Camille Herron just crushed the CR of the Spartathlon by 2 hours - Black page please

The 2:18 women might not finish. It's a fallacy to think that a faster runner of a less than half the distance can just duplicate her success.

A failed drug test and she cut the course at a half marathon. So no, she hasn't "always tested clean" and has a track record of cutting courses. She also has no palmarès that would indicate she's capable of her Badwater performance and her splits are extremely suspect. But it's road ultras so who even cares.

Could just be a soft record she broke? Thats one long run, 2 hours is relative.

moderately unlikely. The former record holder is a darn good runner.

seriously this is just hobbyjogging for a longer period of time. nobody cares.

Thanks for chiming in with your thoughts, Camille!

There was no snow at Spartathlon, watching her "run" the snow at WSER was painful.

Sure, Spartathalon seems like a fun and quirky event with some interesting history, but, come on, there are no competitive ultra marathon races - compared to running, ultras are a niche sport with a tiny number of competitors.

Just in the United States, there were supposedly 8.9 million 5k registrants in 2022.: "There inoncompetitivecompetitive" about Spartathlon. This is the most competitive ultrarace over 24 hours on the planet.

So if you are one of the top amongst millions of 5k competitors and win a big race with thousands of participants that seems to me to competitive sports, whereas being the best of a total of, perhaps 232 competitors, seems to be rather non-competitive.

Again, spartathalon seems like a fun event, but compared to road races of competitive distances, it seems more like the even more noncompetitive and overpriced business venture that is mistakenly called a race by the media of Badwater.

But it's still nowhere near as competitive as distance races of a marathon or shorter. She broke the record by over 2 hours, or roughly 9%. This is like breaking the mile world record by 22 seconds or the marathon world record by 12 minutes. It's not nearly as contested as mainstream events.

I didn't say it was "obscure". Obviously I've known about Spartatholon ever since I started ultra running 11 years ago.

But let's be real: There aren't very many "road ultramarathons over 100-miles" in the world at all though!

In the US we have Badwater and that's like it....it doesn't attract a huge competitive depth.

Compare that to how many "mountain-trail ultramarathons" there are out there in the world?

Camille is world class and what she's done is amazing (especially on the roads/tracks). But the sample size of runners doing these events is much smaller than those doing the big trail ultramarathons....especially for pro level sponsored runners nowadays (save for a race like Comrades or Two Oceans).

I was defending Camille and saying "she didn't cheat for sure" because I believe she can smash course records by huge margins and win these kinds of races (be it Spartathlon or 48 hours on a track).

But it wasn't like she was smashing the CR at UTMB or Western States or Comrades or Leadville or the 100km road world record ( just a few examples of much more "prestigious performances" imo).

Keep in mind the 2nd and 3rd place women also finished under the course record this year, right?

Again, Congrats to Camille and as it was an amazing/great performance. But I do think some context matters.

I know her family, she didn't cheat.

Let's not forget that Camille is the world record holder by a good margin over 24 hours. Around 5.6 miles. The weather was very gentle to the runners this year.

Can't wait to see Sage lining up in Athens for this race next year.

Anyone suggesting she would cheat is just trolling because it's letsrun and they do that to everything

People forget, or don't know, she is an accomplished marathoner and ran 2:37 before super-shoes at the 2012 trials

I vaguely remember reading her form is because she was in a car accident and had to change her style to adapt?

Anyone who thinks it's no big deal and they can run two weeks of mileage in a single day should definitely put their money where their mouth is

Huge congrats to Camille!

You see here at letsrun we say silly nonsense and then ask others to prove it wrong. So the burden of proof is never on the person making BS statements.