Distance champion’s career is just heating up
In Grand Blanc, Mich., a suburb of Flint, Grant Fisher had a rule of thumb.
“If it dropped below zero, I wouldn’t run outside.” he said.
That happened “fairly often,” he added. “The wind-chill could be minus-25 or 30.”
Maybe the rough weather that he did endure helped him win the national cross-country championship as a high school junior — in balmy San Diego. That’s when he got on the radar of a host of college track and field coaches, including Stanford’s Chris Miltenberg.
On a July day, Miltenberg spent four hours at the Fisher home, talking to Grant and his parents, both of whom were runners in college (his father at Arizona State and his mother at Houston). They talked about Grant’s goals “not just to be one of the best in the NCAA but at the world level,” Miltenberg said.
A few years later, the 5foot-10 Stanford junior is the defending Pac-12 champion in the 1,500 going into the conference championships Saturday and Sunday at Stanford. It’s the first time the event has been on the Farm since 2007.
Oregon has won the past 11 conference titles for the men and the past nine for the women. The ninth-ranked USC men could wrest the title from the 11th-ranked Ducks and No. 22 Arizona and No. 23 Stanford also are expected to contend. Among the women, Oregon is ranked No. 2 nationally, USC 3, Stanford 7 and Arizona State 13.
Fisher is entered in both the 1,500 and the 5,000, in which he is the defending NCAA outdoor champion. He’ll see how he feels after the 1,500 final Sunday before deciding if he’ll run the 5000 a little more than two hours later. “I’d say it’s 50-50,” Miltenberg said.
Two years ago in the conference meet, the 1,500 didn’t go nearly the way Fisher had planned. The freshman got boxed in as the field started to sprint; he didn’t even make the final. “I was pretty upset about that,” he said.
Miltenberg sees it as a pivotal moment in Fisher’s development.
“It gave him the opportunity to be back in the growth mindset,” he said. “He turned around three weeks later and got sixth in the NCAA 5,000. That was a big milestone. It confirmed he could run more than the mile and the 1,500.”
The NCAA championships are June 6-9 in Eugene, Ore. Then Fisher has another year at Stanford. Then what?
“Over the next 10 years,” Miltenberg said, “Grant could be one of the best runners in America at everything from 1,500 to 10K. If you had to ask me today where his biggest strength would be, I’d say 5,000.”
For the moment, Fisher thinks the 10,000 is an awfully long slog.
“I like the 1,500 because it’s quick and exciting and tactical,” he said, “whereas in the 10K, you kind of have to wait 25 minutes for it to get quick and exciting and tactical.”
Miltenberg said many elite distance runners fall into the trap of pushing themselves too hard and too often, but he said Fisher’s father and his high school tutor, Mike Scannell, taught him the dangers of that approach early. “It’s about training smart, not just hard all the time,” Miltenberg said.
“From the very first day he got here, his maturity in that regard was above most 22-yearolds I’ve worked with,” he said. “He understood how everything had a purpose in what we did. It fit into a bigger picture.”
Besides pulling a 3.57 gradepoint average in electrical engineering and running 70 miles a week, Fisher likes watching “The Office” and “Stranger Things” on Netflix and the Austin Powers movies. He enjoys both rap and, in a nod to his dad’s tastes, ’80s rock music.
In high school, he played soccer and was good enough to be invited to the Olympic Development Program as a center midfielder. But his future was locked into track from the moment he became the seventh U.S. high schooler to run a sub-4-minute mile.
He’d love to run in the Olympics for the U.S. someday, but there’s also a chance he could run for Canada. He was born in Calgary, Alberta; his father is Canadian and his mother American, so he has dual citizenship.
Beyond track, he’d like a career that unites his engineering studies with computers. “I like the instant thing with software, where you can build something or write some code for something and see what it does instantly, whereas a lot of classes I’m in, you’re not making anything. You’re just solving formulas. I like the creative aspect.”