![]() ![]() Watching clips of Molly’s mom and dad watching the Olympic race from their backyard patio, jumping up and down, tears streaming, is the kind of life-affirming moment you wish you could bottle. Dad, Fritz Sr., was a ski racer in college Mom, Anne, a cheerleader. Izzy is a running influencer and corporate content creator for companies like Peloton and Fritz favors Formula 1 racing and weightlifting and works for the family’s leather-tanning business. Her sister and brother, younger by not quite two years, are twins. Molly grew up in Nashotah, Wisconsin, and is the eldest of three. What Was Behind Molly Seidel’s Shocking Bronze?.“I don’t know what’s happening right now!” Molly kept saying into TV cameras, wrapped in an American flag, as stunned as a lottery winner. trio for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, along with Kenyan-born superstars Aliphine Tuliamuk and Sally Kipyego. ![]() Pushing past 448 of the fastest, most-experienced women marathoners in the country, coming in second with a 2:27:31, earning more in prize money ($60,000) than she had in two years of racing-and a spot on the U.S. Instead, on February 29, 2020, she kicked some herself. “I’m going to get my ass kicked six ways to Sunday!” she told the host of the podcast Running On Om six weeks before the trials in Atlanta. Maybe it’d help her train for the 10K, her best shot-they both thought-at making a U.S. The day after that rooftop party, Molly asked her friend and former FTC teammate Jon Green, who she’d newly anointed as her coach: “Think I should run the marathon trials?” Sure, he shrugged. Subscribe to our newsletter for exclusive access to more great stories about running! Her biggest achievement lately had been being named #2 Top Instacart Shopper (in Flagstaff Boston was big-time). By summer 2019, she’d parted ways with FTC, which left her sobbing on the banks of the Charles River, getting eaten alive by mosquitoes and uncertainty. Staring into Molly’s steely brown eyes, listening to her speak with such clarity and conviction about her struggles since, it’s easy to forget: She is still only 29.Īfter Molly had hip surgery on her birthday in July 2018, her doctors gave her a 50/50 chance of running professionally again. It was such a fun, cool time of my life,” she says, summarizing her 20s. On the final climb during the Speedgoat 28K Mountain Race in Snowbird, Utah, July 2023. The only thing she’s ever wanted to do since she was a freckly fifth-grader in small-town Wisconsin clocking a six-minute mile in gym class. And she was downing free coffee and paying rent, flying to Flagstaff, Arizona, every so often for altitude camps, and having a good time. ![]() Chasing kids around as a babysitter, driving around as an Instacart shopper, and standing around eight hours a day as a barista-when you’re running 20 miles a day-wasn’t ideal. The $34,000 a year that Saucony paid her (pre-tax, sans medical) didn’t go far in one of America’s most expensive cities. ![]() If only because she never had before.Ī four-time NCAA track and cross-country champion at The University of Notre Dame in Indiana, Molly had moved to Boston in 2017, where she’d worked three jobs to supplement her fourth: running for Saucony’s Freedom Track Club. (“The shock of the century,” as she’d put it.) True, 13.1 miles wasn’t 26.2-but running a marathon was something to do. Why the hell not? She’d just qualified for the trials, winning the San Antonio Half with a time of 1:10:27. Molly, an elite 10K racer who’d spent much of 2019 injured, looked out at the city lights, and laughed. “That would be hilarious if you did that as your first marathon.” “You should run the Olympic Trials,” her sister, Izzy, said, as smoke swirled in the chilly air atop The Trackhouse, a retail shop and community hub on Newbury Street operated by the running brand Tracksmith. On a clear December night in 2019, Molly Seidel was at a rooftop holiday party in Boston, wearing a black velvet dress, doing what a lot of 25-year-olds do: passing a joint between friends, wondering what she was doing with her life. ![]()
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