– Fisher is also planning to race a 5000m at Boston University the following week. He is also preparing to race The Ten by Sound Running to chase the Olympic 10,000m standard. He already has the Olympic standard in the 5000m.

Here’s what Fisher said:

"After the 2023 track season, I finished that up at Pre Classic – so that was mid-September or so. For a little bit after that, I was trying to figure out what I was going to do. Ultimately, I decided to make a change. I moved out to Park City, Utah…I’m working with my old high school coach Mike Scannell. I have a really good relationship with him and going back to before I was even running when I was a kid. We have a great relationship. I really like his approach to coaching.”

On why he left Bowerman and the conversation with Jerry Schumacher:

“When I decided to leave the team, I wasn’t in Eugene at the time. I tried to call everyone on the team so they could hear it from me. I flew back to Eugene so I could talk to Jerry and have that conversation in-person. He was very understanding. He didn’t say, ‘Hey, I think you’re making a big mistake.’ Jerry is a great coach. I know that. He knows that. In a way, the conversation was me thanking him for four great years and saying, ‘Hey, I’m moving into a new chapter now but thank you for everything you’ve done for me.’ I think he understood. I know he still wants the best for me. I don’t think there was any bad blood in the conversation. There’s no bad blood now. It felt a little weird. It did feel like a breakup conversation. It wasn’t something I was looking forward to as well but I owed it to him to have the conversation in-person.

Bowerman, when I’ve been on the team, has been anywhere from 12 to 25 athletes. Each one of those of those 10-25 people all have slightly different requests and so you can’t accommodate every single person’s request…There is a massive advantage to training as a group. But the thing you lose while training as a big group is that individuality – that really fine-tuned tweaking to an individual’s needs. Because if you’re in a group of 10 guys and everyone is doing mile repeats but their reps are one second per mile different, what’s the point of having the group in the first place when everyone is running individually with minor variations. I see both sides.

As a professional group, Bowerman in the men’s 5K has had more success than pretty much any other group - if you look at the list of sub-13s and teams as of late. The Bowerman system has produced really great athletes in my event. There’s a reason for that. It’s a system that works. When you have a system that works, you can’t change it based on one person’s requests. I was ready for those little tweaks in training. That’s another reason why I’m trying something new."

On the move to Eugene:

“It’s a cliche but stress is stress. Life stress or living stress do add up and effect your training. If I weren’t a runner and could choose anywhere to live, it would not have been Eugene. But it is a good place to train and that’s where the group was based so that’s where we had to move. If I could choose anywhere as a pro runner, I would’ve chosen Park City and so that’s why I chose Park City. I really like altitude. I respond really well to it. I wanted spend more time at it. When your group is based at sea level, that’s pretty challenging to do."

Our take:

The American record holder in the 3000m, 5000m, and 10,000m just left the country’s most successful professional running group of the last decade to return to his high school coach (according to an interview with LetsRun). Like Matt Centrowitz and Courtney Frerichs, Fisher’s new home will be in Park City, which will only add to the booming real estate market of the Utah mountain town. On the surface, you might be thinking, “What is Grant Fisher thinking?”

Many similar comments were made when Emma Coburn parted ways with Mark Wetmore to be coached by her husband, who at the time had very little resume to his name. But today, Joe Bosshard is a coaching commodity, leading the largest standing army of fast women in the Mountain West... plus Scott Fauble. Alan Webb was coached by his high school coach Scott Raczko as a professional, too. So let’s suspend judgment for at least eight months and see how things pan out.

Now this is a huge win for high school coaches everywhere – America’s fastest athlete is returning to the man who helped make him. It should be noted, however, that Mike Scannell isn’t your average gym teacher who is seeking an extra paycheck for blowing a whistle at distance runners while they do wind sprints. Remember, Grant ran 3:59 in high school and won Foot Locker Nationals – he was very good. And that was accomplished with a long-term vision in mind as even back in 2015, Scannell had purposely held Fisher back.

“Grant hasn’t done any speedwork. You know why? He wasn’t capable of it yet, in my opinion. He wasn’t capable of doing speedwork because he hasn’t been old enough, strong enough and couldn’t recover from it, so we didn’t do it.”

Scannell ran 2:16 for the marathon in his debut back in 1989 to win the Phoenix City Marathon beating a then 39-year-old Bill Rodgers. Before then, he was a walk-on at Arizona State where he was teammates with Grant’s father Dan, which is the initial connection that led to his guidance starting in eighth grade.

It’s tough to change setups ahead of an Olympic year, though we have to trust Grant knows what he is doing. He has run 26:33 – let him cook!