INTERVIEW: Molly Seidel’s training leading up to Bandera 50K outright win

Molly Seidel, the Tokyo Olympic marathon bronze medallist, broke the course record at the Bandera 50K in her debut ultramarathon on January 11. She clocked in at 4:09:39 to win by six minutes and 10 seconds over second-place finisher Benjamin Melisi, the men’s winner.

The 31-year-old Seidel took on the challenging looped course aggressively. The route is fairly technical and situated at an elevation of 1005 metres in what is known as the Texas Hill Country.

Seidel owns a marathon personal best of 2:23:07, so it was assumed that she would perform well in the race. Surprised by the outright win, and course record in her debut, we asked her about training leading up to the Badera 50K.

Interview

Christopher Kelsall: Congratulations on your 50K ultramarathon debut and course record at the Bandera 50K.

Molly Seidel: Thanks! It was a fun day, and Tejas Trails put on a great race.

CK: Were you surprised by the outright win?

MS: Not really. I think ultramarathon is really the only running discipline where women are competitive with men, and I try not to let it get in my head who I’m racing, but rather how I’m racing. I also have a lot of experience running with men from larger marathons (in Chicago, I ran with a group of about 20 sub-elite men for more than half the race). My goal going in was to win the race outright rather than just focus on top female, because that kind of aggressive racing is what I’ll need to do at Black Canyon against such a competitive women’s field.

CK: Earning a bronze medal during the Tokyo Olympic Games in Sapporo is certainly a life highlight for anyone. As ultras go, they are often in the woods and perhaps still considered a little eccentric. Can you compare taking bronze in Tokyo versus winning in Bandera?

MS: No, they’re just completely different things. Bandera was a prep race for my 100K; I went in with the approach that this was more of a training run to test fitness. The Tokyo Olympics were a goal I’d had since I was about 10 years old and involved the most intense 18-month period of training I’d ever experienced. It pushed me to my absolute limit, both mentally and physically, and getting the medal was the culmination of that. Both races are mentally challenging, but it’s very different leading a 50K trail race wire-to-wire versus racing the top female marathoners in the world.

CK: It is often said that a 50K is easier than the 42.195K marathon. Did you find this to be true? How is the post-race recovery?

MS: It’s definitely easier. Trail is a different kind of muscular damage, so you’re still sore, but much less so than racing a marathon in supershoes. The amount of time you need to spend at lactate threshold or just above it in a marathon completely neuromuscularly fries your entire system. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very tired after Bandera, but it’s nothing compared to how I feel after racing an all-out 42K on the roads.

CK: How did you train for this race?

MS: I ran a lot.

CK: Can you compare the differences in training for a marathon?

MS: Marathon training requires an insane amount of time spent at LT, doing lots of repeats and double threshold, as well as marathon-specific workouts on the road at race pace. It’s pretty boring and really hard, to be honest; I don’t enjoy LT work and really have to mentally push myself to stay in it. Mileage and long runs have always been what I love, and ultra training is really just that. We built up time on feet to manage back-to-back long runs, and workouts generally involve 30–60 minutes “steady” in high Zone 3/low Zone 4, with mileage on the front and back. It’s almost all off-road as well, to build the neuromuscular specificity for trail.

CK: When it comes to quality sessions, how did you approach those in comparison to the marathon?

MS: Quality is a lot less rigid than in marathon training, so we had our weekly steady runs, but I also treat the weekend long runs as quality too. I try to get on a surface that’s similar to what I’ll be racing, be really specific about my fuelling, and basically do a dry run of the race for whatever the time allotted is.

CK: Did you have a good stretch of uninterrupted training leading up to the taper?

MS: No, I got either a really bad cold or the flu over New Year’s, so I was knocked out for a few days. We’d had a bunch of travel and weddings, as well as the holidays, so while I was able to adapt and get in most of the work, there were a few interruptions. I’m looking forward to these final five weeks in Flagstaff, getting to just lock in and train hard.

CK: What is next for you? Will you go back to the marathon, or are you transitioning to the ultras?

MS: I’m racing the Black Canyon 100K on February 14th. I won’t be racing a road marathon anytime soon — I’m committed to trails for the next few years.

CK: During the race, rather than having crowds and lots of competition around you, did it feel like a hard training long run, or did you feel like you were racing?

MS: The crowds don’t make the race; the mindset and the competition do. I didn’t have crowds at the Olympics because of the pandemic, so I don’t mind if there’s not a ton of people cheering. The two men behind me were racing hard, so I was racing hard, and once I opened up a gap, I tried to keep my foot on the gas and practice still driving hard even when there wasn’t someone pushing me.

CK: What does a typical week look like for you when training for the ultra?

MS: On trail, I actually don’t do mileage since it depends so much on the terrain, I go off time. A typical week is: