Mike Scannell coached Grant Fisher to two bronze medals (5000 and 10,000 meters) in the Paris Olympics--a feat no American runner had achieved previously. Which brings up a good question: Who is Mike Scannell?

Turns out he is a forever-friend of Grant Fisher's family, and coached Fisher to 2 Footlocker XC Championships victories back when Fisher was a Michigan high schooler. Then he sat back and watched Fisher run 4 years at Stanford, and 4 years with the Bowerman Track Club.

A year ago, Fisher called Scannell to say he was ready for a change of location and coaching. He moved to Park City, UT, and Scannell wrote up a training plan for the long pre-Paris buildup.

In this Pod, Scannell sketches his personal background in running (2:16 marathon!), and describes how he and Fisher designed their successful Olympic plan. Some major topics:

# Scannell's 4 key workouts for every training week

# How to build speed with a minimal amount of speedwork

# What Scannell thinks of Fisher's marathon potential

# Can Jakob Ingebrigtsen be beaten at 5000 meters?

# The current state of American running

And much more.

On ⁠X.com,⁠ Scannell posts a daily motivational tip. Here's a great recent one: "We always save something for ‘another day.’  That’s in part why I don’t do, ‘last one, fast one.’  The other reason is that I don’t want kids to ‘fail’ in practice, and running all out means you run until your body fails. I like kids to walk away with success on the brain."

WHERE TO FIND "RUNNING: STATE OF THE SPORT"

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