"There's 1,000 Grant Fishers out there right now"
Scannell tried to stop coaching in 2011.
He had already quit once, in 1995, after a stint as the triathlon coach at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Co. The runner was coaxed back into coaching at his local high school, Grand Blanc, when the young kids wanted to train with this old guy still clocking sub-15 minute efforts at 5k road races. His star was Omar Kaddurah, a three-time All-American in high school who set the Michigan state record for 1600m (4:07).
Scannell planned to move away from the sport after Kaddurah graduated. Kaddurah himself moved on - after a brief career at Georgetown, he graduated early to enroll in medical school.
"I was going to quit," Scannell said. "[But] Dan Fisher, who was a friend of mine, had a son who was in eighth grade who played soccer."
Scannell promised his former Arizona State University track teammate that he would stick around. But he didn't expect much.
"Nobody could have imagined that Grant Fisher could have been this fast. There's 1,000 Grant Fishers out there right now," he said. "He was nothing special. He was the fastest kid in his middle school, but who cares?"
Who cares, indeed. Fast-forward four years this weekend and that five-minute eighth-grade miler broke Kaddurah's Michigan state meet record this past weekend in 4:00.28. Fisher's indoor 4:03.54 ranks U.S. No. 4 All-Time, despite the fact that his fall precluded three or more steps inside the infield. Technically, that move would preclude a disqualification.
Scannell is no longer a sub-15 minute weekend warrior and would rather not talk about his own running exploits.
"Don't you have any other questions?"
But the run, in fact, is where many of the Fisher-Scannell heart-to-hearts take place.
"I can comfortably run a six-minute pace," he said. "If they go on a long run, I can do that, but that's about it. We talk about stuff when we're warming down a lot. That's 90 percent of the time when we discuss stuff."
That's how he knows, for instance, that tonight's race at the Festival of Miles will feature Fisher at his most sharp since winning the mile at New Balance Nationals Indoor in March. The senior ran U.S. No. 4 All-Time in that race, clocking 4:03.54, despite disastrously tripping on the rail in the final curve.
"When he changed gears that final time on the backstretch there, it sent goosebumps - chills - up my spine," he said. "That's championship racing. I don't need to see the last 30 meters, I got everything I wanted out of that race."
UPDATE -
Grant Fisher finished third in the professional race at the Nike Festival of Miles on Thursday. Fisher ran 3:59.38, the exact mark Matthew Maton ran when he broke four minutes. Read the recap.
"What was the secret, they wanted to know; in a thousand different ways they wanted to know The Secret. And not one of them was prepared, truly prepared to believe that it had not so much to do with chemicals and zippy mental tricks as with that most unprofound and sometimes heart-rending process of removing, molecule by molecule, the very tough rubber that comprised the bottoms of his training shoes. The Trial of Miles; Miles of Trials." - Once A Runner, John L. Parker, Jr.
