Minutes after Conner Mantz crossed the finish line of the Chicago Marathon in record-breaking time, his coach, Ed Eyestone, asked him in front of a TV audience the question that is on the minds of all running aficionados: “I guess the next question is, how far can we take it now from here?”

How much faster can he go?

Mantz, the two-time NCAA champion from BYU via Smithfield, Utah, broke the 22-year-old American record in running to a fourth-place finish in Chicago on Oct. 12, continuing a yearlong streak of brilliant racing.

In April, he posted a time of 2:05:08 while running to a fourth-place finish in the Boston Marathon — a time that was superior to the American record but not allowed for record purposes because Boston is a point-to-point course. Then he topped that in Chicago, r

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