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Oklahoma State's Sinclaire Johnson Seeks Another Level in 1,500 at Toyota USATF Outdoor Championships

Published by
DyeStat.com   Jul 23rd 2019, 3:54pm
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After impressive turnaround following tough finish last year to win NCAA Division 1 1,500-meter title this season, Johnson isn’t placing any limits on what she can achieve on familiar track in Des Moines

By Landon Negri for DyeStat

As the 1,500-meter final contested at last years NCAA Division 1 Outdoor Championships, one of the country’s best collegiate distance runners sat in the stands, relegated to watching after failing to even make it to the final.

Yeah, it stunk.

In Sinclaire Johnson’s own words, it was embarrassing. But as she has often shown, her focus can turn, and turn pretty quickly.

“It was an exciting race,” Johnson explained, “and I actually kind of forgot about not being in the race.”

Maybe that was the first step toward an impressive one-year turnaround, or maybe it was just a great athlete appreciating greatness in front of her. What is certain is the wheels were set in motion for an incredible 12-plus months.

Johnson went from worst to first in the 1,500 meters, a phrase usually reserved for downtrodden teams in Major League Baseball or the NFL.

And after winning the 1,500 title June 8 in 4:05.98, Johnson suddenly has a bonus season kicking into high gear at this week’s Toyota USATF Outdoor Championships in Des Moines, Iowa, and later, maybe the IAAF World Championships in Doha, Qatar.

She further brought that point home July 9 at the Sunset Tour meet at Azusa Pacific by blowing the doors off her personal best in the 800 meters, running 2:00.43, four seconds better than her previous fastest open 800, and two seconds better than her best relay split.

Johnson is seemingly entering this week’s U.S. Championships peaking at just the right time.

“I didn’t really feel like we had run a 2-flat,” said Johnson, who was actually third in the race behind Olympians Kate Grace and Shelby Houlihan.

Both ran sub-2:00 and for Houlihan, the American record holder in the 5,000, it was the first time.

“The last 100 meters of any race, it’s going to hurt,” Johnson added. But it didn’t hurt any more than any of the other 800 races had. I was more shocked with the way I felt versus the time.”

That she’s in this position – it wasn’t until after NCAAs that Johnson even considered U.S. or Worlds as a possibility – is impressive, but not a total shock, either.

Johnson was a five-time Florida state champion – three times in the 800 and twice in the 1,600 – at Lake Brantley High School, north of Orlando, before heading to Oklahoma State.

She had a breakout college track season in 2018, winning three times, including the 1,500 at the West Regional in Sacramento in what was then a personal-best time of 4:11.57.

But from almost the moment the team arrived last year in Eugene, Ore., for the NCAA Championships, Oklahoma State veteran coach Dave Smith felt something wasn’t right.

“We got off the plane on Sunday, and by Sunday night, I thought she’d been crying,” Smith said.

He added that she had a tough time getting through workouts that week and he said he tried having her “stay in the hotel as much as possible.”

Johnson finished 24th, last in the 1,500 semifinals in 4:27.72, and watched the final two days later from the stands. Later, she learned she had a bad allergic reaction.

“Obviously, that was heartbreaking watching everybody warming up and getting ready to run,” she said, “and you’re in the stands watching in normal street clothes.”

What she didn’t do, though, was sulk. Nor did she and Smith panic and blow up her entire training program in an effort to do something different. In fact, both said the training plan stayed virtually the same.

“I knew that I had more seasons to go,” she said. “I knew it wasn’t my last chance.”

So the first thing was to get tested for allergies. She said of the tens of allergies she was tested for, she reacted to about “half the allergens.”

The testing itself wasn’t easy.

“I felt like I got 30 ant bites on my back,” she said. “But I couldn’t touch it, or scratch it.”

Once she got the proper medication, then it was simply a quiet determination to represent herself well in 2019.

“Initially,” she said, “it was like, ‘I want to do everything in my power to get back to this stage and to actually perform like I’m capable of.”

With a renewed focus in cross country, Johnson drastically bettered times and placings. She was the runner-up at the Big 12 Championships after finishing 28th in 2017. She also went from a 233rd-place showing at the NCAA Championships to 48th this year.

She then opened eyes at the Drake Relays, anchoring both the 4x800 and 4x1,600 relay teams to victories. The 4x800 time of 8:25.41 was a school record and still holds the world lead in the event for this year. Her split of 2:02.79, which came on the same track as this week’s U.S. Championships, was her fastest 800 until two weeks ago.

But the 1,500 was always going to be her game. In fact, her entire season really became about that final race at the NCAAs.

Again, Johnson shined on the track at Sacramento State in the West Regional, where she ran 4:09.50.

At the Division 1 championships in Austin, Texas, Johnson sat on the shoulder of Oregon’s Jessica Hull and passed her with about 50 meters to go to win the 1,500, becoming the first Oklahoma State standout to achieve the feat since Natalja Piliusina in 2013.

Hull, the 2018 NCAA champion in the event that Johnson watched in street clothes, hadn’t lost a 1,500 in more than a year.

Prior to the race, Johnson visualized how she wanted to run it, with a late, final surge to win. It went exactly to plan, except faster than she thought. Her time was the second-fastest ever during the season for a collegiate, even in near-100 degree temperatures.

Hull has since run 4:02.62, the fastest time this year for an Australian, on June 30 at the Prefontaine Classic at Stanford, in addition to signing a professional contract and joining the Portland-based Nike Oregon Project training group.

“Right when we finished, (Hull) immediately gave me a hug, and she was saying, ‘Congrats,’ and ‘Good job,’” Johnson said. “Then she told me that we ran a world standard. Even during the race, I had no idea how fast we were running.

“When she said that,” Johnson said, “I said, ‘Are you serious?’”

And thus Johnson had completed her worst-to-first journey.

“I think my mindset was a lot different,” Johnson said. “I was, honestly, embarrassed. Coming out of the West Regional (in 2018) being first, and then getting dead last … that’s embarrassing.

“I think I just really honed in on, ‘I want to be the best runner there is.’”

Through all of it, she maintained faith in her talent.

“It was a very humbling experience,” she said. “I think if it weren’t for that particular race, I can’t say I would’ve been the same athlete I was this year.”

Smith compared the experience to simply learning how to win.

“I think you have to go through a trial run,” he said, “and learn how to deal with the emotional fatigue of it. ... The first time it hits you, I think it’s tough.”

Thoughts of running after the NCAA Championships didn’t come up until a few days after the 1,500 victory. Smith said the plan was “to go to NCAAs and put all our eggs in that basket.”

But perhaps there were more baskets still waiting. And, after a few days, Johnson called Smith, saying she wanted to give the Toyota USATF Championships a shot.

“It was like, ‘OK, then wait a second, there are some other doors that are open,” she said.

That led her to a warm summer evening in Southern California on an Azusa Pacific track and that's become known for producing personal bests at an alarming rate.

In a final tuneup for Des Moines, Johnson entered the Sunset Tour’s 800 in an effort to work on speed and kick against a first-rate field. Pushed by Grace and Houlihan, she nearly broke the 2-minute barrier. And though the stage might not have been as big, Johnson had joined the sub-2:01-and-sub-4:06 club – just the second collegiate female athlete to do so, and the first to get both marks in the same year.

To come back at 2-flat the way she did,” Smith said, “after all year long building up to the NCAA and (think) after that, we're done, I think that’s really hard to do; to come off the hangover of winning.

She won’t run the 800 this week, of course – “my heart is in the 1,500,” she said.

But she is in a great position to compete against four-time winner Jenny Simpson, along with another matchup against Grace and defending 1,500 and 5,000 champion Houlihan. Her NCAA-winning time would’ve also been good enough to capture the U.S. title in nine of the past 15 years.

After all, if you’ve already gone worst to first, where’s the limit?

“She’s pretty good,” Smith said with a chuckle, “at refocusing herself.”



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