FW: Do you do much of that in Australia, where you must be pretty well known?
BJ: Not really. I give some talks at schools, but I’m not really there all that much with all the traveling we do.

FW: You said how last year the Circle of Friends kind of marked the start of the rest of your year after London. What about the rest of this year, especially with there being no major championships the rest of the year?
BJ: I’ve got a lot of things coming up. After tomorrow and then New York, I’m doing the Steamboat 4-miler [in Peoria, Illinois, on June 17]. Then it’s back to London and track races. Mostly I’ll be doing 1500s, 3Ks and 5Ks, but I’ll also probably do a 10K on the track over there. I’ve got a lot things planned, and I think I can run some track PBs once I focus on that. We’ve been in Boulder doing a lot of endurance training. In London, I’ll focus more on running faster.

FW: I interviewed Craig Mottram a few weeks ago before the Healthy Kidney 10K, and he told me a lot about his training. You and he are in the same group. Is your training similar to his?
BJ: Yes, very similar. When we’re at altitude, it’s generally a longer run on Sunday, a pace run midweek, another session during the week, a lot of body strength exercises, strides, and drills. It’s 110, 120 miles a week. The thing about what we do is that we do it week in and week out. We build the legs and keep them strong with the endurance training, and then focus on speed for the final touches. Our coach, Nic Bideau, does a great job of getting us ready, and we have a great group of Australians in Europe to train with.

FW: How often do you run with Mottram?
BJ: When we’re in London, twice a day, every day. Craig and I live about 200 meters apart in London, and actually in Melbourne, too. In London, it’s great to be able to get around without a car. We live by Bushey Park. There’s a track at St. Mary’s College. We do hills in Richmond Park, and there’s the path along the River Thames.

FW: How often are you actually home?
BJ: I’m in Australia three or four months a year. But even there, I’m not always home. We do altitude training at a place called Falls Creek. It’s a four-hour drive from Melbourne, and we go up there for three weeks at a time. So in my home in Melbourne? Maybe three months out of the year. But London is like a second home, so it’s not like we’re living out of a suitcase all the time. My husband, Cameron, travels around with me.

FW: When you’re in Australia, do you have many racing obligations?
BJ: We’ll do a couple of track races, but mostly when we’re there, we’re doing high mileage getting ready for world cross country and the European track season. We’ll do the races more as workouts than all-out races.

FW: Have you had a chance to talk with many of the great Australian runners of the past about how to balance things, in terms of you being from Australia and most of the big races in the world taking place in the Northern Hemisphere?
BJ: Not much, because I’m not in Australia all that often to see that many of them. Probably the most has come from Steve Moneghetti, who is just fantastic. He spent a lot of time with Craig [Mottram] before the Commonwealth Games. I’ve learned a lot about competing overseas and what to do in Europe from Nic Bideau, who has been around for so many years. I really respect what Lisa Ondieki was able to do, especially in the marathon.

FW: You have a really good range, from 4:07 for 1500 meters to 2:26 for the marathon. Within that range, which distances do you enjoy the most?
BJ: Like I said, I’m going to be really focused on the shorter races—1500, 3K, 5K—this summer. I’m really motivated to run fast at those distances. But I also enjoy the longer races. I’ll be doing a half-marathon later on in the year. I’m not sure when my next marathon will be, but I’m eager to do more of those. I’m 27 now, and I think I can handle the training for the longer races. I’ve done only two half-marathons, and in those I was third in the world championships and first at the Great North Run. I’m confident I can run faster than 2:26 in the marathon.

FW: Within that range of 1500 to the marathon, where do you think your greatest talent lies?
BJ: I think in the half-marathon. But it’s not an Olympic event, you know? So I’ll have to think about what I want to do in Beijing.

FW: What’s your main reason for competing at such a wide range? Some people specialize a lot more.
BJ: I just enjoy the different terrains and different distances. I especially love cross country, because every race is always different. It’s motivating to have different goals—that helps keep my enthusiasm up. And I wouldn’t want to leave athletics thinking, “What if...?”

FW: Now you were a field hockey player and runner growing up, and actually gave up running for awhile for hockey.
BJ: I started in hockey when I was 6 years old, and was on the Australian junior squad in 1995 and 1996. In 1996, I was announced as part of the Australian squad for the 2000 Olympics. Everyone thought I would do that. I probably thought I would do that. But I did athletics throughout high school—just during the season, so I did athletics three months out of the year. And I used to win the national 1500-meters title every year—I won it four years in a row. So when I was in year 12 of high school, I was offered an Australian Institute of Sport scholarship for running, and I thought, “I’ll see how good I can get.” I knew I had some talent, because I hadn’t been doing the training those other girls were doing, and I still won the national title every year.

I started training progressively more and more, and I ended up making the Australian squad for 5000 meters at the Sydney Olympics. That was my first national team. It was a great experience, but I was 17th. But then at the 2001 world indoor championships in Lisbon, Portugal, that was only my second national team, and I placed sixth in the 3000 meters, and then two weeks later I was sixth in the world cross country championships. It was then I thought of myself as world class, then that I thought, “I can do this sport and do it well.”

Nic Bideau started coaching me in 2002, and that has really helped me improve. It’s great to be part of our group. We motivate each other to get through the hard days, and there are hard days, lots of them. The great thing is that we’re a team helping each other. And I have the support of my husband, Cameron. So we’re out on the track by ourselves, but there’s a lot of support behind us. It’s a 24-hour-a-day job, and you have to be right on top of your game in every race.

Editor's Update: Benita Johnson ran a strong 10K at the Circle of Friends New York Mini. She finished in fourth place with a time of 32:14.

Interview conducted on June 2, 2006, and posted on June 6, 2006.