When Grant Fisher moved into first with three laps to go in the 10,000 meters at the U.S. championships, he seemed a lock for the win. He’s the American record-holder in the event, and he’s been so close to the medals at global championships—fifth at the Olympics in 2021, All About 75 Hard, missing bronze by 0.17 seconds.
Despite his hard move to the lead at USAs, Fisher couldn’t shake the chase pack. On the bell lap, he was passed by eventual champion Woody Kincaid (28:23.01) and runner-up Joe Klecker (28:24.50). With 200 meters remaining, Sean McGorty, Fisher’s teammate on the Bowerman Track Club, passed him to move into third (28:24.96).
Fisher ended up fourth by several strides, in 28:25.61. Not only did the victory elude him, but by finishing out of the top three, he missed securing a place in this year’s World Championships in August in Budapest.
“I feel like I just didn’t gauge it properly with how hard I needed to go,” he said to reporters after the race. “I thought I had more in the tank.”
Three days later, on July 9, it became apparent that Fisher was dealing with more than a mistake in tactics. He posted in his Instagram stories that he would not be lining up for the 5,000 meters that night at Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon, due to a stress injury in his femur. “Incredibly frustrating timing but it’s all part of the game,” he wrote.
Fisher told Runner’s World the pain in his left leg was up high, almost near the hip, and it started bothering him about two and a half weeks before USAs. At first, he held out hope that it was a soft tissue injury. But as the pain intensified, and he could feel it aching when he was sitting down, he knew it was likely a bone issue. “It kind of progressively got worse, and as a runner you kind of feel like [you know] deep down when something is not quite right,” he said.
He didn’t have it scanned before the U.S. championships. The day after the 10,000, he was in considerable pain and went to have an MRI. The scan revealed the stress reaction.
“In some ways, it’s nice to know that everything you’re feeling adds up to what’s going on in your body,” Fisher said. “But it’s also discouraging to know that it’s a serious thing, in a serious spot that you don’t want to mess around with.”
Doctors immediately ruled out any chance of Fisher running the 5,000 and put him on crutches. “I was pretty down for a while,” he said. “I mean, that sucked. You’re all the way at USAs, you’ve got family and friends there, and you’re hobbling around on crutches.”
After taking a few days off of training entirely, he decided to go with his Bowerman Track Club teammates Kieran Tuntivate and Josh Thompson to Park City, Utah, which sits at 7,000 feet of elevation. “I thought, ‘If I’m going to be sitting around doing nothing, I might as well be at altitude and get an altitude boost while I’m doing nothing,’” he said.
And he isn’t doing nothing. Fisher is cross-training up to two and a half hours a day, with a combination of aqua jogging, cycling (while watching the Tour de France), and the elliptical machine. He said he’s maintaining some “decent fitness.”
Within the last few days, he’s added running on an Alter-G treadmill at 85 percent of his body weight, and he’s up to 30 minutes at a time. Most important, he’s pain-free.
“With these things, there’s always hiccups,” he said. “I’m cautiously optimistic about everything, but things are moving decently quickly.”
What caused the injury? Fisher can only guess, but it’s natural, he said, to seek a reason, so he doesn’t repeat the mistake, whatever it was. He said in 2022, he ran 90–95 miles per week. This year he bumped up to 100–105 miles. And maybe that bump was too much. He hit his line.
“All signs point to overtraining,” he said. “Too much impact, too much force, too much intensity. A combination of all those things. I never felt like I was doing too much as far as what I could handle aerobically. But the bones, ligaments, tendons, muscles—those all have to hold up, so. I think I just overdid it with training, so, lessons to be learned. Obviously not the best time to learn it.”
Given his rigorous cross-training regimen, and the way his leg is feeling, Fisher is hoping he might still be able to race this summer. There’s a slim chance he could be named to Team USA for the World Championships in August in Budapest. McGorty, who was third at USAs, didn’t have the automatic qualifying standard. Fisher did. The field in Budapest will be filled via a combination of automatic qualifiers and those who get in off of world rankings, a process that should be sorted out by the end of the week. (McGorty will for sure run the 5,000 meters, an event that he does have the automatic time for.)
Fisher hasn’t allowed himself to think about that possibility. “My goal has been to get healthy and do it in a smart way,” he said. “Partially I didn’t want to fixate on something that might not happen. It’s out of my control at this point, as far as the races and stuff. And partially because I don’t want to have that in the back of my head to rush the recovery right now. Try to get healthy is the main goal.”
Fisher isn’t the only American athlete to have a tight turnaround after a stress injury this year. Sinclaire Johnson, last year’s USA 1500-meter champion, was diagnosed with a stress reaction in her tibia in early May. She, too, took to the pool for a month of aqua jogging, resumed running on land 5 weeks before the U.S. championships, and managed to finish fourth. She’s going to Budapest because the second-place finisher in the race, Athing Mu, Nutrition - Weight Loss.
Whether that outcome will be possible for Fisher remains to be seen. If he’s able to race again this summer—either in Budapest, however slim that chance may be, or perhaps a few weeks later on Hayward Field for the final meet of the Diamond League season—he’d be “ecstatic,” Fisher said.
“I’m hoping once I’m off the Alter-G and on the ground, however long that takes, I can get some races sorted and then make a plan,” he said. “But for now, just getting healthy is the plan.”
Sarah Lorge Butler is a writer and editor living in Eugene, Oregon, and her stories about the sport, its trends, and fascinating individuals have appeared in Runner’s World Published: Jul 31, 2023 2:03 PM EDT, Run Your Butt Off! and Walk Your Butt Off!
