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Now that my comments on the Florida Ultra Runners page are officially in this thread, I might as well address them. This is Eric Spencer, Bib #2 from Badwater this year. No fake aliases needed.
Here is all I will say:
--I ran a race below my standards given some pre-race injuries and still finished in 36 hours, which was 10 hours ahead of PM's time (however you think she obtained it).
--The only thing that I saw with my own eyes was the van driving by at approximately mile 38 coming down from Horseshoe Meadows. The van never returned. My race strategy was to take the first mountain up and down rather in control. I was actually DFL from the 8 A.M. wave to the top. But PM was the first person in the entire race that I passed, which happened at mile 24. She had a 2 hour head start and was barely moving (downhill). My immediate reaction was that the person had no chance of finishing. When the van went by me, I thought, "Yup, I was right." I would later learn that several other runners from the 7 A.M. wave saw the same thing.
--I would also later hear about the eyewitness accounts from other parts along the course, which fits with my next point.
--About a week after the race someone called my attention to the splits. I looked at both Darwin (mile 91) to Lone Pine (122) and also Lone Pine to the finish. What stood out was that somehow, even in a stretch where I found my 2nd wind (or probably my 7th by that point) and caught nearly every runner within 2 miles of me (independent of wave), PM was only an hour or so behind me. Over the 45 miles!!! Come on. I saw her walking about 1 mph going toward Darwin at maybe mile 80 for her as I was passing on the other side of the road. I thought it was odd since A. she was ahead of people that appeared to be moving well and B. I saw her van drive down from Horseshoe and not return. I actually said, "I thought she DNF'd," to my pacer.
--The most absurd split is that she somehow beat me from Lone Pine to the finish at Whitney. My crew can back me up on this. I passed EVERY SINGLE PERSON on the Whitney Portal Road and had one of the fastest ascents among people not in the Top 10. There is a precisely 0.0000% chance that PM beat me in that stretch or would come close. I'd be happy to fly back to Cali and race any day or time. I'll even do a 20 miler to warm-up before we race those 13 miles up the mountain.
--Here is a major point that I want to drive home about ultras and Badwater in particular. We all know who was near us at certain points in the race (so do the crews). If you ask me about a runner, ANY runner, in this year's race whom I was near at some point (so I saw them or their crew vehicle), I can tell you within a mile or 2 where it happened. I know where I passed people and where people passed me. When people like Darren and several others on a lonely stretch of desert road don't see PM pass them and yet she somehow mysteriously passed not one but ALL of them, then you know something is off.
--To me, the alleged cheating thing is something that PM will have to live with. It doesn't change my time or my place in the race. Like it says in my FUR posts, if someone cheats at Badwater, they cheat themselves, the people they finished ahead of who EARNED that buckle, and also the DNF's--most of whom could certainly have done better and maybe finished had they used the same tactics.
I have no interest in continuing on this thread. I've followed it for a few weeks. I only work on what I can control, which is improving my own race times and performances and being supportive of people who are truly competing and completing ultras.