![]() “You can still go get beaten, you can still have a lot of work to do, but you can do this.” “The Olympic medal was kind of showing me: Hey, you belong here, and you can do this regardless of any insecurities that you might feel,” she adds. “I struggle with confidence and I struggle with wondering whether or not I belong at this level, whether I belong as a competitor on the world stage,” says Seidel. See what the US' fastest marathon runner is up to nowĪs leaders Peres Jepchirchir and Brigid Kosgei of Kenya pulled away in the closing stages of the race, Seidel found herself vying for a medal alongside Israel’s Lonah Chamtai Salpeter.īut with two-and-a-half miles remaining, Salpeter hit a wall and faded from contention.Ī medal was now Seidel’s to lose, and she duly wrapped up the bronze with a scream of joy as she crossed the finish line – the third US woman ever to medal in the Olympic marathon. When the Olympic Marathon came around 18 months after she had qualified for the team, Seidel once again exceeded her own expectations with a typically gutsy, gritty performance in the sweltering heat of Sapporo. The postponement of the Olympics did give Seidel the chance to compete in a second marathon – a sixth-place finish on a modified, elites-only London course involving 20 laps around Buckingham Palace – before gradually turning her attention to the Games. “I think I really struggled with that, and I struggled going into the Games and feeling like I belonged there and trying to prove that I wasn’t a mistake on that team.” “I struggled with this kind of imposter syndrome after the trials, specifically as probably the person no one expected to make the team and the person that got probably the most criticism like: Hey, why is this girl on the team?” she says. As the pandemic delayed the Tokyo Games by a year, further opportunities to prove her credentials in the marathon distance were placed on hold. Seidel’s success at the Olympic trials wasn’t without challenges. Cox/Getty Images North America/Getty Images Everybody wants to do the marathon.”Īn emotional Seidel reacts to finishing second at the Olympic trials. “I think there’s just this kind of like glamor and mystery around it, and especially for a younger runner who enjoys doing the distance events in high school, that’s kind of the ultimate goal. “I always kind of dreamed of doing the marathon,” Seidel adds. Partly, that was due to her frustration with running 10,000m on the track – “I kind of kept banging my head against the wall with that one,” she says – and partly due to ambitions she had held growing up. While many distance runners step up to the 26.2-mile marathon distance towards the end of their careers, Seidel was a comparatively early convert having made the switch from track racing in her mid 20s. “Life has a funny way of giving you what you need before you think you’re ready for it,” Seidel tells CNN Sport, weeks out from the fifth marathon of her career in Boston next month. Having taken to the start line of her debut marathon in Atlanta hoping to place in the top 20 – with the prospect of competing, let alone medaling, at the Olympics a remote thought – she’s the first to admit the race “blew away all of my expectations.” That was during the US Olympic trials when Seidel, competing in her first ever marathon, stunned the field to place second and qualify for the US team.įast-forward to 2022 and, three marathons later, the 27-year-old Seidel can now call herself an Olympic medalist and the fastest American woman ever at the New York City Marathon. Mastering the art of marathon running is a lifetime pursuit for some, but it seemed to take Molly Seidel roughly two-and-a-half hours on one windswept morning in Atlanta a couple of years ago.
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