Molly Seidel: Fearless

Few athletes have made a more public leap of faith than Molly Seidel. She spent the early years of her career as one of the most decorated road runners in the country... then walked away from that identity to start over on the trails. In February, she ran Black Canyon 100K, where she secured one of three Golden Tickets to Western States and set the longest distance of her career. Heading into her 100-mile debut, she is the first to admit she doesn't know what she'll find out there past mile 62. What she does know is that the fear of not finding out is worse. As Molly's shares below, sometimes the only way to find out who you are is to let go of who you were.

A NEW LEAF

On the roads, I had so much success early on that it was hard not to get typecast into the elite roadrunner. It's always nice when you can define who you are. I could have just stayed that the rest of my career. It maybe would have been more comforting, but at the same time, I was starting to chafe at that idea because I know that's not all that I can be.

I have a tendency to become stuck in static mindsets. I tell myself, "you're not a good downhill runner" or "you're not a good technical runner". That really keeps you from improving because you become attached to that identity. Whereas I think when you approach as "I was bad on the technical downhills today", you give yourself more space to change and grow.

I think that's the most fun part of getting into trail running. Yes, it is fun to have like objective success within the sport, but there is something so thrilling about seeing yourself change into something that you couldn't have imagined that you'd be.

HOW DO YOU SILENCE THE VOICE OF DOUBT?

I really deal with a high level of imposter syndrome. I think most elite athletes do. Even though I've had a lot of success in my running, there's also been a lot of hard times. You begin to doubt yourself, but you have to remember that that is just a story that you're telling yourself, that it isn't coming from outside. It's that mean part of my brain that's trying to keep me from doing anything outside the norm.

Half the battle of running is overcoming those doubts because they’re always going to come up. The fact that you experience doubt doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you. It means you’re human. The act of overcoming those is what draws me to endurance sports, and makes them what they are.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU STOP BEING AFRAID TO FAIL?

My career has been marked by high periods and low periods. And because of that, it becomes really easy to doubt your ability. But also, that's just human nature. There is some aspect of having to let go of control within running, which is extremely scary to runners because we are highly control-oriented people. There's almost this aspect of thinking, "if I do everything in my training plan to the T, that guarantees me a good race". And it doesn't. There are no guarantees in this sport. It's scary to go and risk something, but if you don't risk it, the only option is losing. You have to be willing to put yourself out there into a vulnerable place if you want to accomplish anything. You have to be willing to fail.

Failure is any time that your expectations do not meet the outcome that you wanted. But I think that we make failure such a pejorative thing. I was so scared of failure as a kid. It almost became these handcuffs of "you have to do this, otherwise everyone's going to hate you". I think when you frame it that way, then you lose the chance of getting to use it to grow.

The realization of it came over time and having a lot of failure. It's one of the reasons that I didn't necessarily switch to trail earlier, because I was extremely scared of doing these things and failing spectacularly.

I realized I would rather fail at something rather than not try. The pain of sitting still and not doing anything was worse than the projected fear of failing. That's when I knew the fear is never gonna go away, and you have to learn to make peace with it and become friends with it. Because the thing that you're scared of is the direction that you need to go. You're never scared of the easy things. You're scared of the really hard things. Those are the most important.

HOW DO YOU LEARN TO TRUST YOURSELF THROUGH DIFFICULTIES?

I think fear has taught me that I am like at my core a pretty resilient person because I think there's a core fear of mine that I am just like super fragile and that anything like will kind of knock me over. This process of experiencing the ups and downs in my career has taught me that I'm able to withstand a lot and come out the other side. That's something that I actually really love about what pro running is. You take all of these experiences, whether it's mental or physical, and you integrate those to try and create something really cool on the race course.

So much of my training actually is letting myself feel that anxiety. I will feel it oftentimes on really long runs. You can feel it in your elevated heart rate, your brain spinning a little bit and just that feeling of "man, I don't know if I can do this". I feel tired or I feel sore and I can't imagine having to continue this for another 10 hours. You have to very much stay in the moment.

I'm trying to squash it by any means, but allowing myself to almost interrogate it. Why are we scared right now? And let myself actually feel it and process it. And while doing that, you just keep moving forward. I think that's it. Like running is actually in and of itself a very powerful vessel for working through those emotions because you let yourself feel it and you just keep moving forward anyway.

WESTERN STATES

There's always going to be the element of just knowing that racing is hard. Knowing that there's a lot on the line and that desire to really want to do well and not being able to know or control the outcome always creates an element of fear. This is my first 100-miler and I just physically can't anticipate what those extra 38 miles are going to feel like.

I'm really trying to focus on the process-based goal of using this as a learning opportunity and gaining experience. I think, for me, it's being able to just see what my body is capable of during the race and go into it and race fearlessly rather than going into it and trying to be hesitant or hold back anything.

There isn't any one race where I'm going to be able to stamp my pro runner card and say, "I am a trail runner now". You have to get the validation internally, otherwise you're going to spend your whole life looking for external markers to give you some permission to be who you are. For me, running Western States will be another checkmark in that direction.

I'm obviously nervous about the race, but that's just one day. I think I would feel most proud of building that mental muscle of looking at things that scare me and going into it with confidence and an openness to letting the experience just be what it's gonna be.