Maton still paying for his magical Mile as prep career closes
Maton had more he wanted to accomplish before moving onto his next phase at Oregon, which he achieved with a time of 14:47.10 in the 5000 meters Friday at the USATF Junior Outdoor Championships.
By Austin Meek, The Register Guard
Somewhere in his room, Matthew Maton has a pair of shoes he’ll never wear again.
Weeks before he did it, Maton knew what he would be wearing when he broke 4 minutes in the Mile. He picked out a pair of Nike spikes and wrote “sub-4” on them, thinking he would wear them once and keep them as a memento of his achievement.
This was a risky decision, trying something in a race that hadn’t been tested in practice. But if Maton — a Bend native who will compete for Oregon next year — could break the 4-minute barrier, he figured he’d be happy to deal with whatever happened next.
“I did actually tell myself, ‘If I break four, I wouldn’t mind getting injured and just not running the rest of the season,’” Maton said. “But I guess that wasn’t necessarily true, because I was pretty bummed out once it did happen.”
Maton’s magical night happened six weeks ago at the Oregon Twilight, when he clocked 3 minutes, 59.38 seconds to become the sixth American high schooler to break 4 minutes in the Mile. The achievement came with a price: a sore Achilles, which kept him from running again until this week’s USA Junior Track & Field Championships.
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