STANFORD, Calif. – When sophomore Grant Fisher won the 5,000 meters at the NCAA Track and Field Championships, Stanford earned its first men's NCAA outdoor victory since 2012.
Fisher's triumph was not surprising given his great success in high school – two Foot Locker national cross country titles and a sub-4 mile. But the transition from high school to college champion is never a given. Fisher and Chris Miltenberg, Stanford's Franklin P. Johnson Director of Track and Field, were patient in following a plan that began when Fisher first enrolled on The Farm. They were rewarded in Eugene, when Fisher took control of a tactical race with a big finishing kick.
The following is a conversation with NCAA champ Grant Fisher:
Q: Your kick was your trademark this season. How did you develop it?
A: During my freshman year, if I had to say I had a big weakness, it was my kick. At the end of my races, I felt heavy and I didn't get a lot of drive from my legs. It was something that we worked on a lot this year.
Part of it is accumulating training, and this year I worked a lot in the weight room with Coach Allison (Ledesma) on supplemental exercises to work on my form, small body-weight things and that paid a lot of dividends as far as finishing off races when I'm tired.
And a lot of that is race simulation. I didn't know how to navigate a tactical race. It helps being older and stronger and getting that experience. When I was a freshman, I'd have a lap to go and already be pretty exhausted. You can't really kick off of that. There is a point in a race when everyone starts kicking. I wanted to be fresh enough to be able to do it when I got there.
Q: You read the NCAA race well. How did you know where to position yourself?
A: A lot of it has to do with experience. Racing collegiately is very different than racing in high school. Even your tactical races were totally different. In high school, a lot of people weren't mentally prepared and didn't know what to do in a tactical race, including myself. But in college, everybody knows what's going on. Everybody knows going into a championship race that it's going to be tactical and everyone knows what the best spot to be in is.
Q: How do you get to those spots?
A: It becomes quite difficult. You really have to defend a spot if you get it. It's really physical in college. It's reading the guys around you and knowing when to defend your spot, when to leave your spot and when to sit back and let things happen. It's so variable. You can't set a race plan around that stuff.
Q: What happens if you get locked into a strategy?
A: You'll panic.
If I say I need to be in the top five with a mile to go … At NCAA's, that was everybody's race plan. Coming up to a mile to go, you saw everybody move to the front and kind of bottleneck.
It's just king of knowing the guys around you. I've raced a lot of these guys numerous times now. I know their tendencies, know what they're good at, what they're not good at. Even at the NCAA championship, Coach and I didn't plan out a hard move that we were going to make at 200 to go or 300 to go. It was, get in the right spot, and then feel it out. Move when it's the best time.
I felt the best time was with 120 to go -- based on the guys around me, who was left, how they were breathing, and how I was feeling. There are a lot of things that go into it.
Q: Justyn Knight of Syracuse won the Payton Jordan Invitational at Stanford on May 5 in 13:17.51, by far the fastest time by a collegian this year. You didn't race in that meet. How did you feel watching that race from the stands at your home track?
A: Watching Justyn race on our campus, in a race I wasn't in … it's tough to watch a guy that you know you're going to compete with, go out and have an incredible race like that.
The thing about Justyn is, he doesn't have any big weaknesses. He can run fast. He can run shorter races really fast as well. His mile PR (3:56.87) is far faster than mine (3:59.38). Against a guy like that, it's tough to have a definitive plan on how to beat him.
Q: Did you talk to him when he was here?
A: A little bit. He's a great guy. I like Justyn a lot. He's a tough guy to beat and a good competitor. Watching him race was motivation. At the time, I was biding my time and trying to let the training come (Fisher won the Cardinal Classic in 13:37.77 two weeks earlier).
I talked to Coach Milt before that race. He said, "OK, Justyn Knight is in the fast heat. He's going to run really fast. Trust our plan. Don't let that freak you out."
It would be very easy to freak out and say, I'm so far behind. How am I going to keep up? How am I going to catch up to that when he's running world standards? It was tough at the time to see that.
I want Justyn to run super well, I want him to run well. But it's very natural to try to compare to where you are with him. I tried to spin it to be motivation rather than intimidation. (Fisher would kick past Knight on the homestretch of the NCAA meet)
Q: At the 2016 Pac-12 Championships, you ran the 1,500, but couldn't get out of the preliminary round. You got boxed in and couldn't recover. How did that race help you this year?
A: It's funny you bring that up, because that was on my mind a lot this year. That's the worst race of my college career. Tactical racing was a big weakness going into this year -- maneuvering around all this noise and activity and bumping and stuff, and getting into a spot where I could kick.
I felt I'd been getting better at it. I had been in more situations that were similar, but I would think back to that race a lot because I was really frustrated after that one.
This year at Pac-12's, Coach and I considered whether to do the 5K or the 15. I really wanted to do the 15 just to prove to myself that I could do a race like that. It turned out to be the same thing -- it was slow and tactical and it ended up being a kick with a lap to go (Fisher won with a 51-second last lap).
Being able to do that a year after a really frustrating race for me, gave me so much confidence, because I proved to myself that I could do it and was ready for that. I could compete with these guys, I could compete with 1,500 guys, I could compete with 5K guys, and I knew I could compete with 10K guys in cross too. So, I felt like that was the last piece of the puzzle and I was finally patching up that big weakness that I had.
Q: Can you describe the mentality of transitioning from a second-pack runner to the front pack?
A: It wasn't a big switch. Because when I was a freshman, even when I was in that secondary pack, I felt like I belonged in the front pack. When I finally was at a fitness level where I was, it wasn't a big mentality shift.
Early on in the season, I got the sense that I could really control a race no matter where I was – my race and the race in general. I felt I could compete from the back, from the front, from the middle, and side. I felt like I was ready in any situation. That was just due to not changing my mentality and feeling I belonged in situations where things are fast and where the stakes are high.
Q: At the NCAA's, did you feel you could handle anything, a fast race or a slow race?
A: I felt like I was ready for any race scenario. Last year at NCAA's (Fisher was sixth), it was incredibly fast. (Teammate) Sean McGorty ran 13:26, which is incredibly fast for a championship race. This year, it was almost a minute, 10 seconds slower than that (14:35.60). I felt like I was ready for pretty much anything.
That had to do with how we approached the entire season, especially getting through to the regionals and nationals. You have to be pretty tuned up speed-wise to advance through those rounds, but at the same time, you have to be pretty balanced, because anybody could go out front and hammer. It's definitely a balance.
It had to do with the plan of racing 1,500's and 5K's throughout the year, hitting both ends by not locking down on speed or strength, because things are so variable at a national championship. There are guys who can push it and guys who can kick and you have to be ready to beat all of them.
Q: I've never seen anyone smile so much at the end of races?
A: I don't know. I'm usually pretty happy at the end of races. When races are tactical you just kick at the end, they're not that taxing on anybody, it's just like an anaerobic effort at the end, so you're not really too tired.
But, it feels good to finish races and to have things go in a way you felt like you were ready for. When they do play out the way that you're expecting, it's pretty cool.
Q: You didn't have much opportunity to celebrate. The morning after your NCAA race, you had an 8 a.m. final. What was the exam? (Fisher recently declared his major: electrical engineering)
A: It was Math 53. Ordinary Differential Equations. It was pretty tough, pretty advanced math. I woke up at 7:30, grabbed breakfast, and then sat down for three hours to take an exam. The day before, I didn't want to study before the race. And after the race, I didn't want to study. My preparation wasn't the greatest. But, I got it done. I guess we'll find out how I did when grades come out.
Q: I know you just finished your college track season, but is it too early to think about cross country? Stanford was second in the country last year and should contend again, though you will lose seniors Sean McGorty and Garrett Sweatt. Plus, this will be the first year of the post-Edward Cheserek era.
A: It will be different. Having Ches in a race impacts everything. People respect him a lot, rightfully so. His impact and influence in a race was very significant. Now that he won't be there next year, it will be very different.
I think we'll be able to put the pieces together very well. We've got a lot of young guys building up and a lot guys going into their fifth year that are going to be big role players. Sean and Garrett won't be there. Those guys were key runners and leaders on our team. But we had so many guys that stepped up in leadership positions that I think those roles will be filled pretty quickly next year.
I don't think of myself as a leader. I'm not the most outwardly vocal person on the team. But anyone can be a leader on any given day. So, if something needs to be said or an example needs to be set, I'll be more than willing to provide that. I think it would be the wrong approach to put one person in a leadership position and rely upon them to guide everything, because at some point you have to do it for yourself. And, at some point, your leader is going to graduate.
Especially for the younger guys, it's important to make sure they know, and we've been working on this, that anyone can step up and take on a leadership role.
Q: When you came to Stanford, Coach Milt had a plan for you that was conservative in terms of number of races and holding you back somewhat during training. You've been confident that it would pay off in the long run, and never questioned it. Would you say that plan is working?
A: Even when I was still being recruited by Coach Milt, he always emphasized that in my first year in college, and even my second year, the results might not come right away. There might not be this glamorous idea of going to college and carrying over high school successes and winning everything.
It's tough when you're at the top of your game in high school and go to the next level and know that you're starting back at the bottom. Somehow, Coach had me think of that as a motivating factor, rather than kind of a chore that I have to go back through all these steps that it took to get to the top.
I was excited to be back at the bottom. I was on the same page as him in that, eventually I would get back to the top and be back where I could win races and PR. Honestly, it happened a lot quicker than I expected. I didn't expect to start winning races at this point. Even in high school, I didn't really start winning races until my junior year or so.
Even if you're not running well at the beginning of the season, there are people that like to project the rest of the season based on that. Meanwhile, there are guys that you compete against who are running super fast early in the season. But Coach Milt makes sure you're not overdoing it early, and not being greedy in workouts and trying to do too much too early.
I think Coach Milt has a really good skill of holding us back and letting us loose when it matters. I trust Coach with everything he does. When we were talking about race plans, even before the race, Coach wasn't doing much coaching leading up to it. There wasn't a whole lot to be said. At the end of our talk before the race, Coach just said, "I trust you." That's a lot of confidence from your coach.