free shipping with purchases wrote:
runnER/DR wrote:
There's mountains of evidence these guys don't get better on a mission. There are many examples of big-time recruits who got worse. Kids always come back out of shape and usually have gained at least 10 lbs.
Mantz, to your question ran like a 17:55 5K the last day of his mission. He lost 3 to 3.5 minutes of fitness on that mission. It took him a solid year to regain his form.
And Mantz is the best possible outcome. There are big-time recruits on their roster now who have been back for years and haven't run a single respectable time.
My question was: do these Mormon guys get better after college? But, I guess, thanks for that spontaneous emission of tangential information.
Pro camp would say they're still on an upward swing regaining fitness after going on a mission, but I'm not sure that's true. In this case, Mantz probably doesn't have a ton of upside - maybe 27:20-:30 - which, crazy as it sounds, is not getting you on a team these days. Maybe a Pan Am team.
They're still people with regular physiology, so I think it depends, just like asking if any other athletes improve beyond the age of 24. Jared Ward, of course, made progress in the marathon. (Which is probably less relevant since you'd expect people to get better with age). Back in the day, Doug Padilla ran his fastest times after college. Linkletter, who was mentioned previously in this thread, isn't relevant in this discussion since he didn't go on a mission. There are others/will be others from BYU that run post-collegiate that also didn't go on missions.
Recently, it seems a lot of the BYU guys go the marathon route instead of track after college. I don't know what mileage other college guys run, but Mantz seems to be on the high end of mileage, per his Strava. Assuming the other teammates are also running big miles, would you expect that to get them closer to their peak during college since they may not be significantly increasing mileage as pros? Anyone know of other current collegiate athlete examples that are training like Mantz...could be an interesting case study over the next few years.