He also sloughed off stress by taking some sort of concrete action – bushwacking, tree pruning, brush burning – and Molly remembers thinking during those early forays Up Back, “Don’t let Dad lose you. Sometimes her Dad would accompany her, too.

I’d take my dog Augie up there and we would just run loops,” Molly explains. “I would just go up there if I had extra energy or was bored or couldn’t focus on homework. The land had forests and fields, hills and flats, and Wolfgang used to mow a trail to create mile and two-mile loops across the varied terrain. The Seidel family’s home in Hartland, Wisconsin abutted a 150-acre parcel owned by their neighbor Wolfgang. Joan of Arc Catholic Church track team and long before Bowerman Track Club Coach Jerry Schumacher identified her as “intense” in what felt like a job interview for a position on a post-collegiate running team, Molly took refuge “Up Back.” But might it also be true that the marathon, if run right, can put a person back together? September 2004 īefore Molly Seidel earned the nickname Jetty, so dubbed by her classmates when her PE teacher told her she ran so fast it was like she “had jets in her pants” before she threw up from nerves at what was supposed to be her first race for her St. In his book Men of Oregon, Kenny Moore writes that, “If it is run right, the marathon inflicts some damage.” That might be true.

Yet more recently, that self-described fragile frame has held up under the physical burden of consecutive 135-mile weeks and produced perhaps the most remarkable rookie trio of marathons run by any American woman in history. She won four NCAA titles in her final two years at Notre Dame, but suffered just as many injuries, each one contributing to the feeling that her body was made of glass.

“I felt like a broken toy,” Molly Seidel said when asked about the end of her collegiate running career.

Download molly seidel athletic brewing