Welcome to the Running Explained podcast. I'm your host, Coach Elizabeth. When I started running at the age of 29, I had so many questions and what felt like nowhere to turn to for answers. So now I'm here to answer all your questions about running and running adjacent topics to help you become a better, smarter, more knowledgeable runner. Whether you're brand new or you've been doing this for a while,

there's always more we can learn about running. My guest this week is Matt Chidam,

runner, coach, and host of the Rambling Runner podcast. And our topic this week is talking all about

potential, the potential that you and I have inside of us to be the absolute best runner we are capable of being and how long

it actually takes to realize that potential and how close we can even get as regular people

who are not full-time professional athletes. Because here's the thing, most of us are capable of

far, far more than we realize, but we're just not thinking big enough.

Matt, welcome to the show. I'm excited to have you here. This is going to be great. You were on my show

a couple weeks ago. I'm so excited to be on your show. We're both New Englanders, which means

that we've been running in hot soup for the last month. But I'm excited to get out of it and to be talking to you today. For listeners who don't know who you are, tell us who are you. And most importantly, how did you become a runner? Yeah. So my name is Matt Chittam. And I am the host of the Rambling Runner podcast. I'm actually one of the co-hosts of the Relay podcast, which features seven other people, which is a lot of fun. I've been in the running media space for the last

six or seven years now. When I become a runner, I'd say technically I became a runner when I was

in middle school when my dad quit smoking and took up a new addiction of road running. So I would hop in it was, you know, five and six, I'm sorry, fifth, like fifth and sixth grade. I would hop into like local, you know, kids races that he was doing, he'd do like the 5K or whatever. And then I would do the kids race and then quickly thereafter, I just would do the five Ks with him. And then as a high school athlete and and then as a college athlete, I would always use running as training for a lot of the sports I was in.

I did do track in high school, but I can't say I was dedicated to it by any stretch of the imagination.

And then post-college I got into running once my college basketball career ended.

And it was a way for me to to stay fit or at least

try to stay fit and, you know, have some sort of athletic community outside of my job.

So today we're going to be talking about this idea of potential, the potential that we have,

the potential that we are trying to fulfill.

And I love when that you pitched this idea to me, because this is

actually, it dovetailed so nicely with some messages that I got in recently. I'm going to, I'm going to reference

them one specifically. But this idea of fulfilling your potential, achieving your goals, why is this

something that you want to be talking about?

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