Matthew Erickson has a routine.

After every race — every workout, too, he takes out one of his notebooks. He still keeps the old ones — the ones he’s had since he started keeping them in seventh grade — in his room. In his current log, he’ll note what shoes he wore, what the weather was like, what he did and how he felt.

“Maybe it sounds a little bit meticulous,” the Oregon senior said.

It’s working. With his notes and a new mentality in hand, Erickson won the NCAA men’s 800 meter indoor title earlier this year, where he ran the fastest qualifying time in NCAA history before winning the final with a kick at the bell. He took an 800m win at the Oregon Team Invite earlier this outdoor season before placing second in the Big Ten final at Hayward Field on May 18. Now, after qualifying sixth overall in the NCAA West Regional two weeks ago, he’s looking for an 800m title sweep — and one more note in his log.

He’s not picky about the notebooks, for what it’s worth. He uses the same brand every time now, a small black logbook, but he doesn’t think it’s “a big deal”. What matters is what he writes.

After winning the indoor title, he said that he’d struggled with internal pressure in the past. He placed value only in the outcome of his race, not in the running. To battle that, he planned to focus on execution during his final season at Oregon. 

“It’s about making sure you perform the best you can on any given day,” he said before the outdoor season. “If you execute your plan and the outcome isn’t quite what you want, you take that as a win because you’re coming away with lessons learned.”

There’s a benefit to it, too, he said. You become better at planning when you think deeper about the process — better at tactical races, which he said are more important in outdoor competition than indoor because of the greater available space on the track. There’s more space for him to maneuver and speed past runners on nine lanes at Hayward Field than on the banked, six-lane indoor track where he won in Virginia Beach. It pays off, eventually.

“Then, you know that when the time is right, when the fitness is there, when it’s your moment, you’ll be able to step up and execute a plan that’s there for you,” he said.

Executing plans is nothing new. Erickson started running in fourth grade — before he began to keep the logs in seventh — at home in Canada. He starred there, where he became a 10-time provincial champion in British Columbia. Since records were last updated in 2024, he still owns the BC U-23 record in the outdoor 800m, which he set last year.

He then debuted as a freshman at Oregon with a third-place finish in the 2022 Pac-12 Outdoor Championships 800m race. The next year, he’d return and take the same place — this time, he advanced to the NCAA Outdoor Championships, where he finished 15th in the preliminary round.

As a junior, he’d expand his repertoire, setting new lifetime bests in both the 400m and 1500m races. He qualified for the NCAA West Regional again in the 800m, but was two places shy of advancing to Hayward Field for the championship.

This year, finally, he made it back.

At the Penn Relays in April, Erickson anchored Oregon’s 4x800m team. At the bell, he led a field that included Penn State, Michigan and Georgetown. He held the group on his shoulder through to the final straightaway, but was outpaced by Bulldogs anchor Abel Teffra down the stretch. Oregon finished second. Georgetown finished first.

Some time after the race, Erickson grabbed his notebook and wrote what he’d just told Ducks head coach Jerry Schumacher: “I’m never getting outkicked again.”

The last time Erickson ran at Hayward Field, there was a medal on the line: the 2025 Big Ten Outdoor Championships. There, he ran the fastest qualifying time of the 44-man field (1:46.99). Where he faltered, though, wasn’t with speed.

The final race instead became tactical. He had a plan, he said. It was to not get boxed in (that is, closed off from any potential forward move by other athletes). That wasn’t what happened.

On the second lap of the slower-than-usual 800m, Erickson was stuck behind and between competitors — pinned on the rail. He was boxed in. When the final straightaway arrived, he had to drop to the back of the field before swinging wide into the second and third lanes. He powered down the stretch. His effort was supreme.

It wasn’t, though, quite enough. Erickson’s final time, 1:47.922, was just one one-thousandth of a second slower than winner Allon Clay’s 1:47.921. 

“You can’t get away with that sometimes,” Erickson said of his race. The race was lost. His confidence, though, wasn’t shaken.

“I felt like I had a better kick than everyone on the day,” he said afterward. “I think I still did today.”

He’d talked about never getting outkicked, but this wasn’t about that. He had the better burst, but his positioning was what failed him. He had the last 100m.

“Now, it’s about executing the first 700 meters,” he said. “If you can execute the first 700m, and then you have the best last 100m, you’re going to win the race.”

Sometimes, he’ll take the notebooks out at home and read them. Other times, he just remembers what he wrote, like from when he ran a 400m race at this year’s Oregon Twilight. 

A year prior, he said, he finished the race and was “dead on the track”, according to his book. This year, he was up within the minute and taking his victory lap. He didn’t love his time, he said — he thought that he could’ve run faster than the 47.04 that won him the race.

But he wasn’t thinking about outcomes. Instead, what he talked about that day was how much better he felt than last year. Instead, what he said was that, “The effort was different this year, in a good way.”

There is, though, a time when outcomes become important. For Erickson, that time is now. There’s a medal on the line (should he qualify on Wednesday for the final on Friday evening) — recognition in what’s likely his last-ever collegiate race. Executing the plan matters, there, of course, but so does the podium.

After he won the 800m indoor title in March, Erickson said that he “never really goes into a season with time expectations.” It’s just not something he focuses on.

“Indoors breeds that, because the way you qualify is objectively on paper,” he said. It’s about the paper you see before. He’s outside now, and the only piece of paper he cares about now is in his log.

He’ll see that one after the race.

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