On Monday, April 18, Molly Seidel experienced her first competitive setback as a marathoner when she had to withdraw from the Boston Marathon. The Olympic bronze medallist abandoned her first Boston Marathon sometime between the 25th and 30th kilometres.
Molly Seidel Drops Out of Boston Marathon
Around the 9-mile point, Seidel was with the leading pack of elite women until 2020 Olympic champion Peres Jepchirchir slowed the pace with a 4:59 split. Seidel was one of the several contenders left in the dust as a result of the bold manoeuvre that separated the front pack into separate groups.
Seidel was the top American runner at the halfway point, passing Nell Rojas and sitting in 11th place. But, her pace slowed considerably over the next few miles. The 25K portion of her race was completed in 1:25:29. She failed to log a 30K split.
Throughout her preparation, Seidel stated she experienced hip impingement. There were “no indications” that it might hurt today, she claimed in a statement released through the Boston Athletic Association following.
I attempted to keep up with the front runners for as long as I could, but my hip started to lock up around the halfway point of the race and I had to slow down. I was in a lot of agony by mile 16, so I made the tough decision to stop at a medical tent before I did any serious damage.
Seidel has run five marathons in the past two years, all of them extraordinary feats of endurance over the distance of 26.2 miles. The 27-year-old debuted at the 2020 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials in Atlanta, where she placed second.
In 2020, she ran a 2:25:13 and placed sixth in London. Seidel won bronze at the Tokyo Olympics last summer, on a sweltering day in Hokkaido. Thirteen weeks after her historic Olympic performance, she ran the New York City Marathon, where she placed fourth in 2:24:42, the best time ever run by an American.
Seidel broke two ribs approximately a month before the race, so his personal best is all the more remarkable for that reason. She didn’t elaborate on what happened to her leg, but she did say it hurt so much to line up for the race in the post-event news conference.
“It was challenging coming off the Olympics and hard mentally going back into that build,” she stated after the race on November 7, 2021. The time and effort I’ve put into this is too great to abandon now. Regardless of the outcome, doing it means a lot to me.
It was widely expected that Seidel, going into the Boston Marathon, would place in the top three. She had more experience on the illustrious course than most of the other competitors in addition to her world-famous achievements.
She spent nearly five years in Boston before making the move to Flagstaff, Arizona, in April of last year. Seidel, who lives in the nearby Fenway area, spoke of her extensive training on the Boston course during a press conference for elite athletes on April 15.
She ran to Heartbreak Hill and returned, a total of 14 miles, while training near the halfway point and babysitting for a family in Wellesley. After a few “hiccups” in her training, including a hip impingement that forced her to miss a few days of training, Seidel told Runner’s World that the final five weeks leading up to the Boston Marathon were “about as wonderful as I could have wanted.”
It’s almost like you have to make peace between the marathon preparation you want and the one you get, as Seidel put it. But I believe we are in a really good spot now, focusing on a lot of strength as we develop for the rest of the year, not only for Boston but for world champs in the summer.
