Half marathon course cutter Ashley Paulson, who served 6 month contamination suspension, wins coveted Badwater 135.

Thankfully, I was not drinking coffee while reading this.

One poster in the Slowtwitch thread responding to the supportive post from the Badwater RD offered the below on the short Half.

It is hard to take Paulson as a serious athlete reading this and her Insta post.

“Elites showing up at a race and running 1:14 halfs tend not to:

miss the start due to porta potty visit (not coincidentally this is also a practice notorious to cheaters that depend on chip times while also desiring to be absent from the scrutiny of the front of the field)

listen to music while racing 5:40 pace

carry their phone while racing 5:40 pace

"get lost", stop and rely on their phone's map app to get back on course

blase, ho-hum comments about the effort that are not at all consistent with what racing a 1:14 half is like such as "the little hills at the end hurt but I ran them faster to get it over with" and "I pulled out my phone to help me find the finish. I was SO BUGGED! I was too into my music I guess."

I hope that you have enough common sense not to do that. What you suggest here crosses a line.

A race in another country modeled closely after Badwater - similar distance, temperature, etc. - recently decided not to offer future editions because it was too hard to prevent this sort of thing.

Of course, in their situation, entrance fees are a small fraction of what Badwater charges, resources are limited, and the course is not easy to monitor - live tracking and people out on the course shouldn't be something unmanageable.

Also, a lot of people are assuming that either she went into this planning to cheat or she is entirely innocent whereas another possibility is that it was simply a crime of opportunity. She wanted the course record and was half an hour off with 5k remaining, in the dark, tired, with nobody else around but her crew who wanted it as much as she did. No part outside the last 13 miles appears to be questionable in any manner.

Wow. Project much? Is this cheating woman your wife, sister, or daughter? I predict you will have health issues if you don’t give your paranoia a rest. Or has someone already told you that also?

I mean, we know she’s capable of a 2:40 because she ran it at Trials and there’s no way to cheat that. So, while her description of her 1:14 half does seem odd, she actually does race at that pace.

Or rather, what I mean more clearly is this isn’t the typical 3:40 hour marathoner claims to be running 2:40 type thing when they can’t hit 7 minute mile pace for a 5k. She actually is credibly fast (not actually 1:14 fast as that was a cut course, but I mean she actually is an OTQ who apparently does run listening to music and with a phone.)

I do think it means something. I strongly suspect that if a study was done, it would find that people that run faster marathons will absolutely perform better in ultras, with proper training. That has always been the case in my limited experience observing the sport.

seems she might have actually won it fairly then? i admit at the start i was completely in the cheat camp mainly because of the way she handled that previous race where she tried to convince people she'd run past them unnoticed when she had actually knowingly cut the course. she brought this on herself from that. but she'd have had to edit GPS data at the very least. and zero evidence of cheating really. just that last split is remarkable.

how many people are in those support vehicles? if just her boyfriend or whatever then it would be easy for her to get a lift and for those 2 to keep it under wraps. if 4 or 5 of them driving around then much less likely.

I am still somewhat skeptical about her course record, although maybe it is legitimate. I don't understand that much about heart rate but her Paul Jacobs heart rate seems quite low for someone at the end of an ultra, especially for the final whatever it is 13 miles and 4600 ft. For the last 17 miles with that climb her heart rate average was 118 which according to the Garmin app is just above the border of warm-up/easy pace ie zones 1 and 2. For the first 20 hours her average was 130bpm, but actually at about hour 15 or so to 20 her hear rate appears to be below 90bpm. So very roughly, for the first 15 hours her heart rate was maybe about 140 which seems reasonable, then it was relatively very low. Definitely possible or perhaps even likely that the watch stopped accurately measuring her heart rate, but and again I don't know that much about heart rate and what is expected after 15 hours of racing.

Her Garmin data with heart rate:

It is possible that the accused started to have a physical breakdown towards the end of the race. Athlete breakdowns at those distances and in those conditions are often very unpleasant to watch (cramping, delirium, hallucinations, complete mental and physical exhaustion, etc.). Therefore, feeling bad for the accused in that state, and knowing that a win and CR were in jeopardy after all of that physical effort, a member of the support crew threw on the accused watch and ran a portion of the course while the accused recovered. It's possible, but I think it's unlikely. Folks would be suggesting that the support crew anticipated that this could happen and planned for it (finding a look alike crew member, coordinating kit, switching watches in anticipation that people would ask for the data, etc. etc.). I find it unlikely. Not impossible, but not likely.

Using the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard, which I think is the only fair standard under the circumstances, I'd say the accusers here have not met the high burden of proof. Arguably, absent a confession, eyewitness accounts from credible witnesses, or actual video footage, would be needed to prove cheating.

As an aside, is there reasonably affordable technology available that could prevent the type of cheating that is being alleged here? Like, for example, a tamper proofish ankle monitor with Stryd measurement capability?

Are you guys all lawyers?

Please knock off the lame excuses. She cheated.

Since we're all lawyers, we expect you will, of course, present persuasive evidence of her cheating, beyond "her time was too fast at the end, and she's a bad person."

The burden of proof is on you.

Go ahead, present your evidence and make your case that she cheated in this race. (And no, things that she did years ago are not evidence that she cheated this race, so don't bother with that.)

Ashely Paulson had run a 2:40 marathon at the 2020 Olympic trial. That was a difficult course, and also it was windy, and thus she probably could've run faster on an easier course.

I'm a firm believer that time at shorter distances are an important limiting factor for ultra marathon performance, which is demonstrated by many of the top ultra runners such as Jim Walmsley. However, I have no idea if a 2:40 marathon is fast enough to show one's capable of breaking the Badwater 135 CR. Before this incident, I'm not familiar with the race, and didn't know how competitive it is. I realize that the old record was set by
Patrycja Bereznowska, who once owned the 24 hour record. Because of this I initially was very skeptical of Paulson's result, as although 2:40 marathon is fast (by non-Letsrun standard of course), it is still about 20 minutes slower than top female marathon performance, and I thought there got to be women with around 2:30 marathon time who turned ultra running. However, upon closer examination, I find
that according to World Athletics, Patrycja Bereznowska's fastest marathon time is over 3 hours. For me, this means it's totally within the realm of possibility for Ashley Paulson to break her record.

Unfortunately, I don't know that much about heart rate, and I am unable to download all of her data to analyze it, but her heart rate seems to be quite low in the second half relative to her own heart rate in the first half. Again, it may be due to inaccurate measuring by the watch, or perhaps she naturally has a low heart rate late in races, or maybe lots of people do, but again, she had one of the most incredible performances ever in the final climb, so my guess would be that her heart rate would be significantly higher in the final miles.

For example, and note these are random times, but at 6:07:41 in the race she was running a pace of 10:03/mi and her heart rate was recorded at 147bpm while she was at sea level at the temperature was recorded on her watch at around 90F.

At 15:53:04 she was running a pace of 9:37/mi and her heart rate was 111bpm while at an elevation of 4,995 (almost a mile above sea level) and her watch recorded a temperature of 100.4F.

Again, I am in no way saying this is an illustrative example, but 10 hours later in the race, with the temperature 10 degrees hotter, and the elevation 5,000 ft higher her heart rate was 36bpm lower.

Although those are just two random points, it does appear that starting at around hour 15 her heartrate averages around ~20bpm lower for the rest of the race than it was in the beginning. [The first file on her watch for the first 20hrs has an average of 130bpm, and the last 4 hours including the climb up Mt. Whitney has an average of 118bpm (although as mentioned there appears to be a noticeable decrease in heartrate around hour 15.)

It is really sad that people cheat in running races and ultras and similar rather noncompetitive events, and although I don't know whether or not Ashley Paulson cheated, I appreciate that she shared her data, and I hope some more knowledgeable people are able to fairly analyze it.