler.”In other words: focused. Which Conner has been, laser-so, since he was 5 and declared he’d one day be in the Olympics. For what, exactly, he wasn’t sure. But he was the fastest kid at recess. At 9, with a mix of awe and envy, he watched his older brother and father, a former college wrestler, run a half marathon together—and begged his parents to let him run one too. They wouldn’t. So Conner passed the time like most kids do, playing video games competing in 5Ks. Until he turned 12, and his parents relented. He ran 13.1 miles in 1:33:27, which improved to 1:22:43 a few months later. By age 14, at the Utah Valley Half, he’d cut his time to 1:11:24.Soon, Conner caught the eye of Eyestone at a BYU summer camp, where he coached kids who’ve never run before “and some who are, you know—” says Eyestone, “child prodigies.” Conner was the latter. Also, the youngest. And in the leading group. “Pushing the pace of the pack, running more than anybody else,” says Eyestone.“I get the record, and then I get injured? It humbles you.” He pauses.“It’s like: just in case you think you’re the man, now you’re not even walking.”Graduating from Sky View High School in 2015 in Smithfield, Utah, as a three-time Foot Locker Cross-Country Championship All-American, Conner had his pick of colleges. He flirted with Princeton University. BYU didn’t have quite the track-and-field cachet it has today. But it did have Eyestone, a BYU alum and two-time Olympic marathoner, to whom Conner had given his verbal commitment before leaving for Ghana. Second-guessing, he turned for advice to his father, who reminded him: He’d given his word. Conner wouldn’t go back on it.Nor has he ever looked back. After redshirting his freshman year, Conner went on to crush it at BYU. At the 2020 NCAA National Cross-Country Championship (held in March 2021), he found himself all alone again, in the plains of Oklahoma. Some 250 other young guys, miles behind. The only problem: The two leaders were way up ahead. Until Conner pushed past and ultimately left them in the dust, too. Crossing the 10K finish line with a massive 20-second-plus margin as the first American to win the NCAA championship since Galen Rupp in 2008. Later in 2021, Conner did it again, setting a course record in Apalachee Regional Park in Tallahassee. Every major shoe company came calling—and his career as a professional runner with Nike took off.As for cachet? Ask any distance runner today: BYU has become a bit of a dynasty over the last decade. Producing elite runners and Olympians, like Jared Ward, Clayton Young, and Conner, who turn pro and choose to settle in Provo postgraduation to train with Eyestone—and moreover, each other.Community has always been key for Conner, the anchor of his success. “At BYU, the older guys set a tone of, ‘We’re going to be great, and if you don’t want to be great, that’s fine—but then this team isn’t for you,’” Conner says. It was—and continues to be— a culture of camaraderie and commitment. Show up every day. Be accountable. Adhere to the rules, however arbitrary. “We had a No Dessert Rule,” recalls Conner of his BYU cross-country team in 2017. No dessert all season. Maybe not the smartest idea, he laughs. But it was about “the focus of it, the fact that we’re all doing this,” he explained. No dessert. “We were going to get a giant cake at the end, but then …we just forgot.”Forgot? About dessert?Conner’s first-ever marathon was as a pro. At the 2022 Chicago Marathon, he finished seventh overall with a time of 2:08:16—and a title that’d come to be familiar: First American. Outside of 2023, Boston—where he almost blacked out from hypothermia, yet still came in 11th place, with a time of 2:10:25—Conner’s credits have since read like a bibliography of ibid entries:2022 Chicago: First American2023 Chicago: First American2024 Paris Olympics: First American2024 New York City: First American2025 Boston: First AmericanAnd, of course,2025 Chicago: First (and fastest ever) American, at 2:04:43—dropping his time from just three years earlier by three minutes and 33 seconds.Not to mention: the 2025 Houston Half Marathon, where Conner crossed the finish line alongside Ethiopia’s Addisu Gobena, shattering Ryan Hall’s 18-year record with a 59:17.All of which is to say, Conner is consistent. That’s what he’s gunning for, anyway: consistency.It’s why, when you ask him what runner, past or present, he admires most, he doesn’t stumble. Eliud Kipchoge. How come? “His consistency,” says Conner. In the marathon, of course. (“It’s incredible! Ten majors and two Olympic golds within a 10-year period?!”) But also, it’s Kipchoge’s consistency as a person, Conner says. “Whether he’s scrubbing toilets at his training camp or talking to strangers, the way he interacts with people. On camera or in life—he’s the same.”Michael BigginsConner might exude a calm, steady strength—but inside he’s not so different than the rest of us.What Conner doesn’t seem to realize is that he could be describing himself.Consistency is the foundation of Eyestone’s philosophy, which he oft-cites as a formula: C2 = E2 (consistent competence equals eventual excellence). “It is by consistent, competent effort, by the small things that we pay attention to, that ultimately and eventually lead us to excellence,” he wrote in a 2015 BYU address.Alma 37:6: “By small and simple things are great things brought to pass,” reads the Book of Mormon, published in 1830.It’s a similar theory popularized, almost two centuries later, by the 2018 New York Times best-selling book Atomic Habits. As the author, James Clear, wrote: “Intensity makes a good story; consistency makes progress.”Conner, actually, makes both.“Conner is someone who wants to push himself to the extremes,” says Eyestone, adding that his natural approach is, “‘If I can go harder, why not go harder?’ He always feels like he can go harder.” He’s always a little bit kicking himself. How come? I ask Eyestone, who mulls. “Dissatisfaction,” he suggests, then takes it back. “Hmm, that’s too hard a word.” He tries again. “He’s not …content. No, that’s a negative.” Eyestone pauses, then nails it. “Conner is ever-striving,” he concludes. “He will always continue to look for the elusive. You know, the white whale. The perfect race.”Wasn’t Chicago perfect? “It was a pretty darn good race,” says Eyestone, very close to perfect. But he came in fourth. Conner wants the podium. “And I guarantee you, when he does get on the podium—which will occur—that if it’s not the top spot, he will still be ever-striving.”You’d expect someone with such ambition to be—I don’t know—maybe the teeniest bit of an asshole? But Conner is the opposite of cocky. The kindest of kind. He doesn’t present as intense. More …mild. Measured. Almost meek. With a quiet, creaky voice, a boyish face, and slow smile revealing perfect teeth (see: all those Provo dentists), he looks less like the fastest marathoner in America and more like …a clean-cut kid of yore with a neighborhood paper route. Dropping phrases like “holy smokes,” he sounds like one, too. Pigeon-toed and flamingo-legged, nary a hair on his 130-pound 5'8" body, Conner could pass as prepubescent—until you watch him move. Head high, jaw sharp, eyes locked, arms pumping, legs exploding, his muscles bulging like a mini-Hulk, with the speed of Superman—a superman in super shoes.Usually on marathon eve, Conner is in bed by 8 p.m.—then lies there awake. Which is what happened the night before breaking the American record. He barely slept. “I got really nervous,” he says. “I don’t like putting my goals out there; I don’t like telling people what I’m going for.” But, well, he’d looked at all his times and training, and simply said—somehow without an ounce of ego— what everybody already knew: Conner Mantz is competing for the American record. It went out as an official Bank of America Chicago Marathon press release. Not so much a bold declaration as a practical, matter-of-fact one.Still, in the dark, insecurities set in. “It was like, if I don’t do this, not only am I going to feel disappointed in myself, I’m also stupid!” he says.Then came paranoia. At an interview two days earlier, journalist Alex Cyr, who’d heard that Conner liked candy, handed him a repackaged pouch of Sour Patch Kids. Conner downed at least 10; then later, lying in bed, devolved. “I was like, ‘Wait, I don’t know that guy! Did I just take something I shouldn’t have?’ Those could have been contaminated! What have I done?”And that’s when I start to see a crack, just a faint one. Not in Conner’s ceiling. Nor his sacrum. But the kind that’s otherwise undetectable. Unless you’re maybe married to him, like Kylie; or log thousands of miles, with him since college, like Clayton; or sit across from him, long after your food is finished, like me, refilling your water glass, trying to get to the bottom.Conner might exude a calm, steady strength—but inside he’s not so different than the rest of us: as vulnerable as a new McMansion.If 2025 was his best year yet as a professional marathoner—or perhaps any American professional marathoner ever—2026 has, so far at least, been his worst. His most inconsistent.In late March, he pulled out of the Boston Marathon. “Unfortunately, my fitness has not progressed well enough,” he posted on Instagram. As for the app, he actually deleted it long ago on his phone; he keeps his account on Kylie’s—and rarely looks at it.Every body needs a break. Even Conner’s. “It’s the first marathon we said we’re going to run that he’s not running,” Eyestone tells me days before the announcement. Conner was crushed. Missing any race would be wrenching, but missing Boston? Especially after giving the world his word, that was not Conner’s style.The Boston Athletic Association and Conner’s sponsors flew him out for the 130th annual April race anyway, where he did a shakeout run for Nike, participated in a Shokz panel, and cheered his heart out for everyone he trains with under Eyestone, including Rory Linkletter, Clayton Young, and sudden star Kodi Kleven—who all PR’d.Michael BigginsConner doesn’t just want to be the fastest American marathoner—what he really wants is a spot on the marathon podium.“It was really hard not to be jealous,” Conner admits when I call him after Boston. “Waking up on race day was tough.” A cool, clear morning, the conditions were perfect. “I felt like I was missing out,” he says. “It was weird not to be nervous. I wanted to be nervous.” Bonus, though, to sitting this one out: Conner slept like a baby. (Or wishes his new baby, born in July, would.)Still, Conner is always nervous, about all sorts of things. About Sour Patch Kids. About accidentally doping. About USADA drug testers knocking on his door. About Instagram (“and all the little side comments”) getting in his head. About his newfound celebrity. About doing the wrong thing. About saying the wrong thing. About watching the Conner Mantz: The American Record documentary. About reading this article. (Oh, it’s harmless!)Running, though? For Conner—for most of us—“that’s the calming thing.”As is the routine of running itself. It’s what he learned in Ghana: It’s the simplicity of routine that allows him to focus so singularly.It’s why he goes on long runs with friends every Saturday. And to church with family every Sunday. And saunas after every workout. It’s why he and Kylie try to do date nights once a week. Tonight? They’re planning to play Battleship, with candy, a fun idea Kylie found on Instagram.It’s why he makes sure he showers (twice) before a race—the night before and then again in the morning. “I’m actually kind of worried about that,” he admits. “It’s kind of a routine thing.”When I ask him to detail his daily routine, it sounds less simple, more like Sally Albright ordering a deli sandwich. Conner wakes at 6 a.m. Eats a banana and Maurten Solid 160 bar. Sometimes toast and jam. A typical weekday is 10 to 16 miles, with friends. He snacks every two waking hours. Most days, he eats two midday meals. Tuesdays and Thursdays, lifting days, Kylie packs him a bigger lunch (sandwich, bars, fruit, protein shake), which he’ll consume while walking from the car to the gym. Around 1 p.m., driving home, he’ll eat eggs or last night’s leftovers, then rest. Catch up on emails, texts. Then he runs again, solo, four to eight miles. Then showers, eats dinner with Kylie, and goes to bed. Then gets up and does it all again. Ultimately, logging anywhere from 100 to 130 miles a week.Church Sundays, of course, are a true day of rest. Otherwise, apart from a talk at a local school or dinner at Magleby’s when sponsors come to town, Conner’s schedule is exact. Predictable. As routine as a bus route. With a driver who doesn’t take his eyes off the road.It’s no wonder Conner Mantz’s TV is dark, his walls blank. His focus lies beyond them. On bigger things. On running. On religion. On now raising a child. Conner doesn’t have the time, interest, or mental space to binge The Pitt or wander the local (and lovely) Springville Museum of Art, let alone loll around his living room scrolling from Picasso to Pollock. Like Kipchoge once said: “Only the disciplined ones in life are free.”Is disciplined just another word for dull? Isn’t consistency basically …boring?I’ve always wondered, actually: Why are so many of the best distance runners so snoozy? It finally dawned on me the other day. As I rolled out of bed at 7 a.m., brushed my teeth, pulled on my black leggings, laced up my Sauconys, and ran out the door for either six or nine or 13.1 miles—like I’ve been doing every morning, for decades. Conner is boring because …I’m boring! Because, well, running is boring. Runners are boring! Mile for mile. Gloriously, dreadfully, consistently boring. Every single self-proclaimed runner among us. Boring, in a way, is what it means to be one.And some are more boring—more focused, more extremely supremely consistent—and, yeah, more born to be runners than others.Turns out, boring is what it takes to obliterate records. To grace podiums. To be the best. To “be the Mantz,” as one of many Conner puns put it. But even the most secular, non-Mormon among us understands: There is solace in routine. Meaning in mundanity. For Conner, come 2028, there might even be gold in it.I call Conner to catch up in early May. He’s back from babymooning in Hawaii. Hosting family in town. The crack in the drywall has been sealed. Though he’s hesitant to admit it, his body is not yet quite fully healed.He’s inspired by the feats of the recent London Marathon. Looking toward the fall, starting with racing the Copenhagen Half Marathon in September. “If Sabastian Sawe and Yomif Kejelcha can break two hours, it makes me think, ‘What can I do?’” he says. “With the right race, on the right day… If I dot my i’s and cross my t’s, how good can I be?”He ponders. Then apologizes. He’s got to run. He’s got a crib to assemble. And other exciting things to do.Rachel Levin is a San Francisco-based journalist and author of LOOK BIG: And Other Tips for Surviving Animal Encounters of All Kinds. She has written for such publications as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Outside, the New Yorker, and Eater, where she was the San Francisco restaurant critic. An occasional columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, she is the co-author of EAT SOMETHING: A Wise Sons Cookbook for Jews Who Like Food and Food Lovers Who Like Jews, which Eater named one of 2020’s Best New Cookbooks.