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Former BYU runner, new mom goes viral on TikTok, Reddit

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Makenna Myler places first in the women’s division of the Deseret News Half Marathon at Liberty Park in Salt Lake City

Makenna Myler places first in the women’s division of the Deseret News Half Marathon at Liberty Park in Salt Lake City on Friday, July 23, 2021.

Spenser Heaps, Deseret News

To say it’s been an adventurous last 18 months for former BYU runner Makenna Myler would be a pretty big understatement.

As has been chronicled by news sites around the world, she became pregnant early last year and then on Oct. 10, ran a mile in five minutes and 25 seconds — just 10 days before she gave birth to daughter Kenny Lou.

By this spring, Myler was running 400...miles...per month, and in April started entering races to qualify for Olympic trials. After a few failed attempts, she qualified in the 10k at the end of May.

At trials a month later, Myler missed out on the Olympics, placing 14th out of 44 runners, but less than three weeks later on July 14, she signed a contract to run professionally for Asics.

Her debut as a pro came in the Deseret News half marathon on July 23, where she destroyed the course record en route to a win.

All of that brings us to this week. Myler’s husband Mike created and posted a TikTok video compiling clips from the above-mentioned events over the last 18 months, and it has gone viral on social media.

@themylers

I turned in my resignation papers and will be living vicariously through my wife and daughter going forward. -M. #running #asics #pregnanttiktok

♬ Night Invasion (Cover DMC Maxx Flash) - DMC Maxx Flash

On TikTok, the video had over 977,000 likes as of Saturday (total views of the video are not accessible), and to boot, the video was posted on Reddit and ended up on the front page of the site Saturday.

That post had roughly 69,000 upvotes as of Saturday afternoon.