Two seconds. It's roughly how long it takes to read this sentence. For an elite runner, it can be the difference between dream and nothing.
It's what stands between Jinson Johnson and an Olympic berth.
A crazy ask for the fastest metric miler (the event is 109.3m shy of a true mile) in the country. Johnson, who holds the 1500m national record at 3:37.86, will have to improve upon his personal best timing by two seconds to touch the Tokyo Olympics qualification mark. The qualification period opened on May 1 and Johnson is pacing his hopes. "It's tough, very tough, to go from 3:37 to 3:35," he says, haltingly.
The season hasn't begun too well for Johnson. A left calf injury he picked up at the Asian Championships left him out of competition and medal contention. The gold went to Bahrain's Mohamed Ayoub Tiouali at 3:49.14. That's the hardest bit for the Indian to make peace with. Only in March, Johnson had clocked 3:41.67 at the Federation Cup. "It definitely feels like a loss," he says. "Perhaps the first time in many years that I haven't had luck at an international event."
Johnson first strode into the limelight with a silver medal (800m) at the 2015 Asian Athletics Championships in Wuhan. Two years later at the Bhubaneswar edition of the event, he won a bronze (800m) and went to stack up three gold medals at the Asian Grand Prix in Thailand. Though he finished without a medal at the Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast last year by finishing fifth, the Kerala-born athlete broke a 23-year-old national record which stood in Bahadur Prasad's name. He was a touch luckier at the Asian Games where he finished with a gold medal in the 1500m event.
Johnson has been straddling the 1500m and 800m events and holds the existing national records in both. But now, with little more than a year to the Olympics, he has switched to blinker-focus mode. "I think I stand a better chance in 1500m so that's my sole focus now. At the Rio Olympics, the gold medal timing was 3:50. So, there's some hope."
The metric mile is an intriguing race. Training for it can be scarcely boring because runners have to throw in everything - from hill workouts (bread and butter training for middle and long distance runners), steady state runs (longer runs at steady speed) to tempo runs (lactate-threshold runs) and strides (bursts focused on top leg speed).
"You can tell from the difference in distance (between 800m and 1500m events) that training for both is vastly different too. One is almost twice as much the other in distance. I was finding it difficult to keep up with both. Rather than splitting focus, I thought it made more sense to just stick to one."
At the heart of the 1500m race is a runner's aerobic endurance and pace. Off-seasons for Johnson are about focus on endurance and strength. Mid-season onwards it's about marrying speed with endurance. At a 1500m race, runners don't want to pile on one entirely - go out too fast at the start and you risk losing steam early, but go out too slow and you may not have time to make up. For Johnson, his kick - finishing move of endurance runners in the final stretch - has been a winner. He used it effectively in the 50m home stretch at the Asian Games for the 1500m gold.
Outside Olympic qualification, there are no immediate competition goals for Johnson. His time is split between rehab and strengthening drills. Even the September World Championships doesn't figure prominently in his plans. Just back from a high-altitude training stint in Ooty, located at an elevation of 7350 feet, Johnson is now lodged at the SAI Bengaluru facility waiting to firm up his competition plans.
Last time around, Johnson snuck into the Olympic contingent on the final day of qualifying, little more than 20 days ahead of the Games itself. Obviously, he was left with very little time to train.
"Nothing can prepare you for the Olympics like being at the Olympics," he says. Bunched alongside world record holder David Rudisha in Heat 3, Johnson finished fifth in the 800m heats and couldn't qualify for the semi-final. "I have the experience now of being at a stage and contest like Olympics but ours is such a tactical race that anything can happen."
At the TCS World 10k and Asics promotional event that he's speaking on the sidelines of, Johnson ran into an early test of speed. Six female marathon pacers waiting with cue cards throw quick-fire questions at him. In his orange running tee, Jinson beat his legs to the answers. Running? Passion. Training? Smart. Speed? Maximum. Dream? Olympics.
The final one took him under two seconds.