that moment of having everything you ever dreamed of right in front of you, and knowing that the only thing that s keeping you from getting that is yourself. reporter: winner of four ncaa titles at notre dame, molly checked herself into a mental health facility for obsessive compulsive and eating disorders. i was so afraid of failure. i believed i had to keep winning national championships. that if i didn t, i was a failure. reporter: with her family, molly discovered just the opposite. i think that was the key moment. my mom telling me i don t care about molly the runner. i care about molly the person. and that s why i m able to be where i am today. i m excited. reporter: it also helps to have a sister like izzy. she is wildly supportive of me. she also keep miss ego in check. she is my best friend. reporter: by her side, doing the turkey trot. you re doing great, honey. reporter: and racing to run the slowest mile possible. how did you run a
the highly anticipated women s marathon is under way here in japan as we speak. anne thompson has more. reporter: marathoner molly sidle pursuing the olympics most solitary achievement through the neighborhoods of flagstaff, arizona. why did you want to run? i ve always loved it. if i was stress or my brain wasn t working right, i d go off and the woods. my brain just worked. molly seidel gets second in her first marathon ever. reporter: at the time molly was working in boston as a baby-sitter and a barista. her sister izzy insisted she enter the race. have i more confidence in molly than she has in herself. reporter: an amazing comeback that seemed impossible after what happened at the 2016 olympic trials. i basically self-destructed before i even got to line.
40-minute mile? legitimately, that was one of the harder things i ve done in my athletic career. reporter: that and making the olympics in her first ever marathon. how many marathons have you ever run? two. reporter: how many marathons should you have run before the olympics? well, at the very least, i m glad the olympics is not my second marathon. reporter: it will be molly s third, and hopefully her best. anne thompson, nbc news, flagstaff, arizona. there has been nothing quite so ambitious than hosting the world in the middle of a pandemic, but tokyo has managed, even when the view is not what many expected. tokyo, we hardly knew you. covid quarantines made most of the city a bridge too far for many olympic participants and foreign media, required to work and live in a protective bubble. the city was ready to welcome the world. shuttered souvenir stores and empty fan plazas speak to its best intentions and to