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

We need Spotter of Bad Threads to weigh in on how this is a dogs***t thread.

Her results deserve close scrutiny because of past violations.

By 20 pages in (or even if you want to go 10 pages to discount all of the one person's inane defensive comments on this threads), Mezra was proven to be a cheat. 20 pages in and all we have so far is supposition and speculation.

Attention has been brought to the issue. Time to let it die unless someone finds something new.

Scott Jurek's name has been getting thrown around a lot. It would appear that Scott Jurek responded in favor of Ashley Paulson in the comments to the MI article. That, or it was someone impersonating him.

Nothing predicts Badwater. It's a heat-survival event, not a normal race. and if you're trying to extrapolate expected finshing times on a different race baced on an unrelated ultra result, you're an idiot.

Agreed, and I'll go a step farther.

All the digging and arguing has done a lot more to support that she is perfectly capable of the result and that it is valid than to call it into question.

For:

Results in marathons (better PR than the person whose record she broke)

Results in Ironman (nine and ten hour results are very good, and worthy of a professional woman)

Results in previous Ultras (Undefeated in other races with no hint that the results aren't legit)

Her GPS/watch data was supplied and checks out compared to her description of its use

The Race Director's comment

Eye witness reports of her progress

Her splits are all within the realm of possibility (other people have run faster) and are normal for a record setter. None rise to an "impossible split" threshold.

Against:

Nothing. Not a shred of actual evidence.

Inconsequential for THIS race:

Prior drug suspension

Prior course cut/wrong turn and a less-than-ideal response to it

Ever think that she is just a better runner than Jurek?

Caveat, I didn't read several of the last pages here, so apologies if any of this is redundant.

Badwater's website does a reasonably good job of letting you download large sets of results and splits data from previous races in various pace, time of day and other formats.

More caveats - the race used to start in the morning and the lead runners would finish as the sun was rising. As of the last few years because of the parks service wussyness, the race has to start in the evening to get their permits...presumably for safety so the runners are out of the lowest part of the valleys by the heat of the day. That means the leaders are finishing as the sun goes down and in the dark (presumably cooler temperatures). I believe that's also part of the rub from reports on the course due to darkness over the last few hours.

I downloaded a bunch of split data to cover the last 5 years results. As some have pointed out, some runners have taken 4, 6, 8, and even 10+ hour breaks in years past. Including their splits over the ensuing checkpoints after long breaks like that is not a fair way to compare data. So I looked at only the top 10 finishers over the last 5 years.

I looked at the last two sections - Line Pine to Portal Road (9 miles, miles 122 -131), and Portal Road to the Finish (4 miles, miles 131 - 135). Note that the total of these 2 sections are the final 13 miles of a 135 mile race with an elevation gain somewhere around 4,500 feet. The last 4 miles in particular averages something like a 10% gradient.

Top 10 finishers last 5 years, LP to PR 9 mile section: Avg Pace: 17.6 min/mile

Top 10 finishers last 5 years, PR to Finish 4 mile section: Avg Pace: 17.7 min/mile

The single fastest split across the entire data set was Ashley Paulson in both instances, 12.6 min/mile and 13.5 min/mile respectively. Meaning the elite of the elite top 10 finishers across the last several years were nearly 50% slower than she was at this point of the race.

These top finishers are folks like Harvey Lewis and Pam Smith - folks who have 13-14 hour 100 miler speed. Folks who have decades long resumes of ultramarathon experience and now how to finish races, Badwater included.

Ashley Paulson is an elite runner from everything I can see. Elite speed and great long distance strength and endurance. I don't find the data to be impossible, just an extreme outlier. But records are set with outlier numbers. My struggle is that these numbers are outliers within outliers. Not only did she best the worlds best by a significant margin, she did it with low heart rate (assuming the data is reasonably accurate) going up a mountain and was hardly breathing at the end from what I see on the video.

But, if she didn't have a checkered past, I'd probably not think twice about the result. Just like when people like Camille Heron break 13 hours in a 100 mile run or run 165 miles in 24 hours. I guess that's the burden and curse she will live with because of her past. Looking forward to the next marathoninvestigation article as I hope he is able to get more details from people who were at the race that reported suspicious behavior. Hopefully none of this bears out and the result is legitimate. And if so, hopefully she'll try and view all this internet chatter as a badge of honor and keep showing up, trying to be transparent, and doing big things. I'm not worried about what will happen if the result is proven tainted, because the internet is the trash can of the world - it will get taken care of. :)

Also a factor "against" her seems to be that she appears to present in the vein of a certain look-at-me instagram type, that heavily tanned fitness mom type that poses like a 19-year-old in her pictures, and that's a type that people love to hate, and I would say this message board REALLY loves to hate. At the very least I'm finding hints of such hate here and there as I catch up on the thread, or getting a real feeling that it's at least a factor in, let's call it, "bringing people back" to this thread over and over. I think this is an element in the skepticism along with her course cutting and drug history, and it's similarly inconsequential to her performance, such as it is -- you don't gotta like her to accept her result if you can't prove she faked it.

I'd love to see the doppelganger thing proved in some race sometime, though, even if Paulson didn't do that here. It's one heck of a cheating technique and someone should have the brass cajones to try it sometime! Where are the old Heath twins when you really need them? Or the L. Youngs?

It's understandable that people with little awareness would be skeptical of a result by someone they've never heard of. I'd never heard of her until 2 years ago, when I bought a treadmill and she was one of the trainers. But if you look at her results, everywhere from the marathon to 100-milers to the IMs, it's very easy to argue she's better than him, trains harder than him, and is definitely capable of running all these splits faster than him.

What kind of persona she puts on on social media is irrelevant given she has verifiable evidence of her running talent. No matter however she was seeking attention from social media cannot change the fact that she PHYSICALLY run in the Olympic trials with a 2:40 time.

How does someone "cheat" on a straight point-to-point course when the only shortcut is through a hot sand desert filled with rocks and rattlesnakes? Every "shortcut" slows you down.

The same "holier than thou" guys would demand that everyone who ever got a speeding ticket be banned forever from driving, working or buying/renting a place to live.

The vast majority of the boys attacking her can not run a 2:40 marathon. Jealousy.

I mean the first part of what you posted is not wrong. But lets not go overboard - the last part at the end is not supported by the data. Scott Jurek has won mountainous 100 milers in 15 hours. He has sub 13 hour 100 miler speed. During his peak he regularly put in 120-140 mile weeks. Ashley's mountainous 100 was Bear, which she did in a little over 22 hours. That isn't even in the top 10 for female times at that race. Her best flat 100 miler time is nearly 50% slower than his.

By hopping in an unmarked Mercedes Sprinter Van perhaps?

He also didn't have the super shoes during his time, which she is wearing in this race

Don’t know about this Badwater race, but her Olympic trials result is fairly impressive, finishing 44th out of 444 starters who qualified for the marathon Olympic trials. That’s not too shabby.

I think she should race Nick Symmonds in the 100m (or the beer mile).

Until then, I can't venture an opinion.

I'm not arguing that her ultra times are better. she's only been doing them seriously for 2 years. i'm saying that as an athlete with a sub-10 IM, a 2:50 marathon and 2 100-mile wins over three years, she's more well-rounded than he ever was, and definitely has the training and results background going into this year's race to back up running the back half of Badwater faster than he did.

Why aren't you telling people touting her 2:40 that it means nothing? Or her wins in other ultras that it means nothing? Her times extrapolate slower as the distance gets longer. 17:26 is no 2:40.

Sure, nothing predicts Badwater. But there is physical ability required and somebody who ran a 17:26 on the course she went 17:26 on just can't do what she did at Badwater. If you're familiar with running the BW course or what it's like to be a 17:26 runner on a quackish course, I'm sure you know this. As close as she was to Harvey at the top of FC and then opening up a lead of about 40 min by the time she got to Darwin when he was just as strong through to LP as he was last year? No way, and everybody who gets it knows it.

As for your name, Derek is a bit of a clown, but this was being highly discussed well before he knew anything about it. He just jumped on the bandwagon, this isn't his doing.

Someone made an interesting point regarding the introduction of super shoes, which Paulson apparently wore during this race. Have super shoes changed the ultra landscape? Have records been falling more than usual? Were this years results at Badwater trending faster across the board than past years?