It's easy to get sucked into the competitiveness of sports, especially when metals are up for grabs,

but in a few short weeks, when six US marathoners start their race here at the Paris Olympics,

two runners will be rooting for each other.

There's very few people that know me as well as Connor does just because we've run

thousands if not tens of thousands of miles together and so we have lots of time to have great conversations.

It's just so beneficial to just have somebody I can talk to.

And if I have a bad workout or a bad race, but then Clayton does well, it's very motivating. That's Clayton Young and Connor Mance, the two are longtime training partners and friends, as well as the two fastest

men's marathoners representing the U.S. of the Olympics. The two first met on a run at Brigham Young

University in 2017 and as Clayton Young remembers it it was far from a race among

equals. I remember looking back on this run as we were a pack of 15 to 20 guys.

He had just come back from serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,

and he was probably, you know, 20 to 30 pounds overweight,

but he was just hanging on for dear life and I

stayed up with them for about four and a half miles before I was like there is no

way I can hope this pace and I think that's when I first really started to discover like how gritty Connor is.

Consider this with years of friendship and thousands of miles binding them together

can Clayton Young and Connor Mans break away from the pack and take home gold in these Olympic Games?

From NPR, I'm Wanna Summers in Paris.

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