We talk to the American marathon record-holder about the art of mastering the marathon, his Chicago success and why the event is only going to get faster.
The brakes are well and truly off and Conner Mantz, for one, is delighted about it. The 28-year-old American has always been an athlete who preferred to push the pace so to see the world’s best marathon runners continually throwing caution to the wind and attacking the distance head on rather than fearing it brings a smile to his face.
Advances in a number of areas, but most noticeably shoe technology, have changed the game to such an extent that, on the men’s side, the late Kelvin Kiptum’s world record of 2:00:35 is consistently, and openly, being placed front and centre as the target to beat.
Sabastian Sawe made no secret of going after it in Berlin in late September and reached the halfway mark on course to do just that in 60:16, precisely the same split recorded by a group headed by Jacob Kiplimo and John Korir at the 13.1-mile point in Chicago a couple of weeks later. Holding that pace proved to be beyond any of them, with Sawe clocking a world-leading 2:02:16 during his win in the German capital, while Kiplimo hit the line first in the windy city with 2:02:23. Mantz was a big name in the Chicago field, too, and admits that trying to join in the “fun” did cross his mind.
“I was very surprised at how fast they went out and there were a few other athletes with them, going either at world record pace, or at about world record pace,” he tells AW. “That sounded really fun to go for and I was slightly tempted to jump on that train and see how long I could last. But I know my fitness. I know I’m not there yet. I hope to be one day, but it’s not going to happen anytime soon, so I’m just going to be training and seeing where I end up in a few years.
“You can run somewhere between five and 10 seconds a mile quicker for around 18 miles, almost to 20 miles but, after that, I think the wheels really fall off. I could have run with them and seen what I could have done. I could have felt pretty good for halfway, but it’s a marathon, it’s not a half marathon, so it’s not worth it to go with them. It’s not worth the fun to miss out on going for an actual record, and the fun that comes with actually getting records.”
It was a case of first things first for Mantz and his top priority in Chicago was officially becoming the fastest American marathon runner in history. Any bold proclamations about gunning for Khalid Khannouchi’s 2:05:38 from 2002 had been deemed unnecessary by Mantz’s impressive performance in Boston back in April. He finished fourth, and 30 seconds inside that mark in 2:05:08, but with the Boston course having an overall downhill elevation from start to finish, it is not eligible for records.
Achieving that time over the notoriously difficult Massachussets route signalled that he was clearly capable of capturing the national record and the wide, flat roads of Chicago last month presented the perfect opportunity to do just that. Having resisted the temptation to rocket off the start line with Kiplimo and company, he got his reward with a run of 2:04:43 – at the time of writing the 19th fastest time in the world this year and the quickest by an athlete born outside of Africa. Given that he ran 2:08:16 on his marathon debut in 2022, and 2:08:12 at last summer’s Paris Olympics, this year can safely be placed into the “breakthrough” category for the man who hails from Utah.
“I think learning the event more is probably the biggest thing [responsible for the improved times],” he says. “I wouldn’t say [it’s down to] any changes in training, but the accumulation of everything. As runners, sometimes we like to talk about lifetime fitness, and I felt the miles [I’ve run] over the last so many years started stacking up. Things just started clicking a little bit better.
“Everything else was relatively the same to what I did last year so it was nice to see the jump happen, because sometimes when we’re stagnant for too long, we begin to question everything we’re doing, and then it yields poor performance.”
Instead, there has been much for Mantz to celebrate – and celebrate he did. He and his family were taken out to dinner in Chicago by his sponsors, Nike, while there was a party thrown in his honour by a friend. “We had ice cream and pie and some cake,” he grins, but there has been little time for basking in any glory.
“My wife just gave me a lot of housing projects to do,” laughs Mantz. “She was like: ‘All right, now that you’re done, here’s the list of chores’, so that’s been one of the ways I’ve celebrated.”
Amidst putting up curtains and cleaning the family cars, he has been returning to running, too. There is another special assignment he already has on his mind – competing at the World Cross Country Championships in Florida in early January. First he will have to come through the US trials at the beginning of December but the chance to compete for his country in a discipline that holds “a special place in my heart” is too good to pass up.
“I began running on the roads when I was younger, because we didn’t have a cross country programme until I was in high school, so I didn’t start any cross country races until I was about 14,” says Mantz. “But that’s where I think I really came to love competing against others, and I think that’s where I was able to get the best out of myself.
“In college, cross country was my best event, and I was surrounded by a really good cross country team so it really became the season I looked forward to the most. But, unfortunately, the professional scene in cross country doesn’t get the views that the roads or the track get so you have to focus on those and then cross country is something you get to do a couple times a year. I wish, professionally, that cross country was the main thing, because I love it so much.
“If I make that team, I’ll be very excited. I’ve raced in Florida a few times but I have to qualify first. It can be scary trying to jump into it again, but I hope my old cross country legs are still there.”
The championships will provide a mid-winter change of training stimulus for Mantz as he plots his way to another meeting with the marathon. One of the big spring races – be that Tokyo, Boston or London – will be in his future but exactly which one has yet to be confirmed. The New York marathon was about to unfold as this issue went to print, while Valencia – famed for its speed – will take place on December 7, so there may well have been another shift forward in the event by the time he comes to cover 26.2 miles again.
As well as the world record chase, a recurring question is when we might see the first ever legal sub two-hour marathon being run. Eliud Kipchoge showed it was possible under highly controlled conditions in 2019 and Kiptum was closing in on it before his untimely death last year. Sisay Lemma, who ran 2:01:48 to become the fourth-fastest marathon runner in history in Valencia two years ago, will be next to go on the offensive at the same Spanish venue and Mantz believes it will only be a matter of time until the two-hour hurdle is cleared.
“Between Jacob Kiplimo, John Korir and Sabastian Sawe, there’s a lot of good people right now who are going to figure it out,” he says. “There’s Tamirat Tola as well – his 2023 to 2024 was pretty incredible. I feel like there’s enough guys that, on the right day, if the weather’s perfect and they are able to put it together, I think someone’s going to break the two-hour mark. However it’s going to be easier said than done. I think there’s enough guys that are going to be pretty close, but close doesn’t count.
“Eliud really showed it’s possible and he wasn’t super young when he did it, either, so I think there could be some other guys who could do it soon. It could take 10 years, it could take 20 years, but it could happen in the next three years, if I were to make a guess.”
He adds: “I think the new shoes gave us a sense of confidence. Sometimes it ends up being a false sense of confidence, but there’s a sense of confidence nonetheless and you can see it from a lot of races. People are willing to go for it.”
Mantz knows very well that anyone choosing to compete in elite level marathon running certainly isn’t taking the easy route. The competition will only get fiercer but he intends to be in the thick of it and has set his sights on adding his name to the list of marathon major winners. Long distance running has been part of his life for a long time now and remarkably he was just 12 when he completed his first half marathon.
“My dad was trying to lose some weight and improve his fitness so he signed up for one with my older brother, and they trained together,” Mantz explains. “Seeing them do that, I was asking: ‘When do I get to do one?’. My dad signed me up for one just over three years later and I really enjoyed it. It was that inspiration of seeing them run one together that made me want to get into running.”
So what does the 28-year-old Mantz think his 12-year-old self would make of his progress?
“The 12-year-old Conner would be very naive and ignorant of how difficult this is, and so he’d be very proud but he’d say: ‘Of course you’d be this good’. I didn’t understand how fast anybody else ever was, but I always thought I was very quick so I would have been like: ‘Of course I was going to be that good. Why wouldn’t I be?’. But now I know how difficult it is to get here. The 12-year-old Conner might be a little too cocky and confident in himself!”
Given the body of work he has accumulated between then and now, the current version of Mantz can allow himself a pat on the back, too.
How close is the sub two-hour marathon?
Andy Jones, Professor of Applied Physiology in the Department of Public Health and Sport Sciences at the University of Exeter, has worked with Nike as part of their Breaking 2 marathon project and Faith Kipyegon’s recent attempt at breaking the four-minute mile. We got his thoughts on when, and how, this major landmark might fall.
How close do you think we are to the two-hour marathon mark being broken legally?
I think it would already have happened if Kelvin Kiptum were still with us. I also think that Eliud Kipchoge would have done it if he’d run a marathon in the right place in the right conditions around the time he ran 1:59:40. I think it will definitely happen within 10 years, will probably happen within five years and could possibly happen within two years.
What do you see as being the biggest obstacle that is standing in the way? Which area do you see as having the most room for improvement, given the rapid advances in technology, nutrition and so on?
The main thing is finding the successor to Kipchoge and Kiptum. The most likely contenders amongst the current top athletes are perhaps Jacob Kiplimo, Sebastian Sawe, Sisay Lemma and Benson Kipruto but others may yet emerge, almost certainly from East Africa. Ideally many of these top athletes would be in the same race at the same time (to enable drafting) on a fast course and with perfect weather.
Why is the element of “physiological resilience” that you’ve spoken about so important? And how can you prepare to improve that?
Physiological resilience, or fatigue resistance, is vital for the marathon. Yes, you need a high VO2 max, excellent running economy and a high lactate threshold / critical speed on the start line but the best marathon runners are also able to minimise the decline in these variables as the marathon progresses so that speed is sustained throughout the race. There may well be a genetic component to resilience, and we don’t yet know the best ways to train to improve it. However, consistency in training over many years along with a high volume of quality training, progressive long runs and occasional training in a fasted/glycogen-depleted state may play a role.
Is that why Jacob Kiplimo running 56:42 for the half marathon doesn’t necessarily translate into a sub two-hour marathon?
Yes. It also explains why Mo Farah didn’t run faster at the marathon and why Jakob Ingebrigtsen struggled over the half marathon distance. It’s possible to be “too fast” at shorter distances. It’s like a pendulum – if you have too much speed and anaerobic capability your marathon capability might be compromised, and vice versa.
Does that mean experience is a big factor?
Yes, a marathon is long enough where there is enough time for various things to go wrong. Optimising pacing, drafting, nutrition etc. takes time to master. The person that breaks two hours will be outstanding over 10km and the half marathon, but won’t be “too fast”.
Andy Jones will be speaking at the 2025 Endurance Academy, taking place on November 21-23 in Belgrade. See: endurance-academy.com
