A lightly-recruited runner who became an All-American at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, Matt Haugen says, "I was so hungry after not making the state meets in high school, I had a burning will to improve myself in college." And he did. That desire led Matt to successfully compete in distance running not only at the collegiate level but at the national and international levels in triathlons and coaching.

The son of Harold, an elementary school teacher, and Nancy Haugen, a homemaker, Matt has a twin brother, Mark, and two younger sisters, Jayne and Cathy. Born in 1956, Matt appreciated his youth of a simpler time which included lots of outdoors play with neighborhood kids and exploring their Roseville, Minnesota area. Tagging along with his father who led sport and recreation activities at school on Saturdays, Matt enrolled in a summer baseball program, becoming a member of the championship summer league team at age 15 which included pitching a no-hitter. As with many recognized runners, Matt's time in the 600-yard run in a physical fitness test caught the attention of a physical education teacher and Matt was steered to the running track. Switching from football to cross country as a 10th-grader, Matt set records in the two- (9:48) and three-mile (15:38) distances at Kellogg High School (closed in 1986), winning the North Suburban Conference Cross Country Championship as a junior and placing runner-up in an injury-plagued senior year. Idolizing Steve Prefontaine and future local Olympian Steve Plasencia (New Hope, Robbinsdale Cooper), Matt was disappointed not to qualify for any state meets and only Macalester College and Golden Valley Lutheran College approached him about competing following his graduation in 1975.

Opting instead to attend and run at St. Olaf (where he had run a two-mile high school race on their 176-yard indoor dirt track and finished fourth, one spot behind Dick Beardsley of Wayzata), Matt made dramatic strides. He dropped his mile time to 4:15, recorded a 25:03 five-mile time, was the MIAC cross country champion in 1977, and concluded the year achieving All-American status with a fifth-place finish at nationals on a snow-covered golf course in Cleveland won by cross-town rival Dale Kramer (Glenwood) of Carleton College. Matt states, "My college coaches, Bill Thornton and David Troy, taught me that I could always do more than I thought I could, that pride was important during a race, that one should never feel sorry for yourself during a race, and that easy days were supposed to be very easy. My college teammates—who were my new idols—pushed and pulled and affirmed me and the guys that I promised myself to always go to the wall for." Two of the teammates Matt particularly admired were Minnesota athletes who became All-Americans: Mike Palmquist (Chisholm) and Todd Kempainen (Minnetonka, Hopkins High School). During his senior year, Matt set a St. Olaf school record in the six-mile run with a time of 29:43.

After graduating with a degree in psychology in 1979, Matt's next venture was to Penn State for a master's degree. He took up marathoning and ran a 2:32 debut and a personal best 2:23:38 at the 1982 Marine Corps Marathon which claimed sixth place. Intrigued by a story in Sports Illustrated about the grueling Nice, France Triathlon, Matt recalled biking from Roseville to the family cabin in Aitkin (125 miles) as an eighth-grader and decided to pursue duathlons (bike-run races) in 1983 and triathlons a year later. Matt had a plan: "First, my decision to study exercise science and sport psychology at Penn State was pivotal in my ascent as an athlete. Second, my detailed daily log enhanced my self-awareness regarding training effects and recovery needs, and third, my decision to coach myself, and train alone, allowed me to follow a plan that was consistent, without distraction, and tailored for me."  

Memorable triathlons Matt has completed are the Ironman in Hawaii (three times with an 63rd-place finish and 18th-best marathon time out of 1,325 finishers in the 1991competition), the Canada Ironman (three times, with a 12th-place finish in 1993), The World's Toughest Triathlon at Lake Tahoe (twice), Ironman Lanzarote at the Canary Islands, Ironman Zurich in Switzerland, and the hugely supported 1992 Ironman Roth in Germany in 8:41—the 12th-best time ever registered by an American at the time—with over 100,000 fans along the route. As he did at the 1977 NCAA Division III cross country championship in six inches of snow, Matt relates he does better in tough conditions. "I was always motivated to race out-of-state and in other countries in order to compete against the best competition and to have a destination event that would make me dig deeper on race day."

Perhaps the race Matt takes the greatest pride in is the Pike's Peak Half-Marathon, Marathon Doubler on consecutive days. The half-marathon is a grueling and tricky course to train for and maneuver as the 13.1-mile route ascends 7,815 feet in elevation to the peak at 14,115 feet. The next day the climb is repeated plus the descent to consummate a full marathon. At age 50, Matt placed third overall, an astonishing feat for a flatlander running among mountaineers! The 2007 podium-finish brought Matt to tears when he called his father, and he now remarks, "[It] capped the end of my career."

Professionally, "Coach Matt" taught and coached cross country, Nordic skiing, and track at St. Olaf from 1985-97. He then moved to Colorado Springs when he was offered the USA Triathlon National Team Coach and Program Director position in 1997 and remained at that travel-demanding job through the 2000 Olympics. Later, Matt was the head men's cross country coach and assistant men's track coach at Macalester from 2003 until 2020 while also coaching runners and triathletes privately through Performance Power. "The Macalester runners are smart, hardworking national and international athletes. They have made me more adaptable as a coach." Matt now serves as a Hennepin County Corrections Officer, mentoring incarcerated men who need affirming.

Matt and his wife, Ida Bah, a senior analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank in Minneapolis, now live in Victoria and had a baby girl, Amie Lee, born in April. Matt also has a 29-year-old daughter, Kelsey Dornfeld, a Hopkins High School graduate who now lives in Madison, Wisconsin, from a previous marriage.

With a positive attitude, creative training techniques, a fondness for developing mental skills, and love for affirmation, Matt capsulizes it into coaching, saying, "As much as I love racing, I would rather watch my team race because I always put my team first."