Need to improve my speed and capacity to qualify for Olympics, says Jinson Johnson

National record holder and the Asian Games champion Jinson Johnson wouldn’t blame the incidents in the action-packed race including some pushing and even a runner tumbling for crashing out in the 1500m first-round heats at the recent World Athletics Championships in Doha.

“Of course, I got blocked with somebody falling, these things happen in a race but I have to improve myself. Only if I have more ‘capacity’ [can I] pull again but I don’t have that. And, if you noticed, Timothy Cheruiyot, the world leader from Kenya, has a personal best of 3:28 but he clocked 3:36 in the heats. And I, a 3:35 runner clocked 3:39. So that was how the race was.” said the 28-year-old in a chat with Sportstar after his heats at the 59th National Open in Ranchi on Thursday.

Johnson added that he has to improve by three to four seconds to run along with the World’s best. He also revealed that he did not feel comfortable with the race pace in Doha. “The first lap was 57, the second 61 and then the third was 58, that was a problem, too,” he said.

The Army athlete, who will be running in the World Military Games in Wuhan (China) next week, now plans to improve his speed and capacity to become stronger and qualify for the Olympics.

“I have to improve my personal best (3:35.24s) to go to the Tokyo Olympics (entry standard 3:35.00s). I need to improve my aerobic capacity, speed endurance and my long-distance training,” said Johnson.

“In India, I do about 100 to 120kms a week, I think we need to improve on that. But we cannot say how much more kilometres I need to do, at least not now, the coach will decide on that.”

After the Military Games, Johnson will resume his training with coach Scott Simmons at Colorado Springs in the USA. And he is excited to have some quality runners to train with.

“This year’s World Championship finalist is there, Olympic (5000m) silver medallist Paul Chelimo is also there. Training with them will make a difference. I couldn’t adapt well when I last went there because I was there for just 20 days. That’s too short a period to try anything.”