Congratulations on your race in Huesden. How much of a relief was that race for you, knowing you finally hit the IAAF standard?

That had been the plan all along which was making Huesden the race where we focused on the time. We thought that would be the race where I could run the time. Those previous races were to just get the travel out and just get used to the time change, but Huesden was definitely the one that we were aiming towards. 

 

You’ve had a pretty impressive progression this year. If someone had told you in January that you were going to be in this position, would you be surprised?

Yes I would be. The last couple years haven’t gone according to plan. I’ve been training and racing but always with an injury. I was never fully trained and my races were never where I really wanted them to be, but this year I got a lot more training in. I had a whole healthy spring and a really good altitude trip. I was hoping for the best, but didn’t really know how things would play out. 

 

What kind of injuries did you have?

Well, [laughs] there’s a long list. I have a deep peroneal nerve problem that’s ongoing and then I had posterior tendonitis, peroneal tendonitis, and a stress fracture in my foot. 

 

Back-tracking to the USATF Outdoor Championships, you finished fourth and earned a qualifying spot for the World Championship team, but you also needed to run the IAAF standard time of 4:06 to officially run for Team USA. How did you mentally get through these past few weeks knowing you still had to run that mark?

After USA’s I was really excited, but I felt like there was an asterisk on it. I couldn’t fully celebrate about making the team because I knew I had to get the standard. The first couple races I was really focused on time and trying to run certain splits and stuff, which isn’t a good way for me to race and it’s not the way I compete the best. So going into Huesden I was excited and told my coach I was just going to focus on competing and putting myself in the race because it was a good field and the race was going to be set up for me run the standard if I was just competitive. 

 

What were some of your pre-season goals? Did you expect and plan to make the World Championship team?

Going into the year it was obviously at the top of the list because I feel like there would be no point in doing this sport if I wasn’t trying to be competitive at the highest level. So my two goals for the season were to run the Olympic “A” standard and to qualify for the world team. 

 

Let’s talk about your start in running. You went to Huntington University and played basketball and track right?

Yeah my main sport in college and really since I started playing at four years-old was basketball. I went to a pretty small school and the track team was small and the coaches were always looking to recruit people so he offered me a small scholarship if I came out for the team because I had done track in high school. My track season was mid-March through the end of May so I never really considered myself a runner, I was always a basketball player who did track in the spring. 

 

Was it difficult balancing the training for both sports?

No not really because I never did indoor track, just outdoor, and I would literally finish my basketball season and two weeks later compete in my first track meet. There wasn’t a whole lot of training that went on for me. I was really low mileage and raced quite a bit. 

 

What events did you do?

I mainly ran the 400m and 400m hurdles and then occasionally I’d run the 800m, but I just never had the fitness for anything longer than that. 

 

What were some of your notable performances?

I went to the NAIA Championships my sophomore year as part of two relay teams, the 4x400m and 4x800m relay. I qualified as an individual my junior year, but I would say I wasn’t very good until my senior year. I qualified in the 400m hurdles and the 800m as a senior, but I only ran the 800m and finished fourth. So that was my first All American performance on the track. That year was the year where I was really pushed into going after a career in professional running because going into my senior year of college, my 800m PR was 2:19 and that year I lowered it to 2:07 by the end. 

 

Wow! That’s a huge drop!

Yeah! The biggest difference was my senior year was the first time I really had trained and ran during the basketball season. I was the only one on my team who played my position and we didn’t do much conditioning at practice so I would run two or three miles a day after practices and do maybe a five mile run on Sundays so maybe 15 miles a week, but I think that was just enough to give me a little bit of fitness going into track season where I could run really well starting out. 

 

I would say that helped. What did you study at Huntington?

Exercise science. My original plan before all this running stuff was to go to veterinary school and work with high performance horses, like horses that you see at the Olympics, the show jumpers and cross country horses, that kind of thing. I grew up on a horse farm and my family raised horses. My sister and I were pretty competitive showing our horses at horse shows and different competitions. 

 

At what point did you make the decision to pursue running instead?

My senior year of track the thinking was, I’ve still never been a “runner” you know, and I thought what could I do if I actually trained full time? My husband and I were trying to decide where to take that. That summer we worked a running camp with Amy Begley and her husband Andrew Begley. They’re both from the same area of Indiana as we are. So working that camp we started talking to Andrew about the best way to proceed, how do I go about being a recent college graduate to running as a professional? And through those discussions, he offered to coach me, and so after I was done with classes in the fall of 2009, we moved out to Beaverton, Oregon. 

 

You have since moved to Eugene and train with the Oregon Track Club with Coach Mark Rowland. When did you join that group?

I joined the OTC in the fall of 2012 after the London Olympics. I’d been training in Eugene in the spring leading up to the trials, and really liked the environment there. So I reached out to the OTC to see if they had room on their roster. Coach Rowland is a former athlete which I think is really beneficial because he can relate more to the athletes. I really like that he wants and expects the runners to take responsibility for themselves. It’s different for each individual and what they need, but for me, I manage myself pretty well so I like that he’s my coach in that he writes my sessions, develops my workouts, but I’m ultimately responsible for owning the overall program and he doesn’t micromanage everyday. He just kind of gives me an outline of the week and I can fill it in based on how I’m feeling and what I see is best. 

 

Looking ahead to the World Championships in Beijing, what do you hope to get from the experience?

I want the experience of being able to compete at the highest level in our sport. That’s what we all want. I’m really happy that I have the opportunity to do that, line up with the best girls out there and wear the USA jersey. 

 

The time I ran in Huesden, which is my PR, definitely gave me the confidence that I can compete at the highest level. I’ve never had my season extend this long so that’s going to be something new, but my coach has a good plan for that and I think I’ll handle that well. 

 

 

Johnson will compete in the 800m at the FloTrack Throwdown on August 8 before representing Team USA in the 1500m at the World Championships in Beijing.