When distance runner Molly Seidel lined up to race the Olympic marathon trials, she knew she’d have to finish in the top three to make it to Tokyo. A difficult task, made even more challenging by the fact that it was her first ever marathon. But 19 miles into the race, Seidel finds herself tucked into the leading pack of runners. Then, as they raced up a hill, she and one other runner, Alphine Tuliamuk, separate from everyone else.

“I felt good—or as good as you can at mile 19 of your first marathon—everybody else slowed down on the hill, and I just kept going the same pace,” Seidel remembers. “When I realized I was out ahead, it was like, shit, shit, shit, what are you doing?”

What she was doing was running her way to an unexpected second place finish. Though she surprised even herself, Seidel says this “ability to push a little bit harder than the people around me” is something that started all the way back to fifth grade, when she ran a six minute mile, and helped carry her to multiple individual national championships at Notre Dame. “I can go forever,” she says.

That ability to hover right on the edge of her upper limits is something that Seidel will need when she competes in the Olympic marathon on August 6th. It’s a type of mental fortitude that might also be helpful to you and me, whether we’re trying to push your fitness to the next level, or just trying to power through a few more emails. So, ahead of the Olympics, I spoke with Seidel for our GQ sports podcast, Smarter Better Faster Stronger.

Here, she talks about running on a broken pelvis for a year, embracing the feeling of being “a pot of water about to boil over," and the lessons she’s learned from training at peak discomfort.

GQ: Is it true that you're the beer mile record holder at Notre Dame?

Molly Seidel: The last time I checked, I was the beer mile record holder. I have a pretty soft record for it. It was more that I didn't throw up when I did it. This is going to take away from the idea that “Oh my God, Olympians are so mentally focused.” I ran about 8:20 or so. I want to see what I could actually do if I went after it and didn't do this at midnight in jean shorts, being convinced to do it by a friend while at a party.

Shifting away from beer, but staying with miles, what is your weekly mileage these days as you ramp up towards the games?

I'm averaging about 125 miles a week. That comes out to generally 16 or 17 miles a day. Then a long run on the weekends of anywhere from 20 to 24 miles.

Running every day?

Yep, generally every day, twice a day. I'll usually do my longer run in the morning. Most easy runs are around 90 minutes. So that's anywhere from 11 to 13 miles. And then I'll generally do four to six in the afternoon. And then was we get further into the build, the workouts get a lot longer, into the 15 to 18 mile range,

What tempo are you usually doing these runs at?

Easy runs are actually really slow. I think it surprises a lot of people to learn that when I run easy it's to make sure that my body's recovering enough for the hard workout. So I’m never afraid to run 8:00, or 8:30 pace, even slower, to really recover. I run a lot of trails for workouts. We're trying to do a lot of stuff in the threshold range, which for me, at altitude, is around 5:15 to 5:25. So it really varies depending on what we're doing.

What does threshold mean?

So threshold stands for lactate threshold. That's pretty close to what your marathon pace is. It’s the pace at which your body can no longer convert lactate within your system. Basically, threshold is right along that line of, “Oh, we're working hard now.” You need to feel like a pot of water on the stove that's just about to start boiling over. You're like right on that level, and you just hold it there.

When I run, I find it’s easy to just fall into a comfortable pace. It's a lot of work to stay conscious of staying at your upper limit.

It's really mentally draining. That can be the biggest breakthrough for people: being able to just make peace with being uncomfortable and hold that. The key for the marathon is just to be able to go to that Zen place where you're at peace with the knowledge that you're going to be really uncomfortable for a really long period of time.”Okay, I'm just going to dig into the pain and be okay with this.”

Yeah, I heard you say that a lot of people look at professional runners and they think, “Oh, they're in such good shape that this is no longer uncomfortable for them.” But actually being professional is just about being able to sustain that discomfort for longer.

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It's like the old cliche of, “It doesn't get easier. You just get faster.” Seeing how my mentality has progressed from high school to college to pros, it's just been mentally developing and being able to handle discomfort for longer. You have these physical capabilities, but a lot of times the biggest thing holding an athlete back is their own brain saying, “Oh no, you're going to the danger zone. You need to pull back.” Training is less about running at a certain pace to be able to train your body for that pace—it's teaching your brain to be okay with running these paces. “I didn't die this time. So it's going to be okay next time. I know I can run 13 miles at this pace, even though it hurts like hell.” It's just learning to stay mentally strong when it sucks.

What are some of the ways you’ve grown that ability to handle discomfort for longer?

One is shifting the mentality, and knowing it doesn't have to be perfect every time, but you have to finish every time. People would be shocked to learn at the number of workouts where I want to drop out early. It's just saying, “Okay, it doesn't have to be great. It doesn't have to be a hundred percent. But you do have to finish, and you have to stay in it.”

Then I'll use music strategically. There are days when it really helps to be able to have some distraction and get yourself going with music. We can't listen to music when we're racing. So I try not to rely on it too much. Because the marathon is just learning to be bored while you're hurting. A pro marathon is vastly boring for the majority of the race.

Do you have ways of training your boredom?

I try to meditate. Trying to take some time each day to shut down one. To try and practice getting into that focused awareness—or focused disassociation almost. I guess people would refer to it as a flow state, just being in the moment. I find if I try to practice that outside of running, it does help. My best races are races where I feel like I'm able to get into that state of letting your body do what it knows how to do. You're not overthinking it or going, oh God, I still have so many miles to run.

Have you found that it helps you with running?

It helps in the sense of being able to reflect and process. Not that running can't be regenerative, but it is an active thing. Strain is strain—regardless of if it's mental or physical—and you need to take that time to recharge. So if I'm at home and I'm resting my legs, but I'm just on my phone flipping through Instagram the whole time, my brain is still engaged. I'm not giving my brain a mental break. So when I get to my second run in the afternoon, I'm mentally drained.

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I go over to Ethiopia every so often to do work with a foundation there, but I also train in the town of Bekoji. Ethiopians are pro level resters. They'll run two or three times a day, but, in between, it’s: get your legs up. You're not watching TV, you're not on your phone—you're just mentally recharging. I don't think we have enough of an appreciation of that over here. That's why we get our asses kicked by the Ethiopians and the Kenyans all the time.

This ability to increase your threshold for discomfort, has that helped with things outside of running?

Yes and no. I have a very high pain tolerance, but to the degree that it has come back to bite me. I have broken a lot of bones in my life. I've broken my pelvis twice. I’ve broken my sacrum multiple times. It can sometimes be hard to separate discomfort—which is what you feel in a race—from physical, broken bone pain. From 2017 to 2018, my first year as a pro, I was actually running on a broken pelvis for a year. I thought that was a normal amount of pain to be having to run through. Then I went and get an MRI and the doctor was like, “Holy shit, did you fall off a building?”

I've heard you say that running is almost a way for your body to catch up with your brain. Can you unpack that a little bit?

A lot of times, my brain feels like it's going a million miles an hour. I deal with OCD. You feel there's a TV at level 10 volume in the back of your head at all times. When I'm running, it's the only time that I feel like my brain and my body sync up. That's why I love it. It is that flow state, and feeling like your brain fits inside of the vessel of your body finally.

I also feel like running gives me perspective, especially like when I'm running in Flagstaff on a trail, or in Boston, running over the BU bridge. You look out at the whole city and you're like, I'm just one little point moving through this vast ecosystem. It helps put it into perspective that there's more than just like what's going on inside my head.

How is your self-talk different now than it was at Notre Dame?

It’s very different now than when I was in college. I mentally struggled so much, especially in college. I put less pressure on things now. It's not this all-or-nothing approach that I had before, because the all-or-nothing approach almost killed me. Nothing else mattered in the world other than running. I think that's why I try to approach it with this idea of yes, this is incredibly important to me. But at the end of the day, this is a small, silly thing that I love to do, and I am so lucky that I get to.

Did it literally almost kill you?

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Yeah. I had to go into residential treatment and I had to take a hard look at my life. I was just breaking bones left and right. It was a really dark place. I'm very grateful that my therapist put it in terms that I could understand at that time. I wasn't even focusing on, “Oh man, this might ruin my life.” I could only think of “I want to get back to running.” He was like, “You've got to slow down, because if you don't get this shit sorted out, you will never run again.” Where my mind was at time, that's what broke through to me.

That's some real shit!

There needs to be a better appreciation of the double-edged sword. Running is great. But running can also be the problem. I'm not going to be one of the people to be like, “Running saved me.” Running has broken so many bones in my body, and running has driven me to the edge. I realize I'm never going to be fully healthy, mentally, probably, or physically, until I'm done with my competitive running.

What are some of the things about yourself that, in the past, you would have thought of as weaknesses, that you now see as strengths?

Probably the number one with OCD is this obsessiveness—this drive to keep running all the time. Being able to channel that in the right way is super conducive to marathoning. I really like mileage. Having that drive to run upwards of two to three hours every single day. It’s not hard for me to gear up to go for an afternoon run. For someone who needs to be running 120 to 130 miles a week, I see that as a huge benefit.

You went into the trials without much expectation, and you finished second. How do you maintain that lightness going into the Olympics, since I know you’re competitive and will want to win?

I went into the trials being like, “I'm just going to keep an open mind. You never know what's going to happen.” I'm approaching the Olympics in the same way, because, objectively, this is just even 10 times up from what the Olympic trials was like. That was the greatest women in the U S. This is the greatest woman in the world. I feel like it is that Des Linden mentality of “Just keep showing up.” If you show up with the effort, maybe it can be a great day.

It’s also remembering that this is an incredibly important thing for my life—running in the Olympics has been my dream since I was a kid. But also realizing, in the grand scheme of things, it's a pretty silly thing. I make a living by putting one foot in front of the other at a moderately faster pace than most other people. I'm not performing brain surgery. I'm just running.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Read MoreHow to Keep Your Cool, According to Olympic Fencer Daryl Homer

For the latest episode of Smarter Better Faster Stronger, Homer talked to GQ about what fencing taught him about not falling for the tricks your nerves play on you. 

By Clay Skipper

Clay Skipper is a Staff Writer at GQ.XInstagramRelated Stories for GQOlympicsPodcastsRunningMental HealthGQ Sports