We've closed this thread to new posts. Please discuss this topic in a new thread given the fact she just won the race outright in 2023. Does that mean that the 2022 cheating allegations definitely have no merit?
Funny, last week Derek was the devil. Now he's the supreme arbiter of truth. Not sure who died and anointed him lord of distance running but it's comical how people think this is a Supreme Court decision. It's one thing for him to say he found no hard evidence. It's an extremely arrogant reach to say "since I couldn't find hard evidence, I declare it was a legit performance."
The basic argument is that she backed off in her 17:26 because she knew she had the win locked. There aren't splits available online so we don't know. Supposing she had 16 flat ability, which she'd reasonably have to have had last October to get strong enough by July to put the jets on Harvey after Father Crowley, the argument is that she slowed down 90 minutes over the last 20 miles? You run a 100-miler by going out at an easy pace you can maintain and maintaining it. If 9:36s are comfortable, why would you drop to 13s, 14s just to stay out there longer?
This isn't a courtroom. This is a barroom. By barroom standards, she's not good enough. She's just not, and everybody in the barroom knows it. But by courtroom standards, it's a different story, and that's the standard Derek had to live up to. He's facing an angry mob of 90,000+ followers who undoubtedly would provide the resources Ashley needs for a legal fight.
I don't disagree that there's not "beyond a reasonable doubt" evidence out there.
But that's very different than saying she wasn't good enough. She just wasn't, and that's reality, and everybody I've talked to who's run the race totally agrees. Zero jealousy there. But plenty of fear of speaking publicly. It's a unique situation and she's gonna get away with it. I'd love to see her run it next year, though.
totally agree about Derek somehow being a SC justice this week. i think it's troubling the way he initially handled it (mostly from a language standpoint), but it's also troubling the way he followed up on it (from a science standpoint). the data analysis needed to be more thorough. he also briefly mentions an ongoing investigation about a sprinter van, which got my attention.
maybe his data analysis was exhaustive on his end, but it was not shared in as detailed a way as it could have been imo. i'm not going to go analyze her data anymore (my post will be deleted anyway if i do, lol) but i still don't think this is as open-and-shut as it would appear.
No. The basic argument, that has been made by many ultra runners in this thread, is that Badwater is a unique event. It's a lot longer than 100 miles, a lot hillier than a lot of 100 milers and run in unique conditions - the ability to perform in which is probably the key trait to doing well. It also has a tiny field size and our understanding of what a strong Badwater performance means is almost certainly skewed by the meaningless sample size. There is absolutely no reason to suspect that someone like Paulson couldn't break the course record there, and even less reason to suspect that if the field size were much bigger her record wouldn't in turn be broken.
Derek has since clarified the van investigation such as it is pertains to a potential National Park rules violation, not cheating. Yet more sloppiness in his reporting.
Yeah, there's no way to prove anything without the raw files, and even those could have been manipulated. But I did notice another potential red flag with her second bit of Garmin data for her last 18.56 mi: there's no Performance Condition metric (Garmin's internal analysis thing, which isn't super useful IMO but, from Garmin, "Analyzes your pace, heart rate and heart rate variability to make a real-time assessment of your ability to perform compared to your average fitness level.") Performance Condition shows up on her first 115mi run. It also shows up in other runners' BW runs I've looked at on Garmin Connect. Any Garmin people got an idea why that metric wouldn't show up on her second piece of data? Here are both links again:
I'm really stuck on the 120 BPM HR for that non-stop, 2-hour, 3,000-ft climb of Whitney Portal. In the rest of her race, she routinely gets into 140-155 HR after climbing hills, like most humans. She'll stop or walk and her heart rate will come down. But Whitney Portal? Nope. No stops. No HR increases. Not until mile 131, after she passes the final checkpoint before the finish. Would love for others to take a look at that second link and tell me what they think of that data.
Was she wearing a chest strap or is the data based on the watch only?
Nothing is ever absolute. But when Derek of Marathon Investigation spends many days looking over a single person's race data with a fine-tooth comb, talking to multiple witnesses, contacting data experts, and can't find anything, the chance of there having been cheating, goes WAY down. The chance might not be zero. It never is. But the chances are low enough, you're more likely to have luck finding Bigfoot, than you are to find cheating in this instance.
No. The basic argument, that has been made by many ultra runners in this thread, is that Badwater is a unique event. It's a lot longer than 100 miles, a lot hillier than a lot of 100 milers and run in unique conditions - the ability to perform in which is probably the key trait to doing well. It also has a tiny field size and our understanding of what a strong Badwater performance means is almost certainly skewed by the meaningless sample size. There is absolutely no reason to suspect that someone like Paulson couldn't break the course record there, and even less reason to suspect that if the field size were much bigger her record wouldn't in turn be broken.
Strongly disagree, and this is coming from the barroom threshold, not the courtroom threshold.
Just comparing Harvey and Ashley, Harvey is absolutely faster in a normal 100 than her, by a lot. His overall endurance is elite (winner of Big Dog's Backyard Ultra, 148+ miles in 24 hours in June, trained like a beast for Barkley), and he has clearly proven that he is elite in the niche combo of heat, hills and distance that Badwater requires.
There is actually no reason to suspect that Paulson, who is not as fast, who does not have the endurance of Lewis, and who has no experience at Badwater, would fly up Father Crowley 34 minutes faster than him on a hot day with the sun straight overhead when he's ahead of his race-winning pace from 2021.
She's obviously a good athlete but that's at shorter distances. She was good-but-not-great with very limited experience in ultras and she's gonna run hard for a 100 for the first time at Badwater and instantly become the best there ever was and leave a legend at the top of his game in her dust? Not plausible at all.
But we would also have to believe she went in to her data and manufactured thousands of data points for pace/cadence/heart rate that plausibly match the course profile, and I don’t see how that’s possible…
Nothing is ever absolute. But when Derek of Marathon Investigation spends many days looking over a single person's race data with a fine-tooth comb, talking to multiple witnesses, contacting data experts, and can't find anything, the chance of there having been cheating, goes WAY down. The chance might not be zero. It never is. But the chances are low enough, you're more likely to have luck finding Bigfoot, than you are to find cheating in this instance.
You mentioned two things — the chances of there being cheating vs the chance of finding cheating. Agree about the chance of finding cheating, although part of that I'm sure has to do with the fear of speaking out for multiple reasons. Derek is out of his element here, though. He doesn't know this race, he doesn't seem to understand 100s. It's not as simple as plugging splits into his formulas to figure this one out. You have to understand the course and the players. I mean, he referred to Panamount and found it necessary to mention that he noticed that she appeared to run on the right side of the road in Lone Pine.
No. The basic argument, that has been made by many ultra runners in this thread, is that Badwater is a unique event. It's a lot longer than 100 miles, a lot hillier than a lot of 100 milers and run in unique conditions - the ability to perform in which is probably the key trait to doing well. It also has a tiny field size and our understanding of what a strong Badwater performance means is almost certainly skewed by the meaningless sample size. There is absolutely no reason to suspect that someone like Paulson couldn't break the course record there, and even less reason to suspect that if the field size were much bigger her record wouldn't in turn be broken.
Strongly disagree, and this is coming from the barroom threshold, not the courtroom threshold.
Just comparing Harvey and Ashley, Harvey is absolutely faster in a normal 100 than her, by a lot. His overall endurance is elite (winner of Big Dog's Backyard Ultra, 148+ miles in 24 hours in June, trained like a beast for Barkley), and he has clearly proven that he is elite in the niche combo of heat, hills and distance that Badwater requires.
There is actually no reason to suspect that Paulson, who is not as fast, who does not have the endurance of Lewis, and who has no experience at Badwater, would fly up Father Crowley 34 minutes faster than him on a hot day with the sun straight overhead when he's ahead of his race-winning pace from 2021.
She's obviously a good athlete but that's at shorter distances. She was good-but-not-great with very limited experience in ultras and she's gonna run hard for a 100 for the first time at Badwater and instantly become the best there ever was and leave a legend at the top of his game in her dust? Not plausible at all.
This: There is actually no reason to suspect that Paulson, who is not as fast, who does not have the endurance of Lewis, and who has no experience at Badwater, would fly up Father Crowley 34 minutes faster than him on a hot day with the sun straight overhead when he's ahead of his race-winning pace from 2021.
No one knows unless hard evidence comes to light, but this poster is not wrong either, how could she have possible done that?
You really have to get out of the habit of asserting things that you believe to be true as self-evident. Harvey has run faster 100s than her, he's plenty durable and of the people who've ever finished Badwater sure, he seems to manage the heat very well. Things that are absolutely NOT proven include, without limitation, who has the better 100m ceiling, who has the better endurance and who has the better combination of heat, hill and distance ability that Badwater specifically requires. Right now it's 1-0 Paulson. You seem very very defensive about Harvey's standing and I'm sure he appreciates it. But I really wouldn't get bent out of shape about the relative standing of runners in an event that <1,000 have ever finished. If Badwater takes off in popularity, heck if it wasn't a high 4 figure commitment for most people just to run the thing, I'm 100% confident most every quick time to date would be made to look very ordinary, very quickly. Badwater is a niche within a niche. There is no physical sport in the world where we should expect 46 year olds to dominate on the basis of physical ability alone.
You really have to get out of the habit of asserting things that you believe to be true as self-evident. Harvey has run faster 100s than her, he's plenty durable and of the people who've ever finished Badwater sure, he seems to manage the heat very well. Things that are absolutely NOT proven include, without limitation, who has the better 100m ceiling, who has the better endurance and who has the better combination of heat, hill and distance ability that Badwater specifically requires. Right now it's 1-0 Paulson. You seem very very defensive about Harvey's standing and I'm sure he appreciates it. But I really wouldn't get bent out of shape about the relative standing of runners in an event that <1,000 have ever finished. If Badwater takes off in popularity, heck if it wasn't a high 4 figure commitment for most people just to run the thing, I'm 100% confident most every quick time to date would be made to look very ordinary, very quickly. Badwater is a niche within a niche. There is no physical sport in the world where we should expect 46 year olds to dominate on the basis of physical ability alone.
I'm just using Harvey as a measuring stick. I'm not some Harvey fangirl crying about it. He's just a good comparison because of his ability and he was fairly close to her in the race. It would be useless to compare her to somebody in the back of the pack.
It's possible that she has a higher ceiling than him in the 100-mile, but realistically on Jan 1 she was no better than 17 for 100 and his ability was about 15. That 17 to 15 is a much bigger gap than 27 to 25 and it's not just getting to an equal level as him (which would be unlikely in so little time) ... she got head-and-shoulders better than him. The gains in such little time, the way she opened up such a big gap in that spot ... just not likely.
If you wanted to compare her to Patrycja, she has a 14:35. Iván, who has a 13:07, finished just 6.5 minutes ahead of Ashley. Yes, Ashley is a great athlete, but not best-in-the-world great. It's unlikely she made the jump from 17:26 to the sub-15, sub-14 level of these others in half a year.
No. The basic argument, that has been made by many ultra runners in this thread, is that Badwater is a unique event. It's a lot longer than 100 miles, a lot hillier than a lot of 100 milers and run in unique conditions - the ability to perform in which is probably the key trait to doing well. It also has a tiny field size and our understanding of what a strong Badwater performance means is almost certainly skewed by the meaningless sample size. There is absolutely no reason to suspect that someone like Paulson couldn't break the course record there, and even less reason to suspect that if the field size were much bigger her record wouldn't in turn be broken.
Strongly disagree, and this is coming from the barroom threshold, not the courtroom threshold.
Just comparing Harvey and Ashley, Harvey is absolutely faster in a normal 100 than her, by a lot. His overall endurance is elite (winner of Big Dog's Backyard Ultra, 148+ miles in 24 hours in June, trained like a beast for Barkley), and he has clearly proven that he is elite in the niche combo of heat, hills and distance that Badwater requires.
There is actually no reason to suspect that Paulson, who is not as fast, who does not have the endurance of Lewis, and who has no experience at Badwater, would fly up Father Crowley 34 minutes faster than him on a hot day with the sun straight overhead when he's ahead of his race-winning pace from 2021.
She's obviously a good athlete but that's at shorter distances. She was good-but-not-great with very limited experience in ultras and she's gonna run hard for a 100 for the first time at Badwater and instantly become the best there ever was and leave a legend at the top of his game in her dust? Not plausible at all.
Harvey had a tough day, paricularly in that section. He was more than an hour slower than he’s run it before and on four ocassions he has run that section faster than Ashley Paulson. It would be particularly difficult for anyone to cheat during the daytime and provide a gpx file that made sense.
this? sorry but the first two hours of this climb are suspect as hell. this is in conjunction with everything else going on at this point in her race: her pacer either pausing her watch at different junctures on the climb, or getting in and out of the van (or both), and the fact that large portions of Ashley's route up WPR are on the right side of the road, unlike any other competitor i've looked at.
I started out skeptical when I heard runners there reported suspicious behavior and I heard her heart rate was really low up the final climb. The more I looked at the data, the more convinced I became that what she did was indeed possible.
I just followed your link to the pacer's Strava. Well her post certainly didn't help: "She dove so deep in that pain cave, the deepest she said she’s ever been. She went into the race wanting to win. After about 50 miles we realized the course record was within reach."
a) Anybody see her face and her attitude and condition? I would hardly describe someone effusing endless positivity and happiness as diving deep into the pain cave.
b) You knew the course record was within reach after 50 miles? With 85 miles left to go?
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