SEIDEL Molly

General
DEBUT MARATHON EARNS OLYMPIC BERTH
She competed in her first ever marathon at the 2020 US Olympic Trials for marathon in Atlanta, GA, United States of America, where she finished second and earned selection for the Olympic Games in Tokyo. She had moved up to marathon after hip surgery in 2018 meant that she was no longer capable of focusing on shorter distances. "It was very hard for me to do the traditional 5km or 10km training without getting hurt again. My body stays healthier [doing] marathon-type training than it does off strict 5km or 10km training. My goal was eventually to move up to the marathon when I was a little bit older. They say you aren't in your prime for the marathon until you're 27 to 35." Before the US Olympic Trials, she said that finishing in the 10th-20th range would be a good performance. "I didn't want to oversell it and put way too much pressure on, knowing how competitive the field was going to be. But talking with my coach, I didn't want to phone it in just because it was my first one." (runnersworld.com, 26 Feb 2020; cnn.com, 02 Mar 2020; independent.co.uk, 03 Mar 2020; thelily.com, 03 Mar 2020)

FRIENDSHIP ASSISTS OLYMPIC BERTH
She says her friendship with US athlete Aliphine Bolton, who won gold at the US Olympic Trials for marathon, helped her finish in second place at the event. "I think Aliphine needs to take a lot of the credit for this. Every time she said, 'Come on, let's go', I tried to say, 'I'm with you'. But just having her there was huge. I don't think I would have been as calm on that breakaway with anybody else. I look up to her so much. To be able to know I was running alongside a friend and someone I trust, it was almost like a feeling of working together. I knew we were in it, but if we were going down, we were going down together." (podiumrunner.com, 29 Feb 2020)

COACH
Her coach, Jon Green, is the same age as her, and as of 2020 she was his only elite athlete. He was a professional runner with her at the Saucony Freedom Track Club and when she left the club, he reached out to her. They started to work together in October 2019, and four months later she finished second at the 2020 US Olympic Trials for marathon. (thexc.substack.com, 22 Mar 2020)

MENTAL HEALTH
In 2020 she spoke about the difficulties she faced with mental health issues and an eating disorder while at college. "When you get to college, it's almost like this echo chamber where you see other women excelling in the sport with very low body weight. I think the collegiate structure of running is great, but in a lot of ways is super harmful and not necessarily the most positive environment for girls, especially as they're coming into their bodies as women. College athletics can get so warped. I realise [now] in the eating realm, I wasn't eating the amount I needed to fuel the training. You're just burning up all of your fuel stores, and once you get to the edge of that cliff and go off, it's a long way back. I just felt like nothing was enough. I'm probably going to deal with it for the rest of my life. You have to treat it with the gravity that it demands." (1runnersworld.com, 22 Jan 2021, 26 Feb 2020; nytimes.com, 01 Mar 2020)

In 2015 while representing Notre Dame University she became the university's first athlete to win an NCAA outdoor national championship title in the 10,000m event. (und.com, 01 Jan 2018)