Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
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6 UCW AUGUST 18-24, 2021 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM PITT DICKEY, Columnist. COMMENTS? Editor@upandcomin- gweekly.com. 910-484-6200. Molly Seidel, age 27, a cheese head from Wisconsin, is my nominee for Super Woman. Un- less you have been living under a rock you have probably heard about Molly. She won the bronze medal in the Olympic Women's Marathon in Ja- pan. at in and of itself is a really big deal. Who Molly is and what she overcame is even bigger. How she reacted after winning the bronze was beautiful. She won the bronze medal in only the third marathon she had ever run. is is beyond Science Fiction. No one would believe her story if it were a novel. Mark Twain wrote in his book "Pudd'nhead Wilson" that "Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't." You could not make Molly up. Her story is not possible, yet it hap- pened. She is the bumblebee who aerodynami- cally should not be able to fly. But fly she did. But first a history lesson. A marathon is 26.2 miles long which is admittedly an odd distance. e original Marathon was run in 490 B.C. by a Greek soldier named Pheidippides who ran 26 miles from the battle of Marathon to Athens to tell the Athenians that the Greeks had defeated the Persian army. e Persians had been expected to win the battle. e Athenians were ready to burn their city and kill their women and children to prevent them from being enslaved by the Persians. Leg- end has it that Pheidippides reached Athens and told the citizens: "Rejoice, we conquer!" and then died. Athens and western civilization were thus saved by the first marathoner. e marathon is a grueling race. I speak from personal knowledge, having run five marathons in the distant past. I would guess it is about 75% physical and 25% mental. e mental is the toughest part. Molly could run 2 marathons in the time it took me to run one. She is one tough lady. You have to be psyched to run a mara- thon. ings have to be run on a tight schedule. Because it was so hot in Japan, the night before the race, they moved the start up one hour to 6 a.m. when it would be a bit cooler. at change of an hour may seem like a small thing but to a marathon runner anything unexpected can upset their run. Molly is a four-time NCAA cross country cham- pion who ran for Notre Dame. Her first marathon was in the U.S. Olympic Trials in February 2020, where she placed second. e idea of running a first marathon in the Olympic Trials and finish- ing second bog gles the mind. It cannot be. And yet it was. Her second marathon was in London in October 2020, where she finished sixth. Her road to the Olympics was colorful. Prior to the Olympic Trials she was working two jobs: as a barista in a coffee shop and as a babysitter. In 2016, Molly checked herself into a mental health facility to deal with issues of obsessive-compulsive disorder and an eating disorder. She wrote in USA Today: "I deal with OCD, and I have a long-standing history of eat- ing disorders. During the pandemic, I dealt with relapsing into both of those. It's very difficult when you're dealing with an enormous amount of stress in day-to-day life with COVID-19, and then at the same time you don't' have the normal outlets that you develop over the years to deal with mental struggles." e lady is beyond resilient. e betting odds against her winning a medal were 6000 to 1. It was like the scene in "Dumb and Dumber" when Jim Carey says "What are the chances of a guy like me and a girl like you ending up together? ... What are my chances?" Mary: "Not good." Jim: "You mean like one out of a hundred?" Mary: "I'd say more like one out of a million." Jim: "So you're telling me there's a chance! YEAH!" Molly beat the odds. Marathoners traditionally hate hot days. Cool and cold days are best for running. In talking about the hot and humid conditions of the race, she said: "I wanted it hot and windy, knowing a lot of these women run really fast in conditions that are very good. I think I thrive off a little bit of adversity. When the going gets tough, that's my strong suit. I wanted to go and be that per- son who, when you're racing, they're all saying, 'Who the hell is this girl?' I just wanted to stick my nose in where it didn't belong and get after it. e Olympics only happens every four years, you might as well take your shot." Molly is only the third American woman to win a medal in the Olympic Marathon. Joan Benoit Samuelson (who attended NC State) won the gold medal in 1984 and Deena Kastor won the silver in 2004. Molly's response to winning the bronze medal was epic. e TV showed her family going nuts at home which she watched them on her phone. Wearing an American flag draped across her shoulders, she was crying and laughing as the home folks were going bananas. She told them, "Oh my God, you guys. We did it. I'm so tired. Please, please drink a beer for me!" Drink a beer for Molly. She is America's Super Woman. If Molly can do it. You can do it. OPINION Super Woman is real by PITT DICKEY Molly Seidel (Photo courtesy www.teamusa.org) Christian music station local your