Mike Scannell on Coaching Grant Fisher | Episode 4

Mike Scannell talks to Sarah Lorge Butler about coaching Grant Fisher to Olympic Bronze medals in the 5,000m and 10,000m last year, as well as two indoor world records in February.

Some Highlights:

• Discussion of Grant and Mike's post-Olympic recovery
• The importance of pacers maintaining rhythm in high-stakes races
• Grant thanking his pacer mid-race, while setting the indoor 5,000m world record
• What makes Grant unique, from a mental standpoint
• On whether it's harder to get high school kids to commit to working hard than it was 10 years ago
• High school kids being "mindless balls of clay"
• Is Mike still seeking a training partner for Grant?
• Mike's running, and how he tests all of the workouts he assigns on himself first
• How, at age 62, he remains healthy enough to do so
• How he got into coaching
• On learning from other coaches.
• How he'll approach Grand Slam Track, from a training perspective
• When Grant will run a marathon

Sarah's Runner's World article on the four pacers who helped Grant Fisher set his two world records this winter: https://www.runnersworld.com/news/a63875236/grant-fisher-pacers-world-records/

Sarah Lorge Butler on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/slorgebutler.bsky.social

Fast Women on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fastwomen/

Fast Women on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/fastwomen.bsky.social

Subscribe to the Fast Women newsletter: https://fastwomen.substack.com/

Thanks for being one of the original listeners of the Fast People podcast!

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 0:52 On getting back to work after the Olympics
• 5:50 How Grant recovered at the end of the season
• 7:31 How Grant's world records came to be
• 10:18 The pacers who helped Grant set his world records
• 14:23 On Grant thanking his pacer mid-race
• 16:09 What's special about Grant's mental approach
• 19:17 Coaching high school kids
• 22:10 ISO a training partner?
• 23:43 The explosion of medals earned by U.S. distance men
• 27:14 Mike's own running, and testing out workouts on himself
• 31:50 How Mike stays healthy enough to be a workout guinea pig
• 34:10 How Mike got into coaching
• 38:14 Which coaches he learns from
• 39:26 The year ahead
• 40:59 When Grant will run a marathon
• 44:30 Outro