SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO — For decades, tourists have come to this south Orange County town each March to celebrate the return of the swallows to Mission San Juan Capistrano, the nearly 250-year-old stone church that is the birds’ landing spot after a 6,000-mile flight from Goya in northern Argentina.
In recent years, March has seen another migratory pattern to San Juan Capistrano that has also attracted global attention.
America’s best distance runners and world-class athletes from around the planet flock to The Ten, a high-performance distance carnival at J Serra High School, less than five minutes up via Camino Capistrano from the Mission, and the promise of ideal race conditions to reach Olympic Games, Olympic Trials or World Championships qualifying standards in the 5,000-, 1,500- and especially 10,000-meter runs.
The star of Fast Times at J Serra High has been Grant Fisher, American distance running’s leading man.
At The Ten in 2022, the former NCAA champion at Stanford shattered the American record at 10,000 with a 26-minute, 33.84-second clocking, the fastest time ever run by a man born outside of Africa. In his slipstream that night, runners from Canada, Australia and Scotland also broke their national 10,000 records.
Fisher again headlines The Ten on Saturday night, the fastest seed in a field of 36 runners from 16 countries that includes nine Olympians, 10 World Championships participants and Northern Arizona’s Nico Young, the former Newbury Park High star who last week swept the NCAA indoor 3,000 and 5,000 titles.
Fisher has set six American records at four distances since February 2022. But as Fisher, 26, enters this Olympic season in the prime of his career, he is not focused on the clock.
“It’s not about chasing time,” he said. “It’s about chasing medals.”
As in medals in the 10,000 and/or 5,000 at the Olympic Games in Paris later this summer.
A generation ago, Fisher’s comments would have been considered laughable,…
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