Benita Johnson, who set an Australian national record of 2:22:36 in the 2006 Chicago Marathon (she was third), will run the marathon in the Beijing Olympics. Johnson was the 2004 World Cross Country champion. She’s won the Freihofer’s Run For Women 5K in Albany, NY three years in a row. She was fifth in the 2008 Chicago Marathon in oppressive heat in 2:38:30, seventh in the 2007 Flora London Marathon in April in 2:29:47 after a halfway split of 1:10:35, and sixth in London in 2005 in 2:26:32. Johnson was 17th in the 10,000 at the 2007 World Championships in Osaka in 32:21; she fell over a runner who‘d stopped on the track, and got a bad gash on her leg. She was second in the 2006 NYC Half Marathon Presented By Nike in 1:09:43, just three-tenths of a second behind winner Catherine Ndereba. Johnson has personal bests on the track of 14:47.60 for 5000 meters and 30:37.68 for 10,000. In New York, for the NYC Half-Marathon Presented by NIKE, in which she would finish 11th in 1:14:14, Johnson explained by teleconference “I really enjoyed it two years ago. The atmosphere was good, the course was good. I want to use a race that I really love and enjoy as my lead-up race to the Olympic marathon, and that’s the reason why I choose to run here. I’ve been over in St. Moritz, training with my training group, Buster (Mottram) and the rest of the gang for the last three weeks.”
