Who the Hell Is Matt Richtman, America’s Newest Marathon Star?

A year ago, Matt Richtman was a good but mostly unheralded college runner toiling away in his final semester of classes at Montana State University in Bozeman and, like most graduating seniors, wasn’t really sure what would come next.

A year later, after winning Sunday’s Los Angeles Marathon in stunning fashion in 2:07:56, he’s established himself as one of the best marathon runners in the country and is now tied for the seventh-fastest marathoner in U.S. history, per Tilastopaja. (Note: The LA Marathon is not eligible for records since it is net downhill and the route is point-to-point.)

His win, the first by an American runner in LA since 1994, proved he was no fluke, but instead further leveled-up his steep trajectory of success that began last October with his fourth-place, 2:10:47 debut at the Twin-Cities Marathon, and continued with his sixth-place, 1:01:14 effort at the Published: Mar 19, 2025 7:15 PM EDT Shelby Houlihan Wins the 5,000 at U.S. Champs.

To say that Richtman has burst on the scene of elite American running is a vast understatement, especially given the beyond-his-years competitiveness and racing instincts he has displayed so far.

How did it happen? And how did it happen so fast? The puzzle pieces and the potential have been there all along, he’s just managed to craft it together almost perfectly over the past five months or so.

“It’s been a really interesting year,” Richtman admitted. “There have been a lot of changes in these last several of months, but I would say it’s always kind of been there. I was never running super great in college. I had some really good times, but I think it is a little bit of a surprise to most people to see me running this well just because I wasn’t at the top in college. A lot of it has been learning by doing.”

It sounds almost too simple to be true, but Richtman has been a crafty self-starter who’s learned by doing all of his life. The same strong work ethic, humble demeanor, and curious, analytical mind that made him a top Illinois high school runner—as well as a skilled woodworker—have also been keys to helping him become a proficient marathoner.

“It’s very surreal,” his dad, Tom, said on Sunday afternoon after the race. “He keeps surprising us, but he’s been doing that all along.”

‘The Running Richtmans’

Richtman grew up in Elburn, Illinois, a small, semi-rural town about 45 miles west of Chicago, with an older sister, Rebecca, and a younger sister, Rachel. His mom, Karen, who works as a flight attendant for United Airlines, was the first runner in the household, having taken to running 5Ks with a niece in the early 2000s. But eventually the whole family began participating in the annual race, too. “We were known as the ‘Running Richtmans’ for a while back then,” Karen recalled on Sunday.

One year on the morning of the local 5K, his sisters each had soccer games, so Tom took them to the games and Matt, who was about 8 years old at the time, ran with his mom. She had been training for a PR and told Matt if they got separated or if he had to walk, they’d reconnect at the finish line. What ensued was perhaps his first breakthrough race.

“The race starts and we’re running together, and I was like, ‘This is so great. I am so proud of him,’” Karen said. “And then, all of a sudden, he just takes off running ahead of me. And I initially thought, ‘Oh no, he’s going to be so tired that he’s going to be on the side of the road crying thinking he can’t run anymore because he started so fast. But I never saw him again. I was worried the whole time, and when I finally got to the finish line, he was standing there smiling and eating a hot dog.”

Those early 5K experiences made a lasting impression on Richtman, who said he really began to discover an innate love for running when he was in the eighth grade. His sisters also developed an enduring passion for running, as Rebecca, 26, was a four-time NAIA national champion runner for Montana Tech and is now an assistant coach at Purdue University, and Rachel, 22, is a fifth-year senior on the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs track team.

Richtman became a five-time all-state runner in high school and the 2017 Illinois 2A state champion in cross-country as a senior. As he progressed through his career, he found the longer he ran in training, the more he enjoyed it and the better he raced. While that might have been simply a factor of consistent aerobic development that many teenage runners experience, his dad said it also led to him engaging in training and racing with a more cerebral perspective.

That’s also when his interest in following the family passion for woodworking shared by his grandfather, father, and uncle began to emerge. Several times Matt came home from long runs with a piece of driftwood or a broken branch he found along a rural road, and then, envisioned something special he could make from it.

It’s a hobby he’s continued to pursue through the years, having made everything from scale model airplanes and salad bowls, to a 14-foot canoe, a violin, and a guitar. (He gave the guitar to his sister and tried to learn violin but didn’t stick with it.)

“He’s a craftsman. That’s how he thinks,” Tom said. “He likes to create things. If he’s not running or working with me, he’s often down in the basement working on something. He’s found wood in a dumpster that was being thrown out and has turned it into something really amazing. Like I said, he’s always surprising us.”

He gave himself half a chance

Even though he had already earned a degree in mechanical engineering in May of 2023, Richtman gave into the encouragement of his Montana State coaches and teammates and decided to return to Bozeman for a sixth year of school and a fifth year of collegiate running—he spent this first two years attending Bradley University—with the hope of improving on his 40th place individual finish in the NCAA Cross-Country Championships and to see if he could help the Bobcats better their 25th-place team showing. He achieved both, finishing 26th overall to earn All-American status for the second straight year and helping the team finish 13th.

He considered going to flight school to become a pilot—he’s always been keen on airplanes—but that would have required attending another school in Montana. He kept focusing on running and by springtime he had lowered his personal best time in the 10,000 meters to 28:21.79. But because he wasn’t good enough to make it to the NCAA championships last June or attract the attention of a shoe sponsor, he graduated in May as a good but mostly unheralded runner.

That might have been the end of this story, but Richtman didn’t sense his competitive running career was over yet and decided to run the Missoula Half Marathon late last June, his first time racing longer than 6.2 miles. He felt smooth and in control the whole way as he finished second in 1:05:45, and immediately started thinking ahead.

“I really enjoyed that because a lot of good friends were there racing with me, so at that point, I thought, ‘You know, I might as well try a marathon,’” he said. “And that’s when I decided to start training for my first marathon.”

He’s self-coached and self-motivated

Last summer, Richtman moved back home with his parents and didn’t necessarily think he’d be back in Bozeman. He began working for his dad’s residential carpentry business, serving as a volunteer cross-country coach at his high school, and ramping up his training for the Twin Cities Marathon.

True to his crafty, self-taught ways, he’s developed his training programs for his first two marathons on his own, although he admits he takes cues for his training from a lot of sources and running experiences. That includes Chad Clarey and Clayton Brundige, his track and cross-country coaches at Kaneland High School; and his college coach Lyle Weese at Montana State, as well as numerous teammates along the way.

He’s also gleaned loads of information from books, articles, and online videos, but most of his success can be attributed to cautiously experimenting and continuing to push his own limits. He’s always loved the 18-mile long runs he started doing under Weese’s guidance in Bozeman, and as he carefully upped his training volume, he cautiously listened to his body and made adjustments along the way.

“I’ve been running for 10 years now, so I’ve picked up quite a bit of knowledge about it,” he said. “Obviously, there’s always more to learn from other people and more experience to gain in the marathon. It’s nice to have other influences. I take a lot of the training that I was doing in college and have kind of adapted it a little bit more for the longer races I’m doing now.”

He peaked at about 100 miles per week before Twin Cities, but he hit 113 miles several times in his build-up to Los Angeles. His go-to speedier workouts have been long tempo runs and mile repeats between 4:40 and 4:55.

He did all of his training buildup for Twin Cities alone in and around Elburn (elevation 840 feet), but after he signed a professional contract with Asics in January, ran a strong Why TikTok Is Flooded With Track Memes Right Now (1:01:20), and committed to run the Los Angeles Marathon, he decided to head back to Bozeman (elevation 4,800 feet) for some high-altitude training and the chance to run with some of his former teammates.

“For me, it’s been really beneficial to try something new, and see how it really works with my body,” he said. “After Twin Cities, I really enjoyed that experience, and I thought, ‘You know what? This might be my favorite distance, and I’m gonna continue on with it. It’s been nice to experiment with stuff in training and be able to tailor it to what I want and what I need.”

What is next?

Build Speed Like 16-Year-Old Cooper Lutkenhaus fast course. Although there are several sections of rolling hills, the event has produced some pretty fast times when runners have pushed each other deep into the race. On Sunday, Richtman was locked into the lead group through 16 miles when he decided to be the speedy catalyst. At mile 16, he dropped a 4:38 mile to break the race open. Kenyans Moses Kiptoo Kurgat and Sammy Rotich fell off the pace, but Athanas Kioko tried to keep pace as Richtman kept pushing.

By mile 18, Richtman had built a 1-minute lead on Kioko and by 22 miles, he increased it to 2.5 minutes. As proof that his self-coaching methods have worked wonders so far, he barely slowed over the final miles and wound up winning by nearly 3 minutes, finishing with the second-fastest time in the event’s 40-year history.

Richtman’s next marathon will no doubt be even more competitive—very likely Berlin, Chicago, or New York—and also come with a sizable appearance fee. Along with Conner Mantz and Clayton Young, he’s already put himself in the upper echelon of American marathoners and, at least for now, become one of the early contenders to make the U.S. team for the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.

“At Twin Cities, for a lot of the first half of the race, I was a little bit more nervous about what would happen once I got to mile 20 and after that, so I was maybe a little bit more conservative,” he said. “For this one, I definitely had more knowledge about how the distance plays out. I was just a lot more comfortable in the middle stages of the race than I had been in my previous marathon. But there is so much to learn about the marathon, every one is different.”