Grant Fisher punched his ticket to a second Olympic Games on Friday night after winning his first U.S. national title in the 10,000 meters at the Olympic Trials in Eugene. Earlier this month, he joined U.S. cross-country ski head coach Matt Whitcomb and the rest of the American ski community for the first National Nordic Foundation summer speaker series.

Fisher relocated to Park City after leaving the Bowerman Track Club and has been rubbing shoulders with skiers and snowboarders at the High Performance Center since. There’s a little Nordic in his blood, too, having been born in Calgary. His dad’s side of the family apparently has a cross-country skiing background. 

“So yeah, I I think if I were to stay stayed in Canada, I probably would be involved in some cross country skiing, maybe some Nordic combined stuff growing up in Calgary,” Fisher said during the session, adding that his parents thought he’d end up being a ski jumper.

Fisher said his goal for the hour-long discussion, which ended up going almost 80 minutes, was to highlight similarities and differences between running and cross-country skiing in terms of training and competition demands.

Outline of topics

• Competition
• Altitude training
• Coaching relationships
• Lactate/threshold training
• Cross-training
• The long run
• Recovery metrics
• Race mindsets
• Toughness
• Final thoughts

My main takeaways

Competition

**In both sports, the only things that matter are global championships. There’s tons of pressure on athletes at the World Championships and the Olympics in terms of sponsorships and national team nomination.

Altitude training

“I think altitude training is quite necessary if you want to compete on the global stage,” Fisher started before stating that the top 20 finishers in the Tokyo Olympics 10k final all used altitude strategies (I haven’t fact-checked him on this, just FYI).

**Altitude is the default for runners. In other words, you’re always at altitude unless you’re competing or absorbing a particularly hard block of training. Could skiers learn from this perhaps?

**Fisher’s altitude incorporation pattern = sea level > altitude > race. The altitude blocks vary depending on the time of the year. Usually, they’re between 5-8 weeks.

** Fisher comes down to sea level 48 hours before a competition. He prefers to stay there for 72 hours, max.

**Fisher trains at 6,000-7000 feet and sleeps in an altitude tent set for around 10,000.

Coaching relationships

Fisher recently departed the Bowerman Track Club and went back to his high school coach, Mike Scannell. His calculus for that change, was going from one coach who was more into the “art of coaching,” to another, Scannell, who is “more scientific.”

He also values the shared understanding that Fisher has a limited window to maximize his potential, and thus, doing all the little things (altitude to double-thresholds to heat training) is a given.

Lactate/threshold training

I would say the most time was spent discussing this topic.

Fisher’s logic on incorporating more threshold work is as follows: the most limiting factor in an athlete maximizing potential is injury/time off. Because of the musculoskeletal stress of high-speed intervals and very high-intensity training in running, the risk of injury is high when following what he called the “old model.” (This would be: race-pace intervals on Tuesday, more hard/fast stuff on Friday, and a long run on Sunday — with everything else being super easy/slow).

Fisher thinks you get more bang for your buck — at a very low risk — by doing double thresholds.

His ‘morning’ threshold is a “true” threshold — i.e. targeting a blood lactate level of 3.5 mmol/L. On a pain scale of 1-10, this is a 7, Fisher said. The afternoon is more in the 2.5 range (which he said feels more like a 4).

“And what people have found, myself included, is that you can do a ton of those sessions with little repercussions on the body physically, mechanically,” he said, adding that it’s possible to get into “a really good place” fitness-wise from just that.

“The other stuff is just final touches,” Fisher continued. “Getting really rhythmic at 10-k pace, or really comfortable at 5-k-pace, or you know, making sure your top end speed is really up there for closing down a race.”

Whitcomb chimed in, saying he believes Nordic skiers can get stuck in a paradigm where intervals all look the same (4-6 x 10 min on with 2-3 min rest).

Cross-training

If the last subject took the bulk of the time, this subject might contain some of the main sporting cross-over takeaways. Basically, Fisher said that runners could learn to lean into different forms of cross-training more.

 “Often your eyes aren’t opened until you’re injured and have to cross train,” said Fisher — who was injured and cross-trained himself to a 12:54 5k last fall. “And you realize how much fitness you can maintain.”

The long run

**Skiers go on 3-4 hour runs in the mountains. Runners’ ‘long runs’ are more like 1 hour and 45 minutes, tops. But, Fisher said in that time he might cover 18-19 miles. Thus, he struggled to provide any good verbal cues for Whitcomb to use with skiers to help with improved running in these situations.

Recovery metrics

**Fisher has tried a bunch of various recovery tools in the past.

“I’ve gotten rid of all that stuff,” he said. Why? It messes with your head, and for data nerds, it can be “counterproductive.” I agree.

Race mindsets

This was my favorite topic that was covered and it bleeds into the next one, which was toughness.

Fisher was asked how he approaches a high-stress race — before, in the middle, and before the bell lap.

He said there’s a lot of visualization in the lead up. He not only images the race, but all the elements inherent to the pre-race scene as well.

“To make sure it feels familiar, even if the situation is unfamiliar,” he said. “That comfort goes a long way.”

Since most of the highest-pressure races are unrabbited, Fisher said it’s not smart to be “married to a race plan.”

“Because, it’s almost never going to work,” he added.

Instead, it’s important to be ready to react to the big moves that are made. This has a strategic component and toughness component, especially in running, where they often occur at the hardest part of the race.

“You have to go into it with a mindset that it’s going to hurt and that you’re in charge, not your body,” Fisher said in what I think was one of the most poignant quotes of the session.

“Which is a weird distinction to make,” he continued. “But if you’re able to separate it out, the pain, the fatigue, all that stuff is almost external. Those are just feedback rather than like something you have to accept.”

“Telling yourself it’s not going to be easy goes a long ways.” – Grant Fisher

Toughness + Final thoughts

If you want to hear what I thought about this topic — and hear me dissect the others further — tune into our June 22 podcast.

Hopefully that’s a good enough tease!