Let's be real, do BYU guys do any mileage while on mission??

Age 20ish is probably the easiest time to return from 2 years off. So 2 years losing fitness and a year gaining it back. If there were 100 Jakob Ingebritsens, this would be a huge detriment, but there just aren't. Top runners today can get beat by someone who took 2 years off.

Niners #2

I frequently make fun of both the magical underwear and the hijab folk. both are free to live in their cultural communities. mormons are just more evangelical, so that is annoying. i don't need to follow your practices to get my own eternal progression. the eschaton is immanentizing with computing technology, not some american pioneer who wanted to have a bunch of wives and be a wannabe Moses.

Has there ever been a Kenyan Mormon?

This argument is ridiculous and I cannot believe how many people make it .

The mission is not an athletic advantage . I served a mission - midway through my D1 career and gained a ton of weight and MAYBE hit 12 miles a week - plus some core etc and an occasional 4-5 mile day if we had a treadmill or a track near by AND my companion was willing to wake up 15-30 min early . I was EXTREMELY proactive about getting it in and still came back fat and out of shape . Every mission is different - if anything I had an advantage where running is concerned because I was in the United States in a relatively safe area with access to HS tracks , residential areas to run and a treadmill in a few of the apartments I lived in. In many countries and places it’s way way harder to run - if not impossible. You don’t get to choose where you go or really have much say in your schedule etc .

if these two years were really such an advantage every school could do it - they could join the peace corps , work for two years at an easy job and just train , you could go on an actual LDS mission since everyone seems to think it is the magic bullet . People don’t because - 1. It’s freaking hard 2. It hurts more than helps in the end

missions are extremely difficult and stressful , this is not something people do for fun or to be faster or have an advantage in the NCAA. It is honestly insulting how many people on the site are bashing missions because whatever school they like is getting beat by kids who paused for two years to serve others and try to do something good.

thousands of LDS missionaries are not lying about their experience and work out time to protect BYU XC.

I personally have the utmost respect for anyone who dedicates time to serve and help and try to spread happiness and is faithful in any religion .
The make fun of the Mormons is unreal - universally accepted .

There have been a bunch of replies such as yours over the years. For some reason a portion of our running community is able to consistently reject these first hand accounts of Mormon missionary life and will continue to claim that these young men and women are getting in good mileage during their mission.

Can we just chalk this up to the fact that a portion of our running community is just plain stupid?

thanks for the sick ancestry data tho! sad to hear about ancestory.com. I get that your practices optimize for high branching factor (hence the bit with wives and children) families that stays within the church and accumulate numbers from missions? what makes your God different from Jupiter and the state of Rome that you claim to trace to?

yes, the portion that are going around trying to convince everybody else to believe in mythical beings.

Thanks for the accurate post. I remember traveling to a XC meet in the same BYU van with Henry Marsh. He used to joke about being the fat guy on the team - he really wasn't kidding. I left on my own mission after that and was shocked to learn about his successes 2 years later. I just could not believe that was the same guy. And then I had my own missionary training experiences and weight gains going from 60-70 miles a week to practically nothing and putting on 40+ pounds in a year, only to lose most of it when got some virus that laid me up for a month. If I got to run, it was only because I was lucky enough to have a companion that would run with me - there weren't very many and it was always just a worthless jog. Yea, so it's time to give it a rest.

If you’re a BYU apologist and wonder why this always comes up, it’s a simple answer:

1. Success

You have to look at BYU’s program from the perspective of an outsider (and likely one that would never consider a religious mission, and if they did would still prioritize running).

For these people, the idea of taking two years “off” and starting their running career in a more mature body seems like an advantage…and there’s no doubt it can be.

It’s also impossible to disentangle the other factors. Most (all?) of BYU’s runners are alcohol free. They also step foot on campus with a life focus that allows them to mesh as a team without much issue.

Or, its Ed Eyestone and his coaching/culture.

When you combine these things (along with redshirts/covid years) you end up with some older runners who are very successful. For some, the mission could’ve helped. For many it’s insignificant, and it’s likely harmful for a few as well.

BTW, for those mormons out there that gained 30-40 pounds, pretty sure that’s NOT what the church had in mind. It would’ve been the responsible thing to make your companion get out and exercise as scheduled.

it would have been the responsible thing to not send impressionable young people off to waste their time spreading nonsense half way around the world.

I've met many Mormons during my teaching years in Taiwan, Costa Rica and other places too numerous to mention and they always made a good impression on me for their discipline, good ethics, dedication to task, and amazing language learning ability which interested me particularly since I studied Linguistics at McGill University in Canada, and became a foreign language teacher myself.

I remember meeting Mormons in Taichung Taiwan, during my time at Providence University, Taichung, who spoke better Mandarin (after a 3 month course in Utah!), than students of Mandarin back in Canada and elsewhere, who had been studying the language for one to three years. Their (Mormons') language learning ability is second to none, absolutely. No one can equal Mormons' foreign language learning ability, including very esoteric languages like kiche in Central America, Guatemala , in a short space of time, with the exception of the US diplomatic people who also study foreign languages fast track in very rigid and disciplined conditions at the DLI. Defence Language Institute.

I may not agree with what Mormons push in their religion but I think people should bear in mind that Mormons never tried to push their religion to people who didn't wish to adhere to it and that's a very important thing and neither do they tell people that they will "go to hell" like many Christians do when they don't accept God in their lives.

All that walking and double teaming hookers is plenty of exercise.

I served a mission. Gained 50 lbs. lost 20 when I was able to run.
As part of mission rules you have to stay with your companion.
If your companion doesn't run, or want to run -- Then no running (hence the weight gain)
100% of the runners I have run with gained weight, got slower and took almost a year to get back to where they were in high school.
Subjectively - 100% of the 15+ runners I have known that have served missions feels like they would have been faster if they didn't serve.
I think a good way to contextualize the mission is image a runner being injured for 2 years - If you think that will benefit a person's athletic aspirations then a mission would be an advantage.
I do think that the increased age, muscle mass, body development may help other sports better.
Lastly BYU isn't the only school with returned missionaries. USU, Weber State, UVU and Southern Utah all have returned missionaries which typically underperform.

Your post is really believable.........no way you know any LDS missionaries that served in Israel. The church does not proselytize in Israel--so there aren't any missionaries there. Not sure how credible the rest of your statement would be given you make a silly statement like that right off the bat.

But the topic here is whether Mormons actually train while on their missions. The fact that those lying about it happening keep bringing it up is the issue. Whether a senior at BYU has an advantage is an entirely different topic.

The missionary program is not built around elite distance runners. It’s built around regular Joes who do much less exercise than BYU runners do. The time allotted for exercise on a mission can accommodate a whole range of activities and not just running. Very, very few regular Joes want to go outside and pound out a few miles to start their day, which is already going to leave them exhausted by the end. And if your companion doesn’t want to go then that’s the end of the discussion. As others have noted, this time is often seen as optional because, for the vast majority of missionaries, they get plenty of exercise already just walking around during the day. For elite distance runners though, they are getting significantly less exercise. In my case, the walking I did was about equal to the non-running exercise I got pre-mission during a typical day. Add in the fact that I served in an area where it was rude to refuse food offered to you, and weight gain was inevitable for me (even though most of my companions lost weight while serving).

Thought I'd chime in.

I'm no longer active in the Church and have no plans on ever going back

Having said that guys do not "train" on missions at all.

By asking the question one knows that the person asking has no idea about the Mormon culture. Getting new members on the is the name of the game, not future running careers.

I cheer for the BYU running teams and love their coaches but I hate the Mormon leadership of the Church.

If you reading this and wondering how much "Training" these guys get its next to nothing and families feed these guys non stop

all this sounds really weird... cool cult

This is an very good post that gives some insight into a semi-recent mission. I served 20 years ago, and we only had 30 minutes three times a week (not counting preparation day, when we had most of the day off but still had to work in the evening, and there are plenty of non-exercise things to do on P Day) rather than 30 minutes a day.

I wasn't a runner, but I do a lot of weight training. In the first few months of my mission, I could work out once a week for maybe an hour or so. In the next six weeks, I got a new companion who just got released from being an AP, so we had a car, and he was also very fit. We had a free gym that we could go to (we were in Utah), so we woke up an hour early every day to go work out before doing our missionary work. This was the only time I was able to work out regularly. I got transferred, and my mission president banned all the gyms a week or so later because he said there were "too many distractions" there.

I lost about 20 pounds of muscle (my metabolism was so fast back then that I had almost no fat) in the next six weeks, as I lost much of my appetite and was walking everywhere during the 60+ hour work weeks (not even counting the studying time). And I was so exhausted in the last year that I don't know how much I would have exercised anyway. I came home as skinny as a rail, though it only took a couple months to put the muscle back on. But I imagine it would be a lot harder to get back into D1 running shape.

Anyway, like you said, it's theoretically possible for a D1 runner to stay in shape while on a mission, but it would require incredible luck in terms of where you're sent to go, who your mission president is and who all of your companions are. We typically got a new companion every two or three months. I don't think any of my companions ever wanted to run for exercise. They usually wanted to play basketball if they exercised at all.