A coffee shop worker from Boston found herself making history when she was chosen to be part of the US Olympic team for this summer’s Tokyo Olympic games after she placed second in her first-ever marathon.
Now, Molly Seidel, 25, will be representing the country along with two other teammates.
Her entry into the Olympic team is made even more remarkable by the fact that it was her first competitive try at the full 26.2-mile marathon distance.
Even in college at Notre Dame, Indiana, Seidel had already been an accomplished athlete. But after graduating, running became a hobby rather than a sport for her. To make ends meet, she worked in a coffee shop and did babysitting.
Despite that, she managed to finish in second place with a time of 2 hours, 27 minutes, 31 seconds. The photos taken just minutes showed a bewildered look on her face as if she couldn’t believe what had happened.
“I don’t know what’s happening right now,” she told NBC Sports after her incredible achievement.
She’s not a complete newbie because she did well in both 5,000- and 10,000-meter races.
While she was in high school, she won the Foot Locker Cross Country Championship in 2011. She even has four National Collegiate Athletic Association (N.C.A.A.) titles.
In last year’s Manchester Road Race in Connecticut, she tied the 4.74-mile race.
But Seidel had always been plagued by injuries, including a stress fracture in her pelvis and lower back. An eating disorder only compounded her problems.
Three months ago, she did well in a half-marathon in San Antonio which qualified her for last weekend’s Olympic marathon trials. That time, she finished at 1:10:27, more than enough to beat the 1:13 that was required.
“I had no idea what this was going to be like,” she said after the race.
“I didn’t want to oversell it and put way too much pressure on myself, 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.”
Seidel stayed with the pack until around mile 21, at which point she broke away.
Two other runners, Aliphine Tuliamuk and Sally Kipyego made the cut as she did.
Seidel got an extra morale boost from her parents, Fritz and Anne, who flew from Wisconsin just to cheer her on. At mile 7, she even swerved across runners so she could give her sister a hi-five.
“Going into it, I was just trying to keep a clear head,” she said to Runners World. “Truthfully, I wasn’t really thinking a lot the first half of the race. My coach and I have a little saying, ‘No brain, no pain.’ I was just trying to float through it. Not paying attention to miles, not paying attention to pace, just going off feel.”
Despite training in January and February in Flagstaff, Arizona, Seidel otherwise had an “ordinary life” in an apartment she shared with her sister in Boston as she worked at the coffee shop and babysat.
“I usually get up, do my main training session, come back, work a couple of hours at the coffee shop or go babysit, then can run later in the day,” she to the Times. “But things might be changing up a little bit when I get back to Boston.”
Her second-place finish in Atlanta won her $65,000.
The women’s Olympic marathon kicks off on August 8 in Sapporo, Japan.
Replaced!