2024 Paris Olympian and runner Matt Wilkinson visited M-A’s cross country practice on Tuesday, sharing his motivations, challenges, and journey into professional running with the team. Wilkinson also answered runners’ questions, took pictures, and ran alongside the team.
Wilkinson began his running career in high school where he ran semi-competitively. Although he was initially unsure about continuing running at the collegiate level, Wilkinson ended up loving the team culture, and eventually committed to run Division III at Carleton College.
After four years, Wilkinson attended graduate school at University of Minnesota, where he ran Division I and quickly scored a contract with Under Armour. He placed second in the U.S. Olympic Trials and narrowly missed qualifying for the Olympic finals this summer in the steeplechase.
During practice, M-A runners peppered Wilkinson with questions about training, injury prevention, and pursuing running in college.
Leading up to the Olympics, Wilkinson ran without a day off for almost six months, clocking 100 to 150 miles per week. As for nutrition, he is a big fan of the famous Olympic Village chocolate muffins, post-race ice cream and fast food, and drinks three two-liter bottles of water a day.
Runners also listened to Wilkinson’s underdog story. In high school and early in college, Wilkinson was a solid runner, but never the best. In fact, he never qualified for the high school state track meet. However, he continued to persevere. Wilkinson’s passion for running went beyond competition, and brought him to where he is today.
For one, Wilkinson genuinely loved being on a team. “Running was something I fell in love with as a kid and just wanted to continue doing,” he said. “The team culture is really special in cross country and track.”
“There’s a lot of bad races out there, where it’s just helpful to be able to say, ‘Oh, I had a bad race, but that’s not where I get all my self worth from.’ There’s other important things to focus on, which I think is very valuable,” he said.
His story and message resonated with the team, especially those dealing with these expectations and achieving balance.
“It was so inspiring how he didn’t go to State [championships] as a high schooler, and still had the motivation and passion to keep running and eventually become an Olympian. It’s a pretty big deal, because it means any ordinary person with his motivation and passion could succeed like him,” senior Sophie Chi said.
“I really enjoyed learning his story, because he started off at a pretty average level and worked his way up, which I found super inspiring and motivational,” junior Riya Mehta said.
As someone who went through the student-athlete pipeline and made a career out of running, Wilkinson stressed the importance of having an intrinsic love for what you do. “Many of those kids that were really good in high school kind of lost interest in it, or they were only doing it because they were really good at it,” he said.
