Molly Seidel's airplane story

This story is sadder than the story of how awful Emma treats grocery story employees .

reading through the replies it seems a lot of you missed a major piece. the guy likely showed her the youtube video that was made focusing on molly's training (extracted from strava). we had a whole multi-page thread about it here. either he was trying to pass it off as his own work or molly misinterpreted it as he was trying to take credit. this to me is much more plausible than the idea that she completely made it up.

also, the flight was likely from boston to chicago or milwaukee as according to strava she's been chilling with her parents there for the past few days.

whiskas wrote: Recently I told a guy I worked for a large retailer and he asked me if I knew why Black Friday was called that. And I said yes. And then he preceded to tell me anyway.

In other cases, it's less obvious, like I'm not saying YES, I KNOW. But I'm saying that in a dozen different ways and they don't pick up on it. It's a real snoozefest.

Respectfully, I feel like that Black Friday thing could have happened to me, a guy, and there obviously wouldn’t have been any sexism to it—I would have just considered the dude a bit of a boring pedant with poor social skills.

subway Jarrod in jail wrote:

This story is sadder than the story of how awful Emma treats grocery story employees .

?

Haven’t heard that one.

Sounds like dude was enthusiastic about talking about running and trying and was offering good advice.

He didn’t recognize her.

Nothing leads me to think he wouldn’t offer the same advice to a guy he met on a plane.

It is the same type advice people often recommend here.

Some of the reaction to this tweet and the tweet about the guy’s aggressive behavior at the airport in Miami yesterday make me realize social media reaction and the reaction most people have in real life are not the same.

That's a great (and relevant) story. Thanks.

Perch wrote:

Hotel bar in Tampa during baseball spring training. Watching Peter Gammons on ESPN talking about spring training. Look to my left and seated 3 empty stools away is Peter Gammons. He looks my way and I say " This Gammons guy is good, really knows his baseball." Gammons gets a confused look like he's deciding whether to say who he is and thank me for the compliment or play dumb about who he is. I make his decision easy by adding "Don't worry, I'll let you enjoy your beer in peace. " We never said another word to each other. I don't know if Siedel is being truthful or not but I can absolutely see her not wanting to identify herself.

brien evans wrote:

Danicmic1 wrote:

Let’s run detectives. Find this man!

Exactly. If this were real, Molly could post the flight. We'd look to the passenger manifest and find out who she was seated next to and bring him on LRC for an interview.

Your move, Molly.

You're move, Molly.

Fixed.

doubter? wrote:

I doubted the story when I read the tweet too, and I happen to be a female and a huge fan of hers. Seems like most people would have laughed and identified themselves. Unless maybe the guy was super annoying and she just wanted to be left alone. That said, I've had guys give me unwanted advice about training so many times, so that part is believable.

The flight was most likely from Boston since was in Boston throwing a first pitch not long ago.

I'm not doubting her story. After all, she was the only U.S. medalist beyond 5000m this year, so a lot of people are looking into her training to see what she did so right. What I'm asking a question about is the poster above who claimed that it was him.

I don’t know, I think every running group that is large enough has at least one of these guys. He doesn’t care if you are male or female. He doesn’t care what level you are at. He thinks he knows the best way to train and will tell you unprompted. Never bothers to ask about your background or even consider you might know something on the subject.

Usually he is a 4 hour marathoner and has no idea about training. Runners can be pretty bad, but I’ve found the triathlete version of this guy is by far the worst. The guy at the pool giving unsolicited bad swimming stroke advise is a close second.

I'll one-up Molly. A friend (acquaintance really) was at a shoe company gathering prior to Boston in 1986. He asked the woman he was speaking with if she was familiar with the Boston course. She said, yeah, I won last year (Lisa Rainsberger)

Unfortunately, I didn't have a partner. I got gonorrhea from an airplane.

John Wesley Harding wrote:

subway Jarrod in jail wrote:

This story is sadder than the story of how awful Emma treats grocery story employees .

?

Haven’t heard that one.

What is this story? I haven't heard this.

Olympic medalists automatically get bumped up to first class, right?

painful social interactions wrote:

I don’t know, I think every running group that is large enough has at least one of these guys. He doesn’t care if you are male or female. He doesn’t care what level you are at. He thinks he knows the best way to train and will tell you unprompted. Never bothers to ask about your background or even consider you might know something on the subject.

Usually he is a 4 hour marathoner and has no idea about training. Runners can be pretty bad, but I’ve found the triathlete version of this guy is by far the worst. The guy at the pool giving unsolicited bad swimming stroke advise is a close second.

If this story is true, why do I imagine the guy was Doug from the Liberty Mutual Limu Emu commercials?

In some thread on here, there was a poster with an obviously fake story about Emma Coburn in which she tried to shoplift energy bars, winked at the poster in a grocery store while demanding that the cashier scan 15 energy bars one by one to prevent what she called "interfettence," and kept yawning at the cashier. It was looney fiction. I think the poster is saying Molly's story is similarly fake (I personally disagree; I don't think Molly is making it up).

Burrito Monster wrote:

Olympic medalists automatically get bumped up to first class, right?

I doubt it. Seidel still has practically no name recognition among the public.

How many Olympic medalists can retire from their sport and go on to a career in an occupation that is related to their sport ? For the non-medalists, not many.

I hear you loud and clear wrote:

drocha86 wrote:

I like Molly, I thought the story was fun/light hearted when I first read her tweet….but then I read the comments and cringed hard at the “mansplaining” complaints and other takes that made me question whether the story was real, or at the very least realize the degree of the victim mentality from the “Fast Women” running social media side.

Fast Women is a hangout for Women that have spent their lives being rejected by Men. I am a Woman.

Fox News is for the extreme right. Fast Women is for rejected Women.

It seems like you are correct--Fast Women has some good articles on training but most of them are angry at men or somehow find a way to blame men or take digs at them.

ConsistencyIsKing wrote:

Yup. When I first read that tweet, I immediately knew it was made up. From what I have heard, Molly was one of the most narcissistic teammates at ND. Thought the whole world revolved around her.

Interesting, as everything I've read says the opposite. This is the first account that I've read said she is such. I've read she was always kind and humble to others.

Link? Stories? Not saying you are wrong, but back it up :)

ClaytonHammer wrote:

Wouldn't shock me if this was made up, or at the very least exaggerated and embellished. First, hardly anyone talks to strangers on planes in such detail, and even less on the post-covid masked flights I've been on. So you sit next to a rare chatty neighboring passenger. Then that passenger happens to have a detailed analysis of her training plan ready to go on his phone.

Even if in the 1 in 100,000 chance this is all true, the story sounds so insane that I would NOT be posting it on Twitter. FWIW I've heard several rumors that she could be a bit... weird, narcissistic, even neurotic. Reminds me of a guy I knew in college who was always making up stupid stories to seem accomplished/funny/likeable yet anyone with half a brain could tell they belonged on /r/thathappened.

Interesting...

Molly did have to overcome quite a few challenges in her life with regard to health, etc. But I've never heard anyone claim she was narcissistic or neurotic. I don't doubt your story, but I've never heard that about here here or even on Reddit. She seems balanced and super-chill in all the interviews I've seen about her after she won her bronze.