Now She Can't Stop Winning

She wasn't supposed to make a career out of running.

- By Svati Kirsten Narula

Diljeet Taylor is redefining what it means to coach along the way, she's turned BYU into a women's distance-running powerhouse

IT IS TEMPTING TO ASK DILJEET TAYLOR HOW SHE GETS IT ALL DONE.

It's Monday, November 8, 2021, and the head women's cross-country coach at Utah's Brigham Young University has been going nonstop since about 5:30 this morning-squeezing in a predawn run with a friend, teaching a community fitness class, driving her two boys to school, supervising her runners at practice, holding one-on-one meetings, shopping for groceries. But if any version of how do you find time escapes your lips, be prepared for Taylor to cut you off: I don't have time.

Now it's 5 p.m. and Taylor is methodically prepping dinner for her athletes-washing and slicing broccoli, brussels sprouts, and sweet potatoes on the massive marble-topped island of her gleaming white kitchen in the home she shares with her husband, Ira; their sons, 11-year-old Taj and 7-year-old Avi; and their two dogs.

The house, in a neighborhood at the foot of Provo's Little Rock Canyon, should be a mess. The kitchen floor was just replaced a day ago, there's a pool half-installed in the backyard, and a portable toilet for the construction crew sits in the driveway. But no. Every countertop is sparkling, the floors look clean enough to eat off of, and no coffee-table book is out of place. Even Taylor's bedroom, which she proudly opens to show off her two Pelotons-a treadmill and a bike has a crisply made bed with perfectly fluffed pillows.