Elmira’s own Molly Huddle set a new American record in the women’s 10,000 meter race in Rio de Janeiro this morning.

Megan Huddle says she had a feeling her twin sister Molly was going to run well in the race on Friday.

“I was like screaming at the TV, ‘Go Molly run Molly run,'” Megan says.

“I didn’t sleep well last night because I was so excited, I was like I knew she was gonna set some type of record because she’s Molly Huddle,” she says.

Megan was right. Huddle smashed the previous American record by 9 seconds. But the competition was tough this year.

“I knew going in that it was going to be an extremely competitive race when you looked at the times that the Ethiopian women had run in their trials,” says Dr. Robert Huddle Jr., Molly’s father and former coach.

“And of course the concern was even though she’s in American record shape, where does that put her relative to the African runners who are competing too?” he says.

Huddle placed 6th with a time of 30:13, that’s just about a 4:50 pace for 6.2 miles.

That time would have won her a medal in any of the last four Olympics, but her father says times were usually fast for this race.

“She held pace, she was running 72 second 400’s for the whole race and Ayana had ratcheted up the pace to sub :70’s :68, :67, :69 and I mean that’s normally– in a normal 10,000 meter for women that’s usually the finishing 400, not the mid race 400,” he says.

The Huddle family says they’re incredibly proud of Molly’s performance in the race. They also think she’ll be the women’s 10,000 meter record holder for many years to come.

“For her to compete in a race like this I think is just incredible and to set a new American record, and I may be prejudiced but I think the caliber of this record is such that it’s gonna stand for a long time because it broke the old record by 9 seconds,” Dr. Huddle says.

Huddle will start training for the New York City Marathon in November in a few weeks.