Ashley Paulson SMASHES her own Badwater 135 record in winning the race outright; last year's doubters are SILENT
Paulson credits her risorius muscles for making the critical difference
When U.S. ultramarathon runner Ashley Paulson ran 24:09:34 last year at age 40 to set a women’s course record at the Badwater 135—a 217-kilometer adventure through California’s Death Valley (a title that now describes the entire state) and partway up Mount Whitney—veterans of the race or at least of ultramarathon running were immediately skeptical of Paulson’s performance. In particular, they found some of her late-race splits unlikely at best.
In the immediate aftermath, U.S. ultramarathon runner Camille Herron went to the trouble of compiling a table to demonstrate how unlikely it was that Paulson had even run the whole way. Some observers even commented that she didn’t look tired enough. This static led to a Marathon Investigation ultramarathon investigation in which Derek Murphy found no evidence that Paulson had cut the course.
This seemed to satisfy doubters like Herron, or at least it shut them up. Less interesting to ultrafolx for some reason was Paulson’s six-month suspension in 2016 for testing positive for the quasi-androgen ostarine. At the time she peed hot, during an out-of-competition test in 2015, Paulson was a triathlete, meaning she was in a sport where dopers are taking far more of a risk than they are in off-road running races.
You’ll see some people claim that the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency reduced Paulson’s suspension from a year to six months after determining that the ostarine metabolites in her urine were the result of a tainted but otherwise benign nutritional supplement, thereby implying innocence. These people are deluded or simply lying. Even if USADA made a determination of the ostarine’s source, it wasn’t calling her innocent. It is not the job of USADA to read minds, only chemstrips, and it still suspended her.
Furthermore, if you know anything whatsoever about high-level triathlon and ostarine, you know that the chances of someone ingesting it accidentally are close to zero. The stuff is a heavy hitter and companies couldn’t afford to let it somehow sneak into their GNC product lines.
Last year, I wrote a post about Paulson’s Badwater record that, despite including unusually obnoxious gratuitous vulgarities even by my standards, still stands as the most-viewed post I have ever written. This is merely because someone shared it in a Facebook group, which rarely happens; I haven’t been on Facebook myself in close to five years, and much of what I write here would be immediately banned in that censorious rathole of libtard spittle-spackle along with whatever rascal was drunk enough to share it there.
I now believe I understand why I have gotten a spate of new sign-ups lately. This year’s Badwater race took place last week (results), and Paulson not only broke her own record, she cleaved ten percent from her 2022 time and won the race outright.
And when I say she took ten percent off her 2022 time, I am being hellishly precise. Paulson ran 24:09:34 last year and 21:44:35 this year. 24 hours, 8 minutes, and 34 seconds is 86,974 seconds. 90 percent of that is 78,276 seconds, which is 21 hours, 44 minutes, and 36 seconds.
Last year, Paulson broke the record, then three summers old, by less than four minutes.
She may have been frowning last year at too many key points in both the desert or climbing portions of the Badwater 135. Paulson credited her stupastic 2023 improvement to, loosely, a positive attitude run gloriously amok.
That Run247 article doesn’t mention Paulson’s past run-ins with the doping authorities. I’m fairly certain, in fact, that none of the write-ups about her incredible 2023 Badwater result do.
Here’s what I see: A 41-year-old who tested positive in her mid-thirties for an androgen-like compound all triathletes knew about even then fled the discipline for ultrarunning an environment not only known for lax-to-nonexistent drug testing, but for the number of people who defend successful runners who aren’t really hiding their doping. I didn’t know about the latter factor until I started reading more Marathon Investigation comment threads. I think the discipline started attracting a lot of corner-cutting narcissists at approximately the same time a sufficient number of subdivision-raised well-off Millennials became old enough to discover it; look at how many under-45 people with professional-managerial class jobs either lie about everything or have heads jammed with nonsense thanks to their “information” sources.
One popular retort to pointing out that Paulson was previously suspended, in addition to the theory Paulson’s doping was accidental, is that she served her time and so it’s time to shut up already. (Curiously, these two ostensibly clashing ideas often come from the same sources.) To that I ask, what choice did she have, exactly? And is it really possible to dismiss a past positive doping test as supplement miscue when a woman in her forties who looks like she’s taking androgens is doing unlikely things in sports?1
This Reddit thread (natch) captures the breathtaking detachment from reality of some observers.
I’ll assume this is sincere and not from Team Paulson itself. It asserts, among other inanities (such as the presumption-by-fiat of Courtney Dauwalter’s “cleanliness” and failing to account for the fact that plenty of people are sufficiently egoistic to cheat at sports without huge, or even any, financial incentives) that “people change,” and sure, you can find people who once did immoral or otherwise damaging things and stopped doing them so as to be a better human in some way. But when someone who has served a doping ban keeps competition in a sport she knows is littered with users of illicit performance-enhancing potions, doesn’t that affect any judgments rendered? Ashley Paulson has no reason to change.
If someone you regularly see tells you he has quit drinking, and you know that he no longer goes to the bars about town or misses engagements or needs to be bailed out of the hoosegow, you can likely trust him. But if that same person is always at the bars in the next town, hanging around the same kinds of people, sharing the same jokes and bullshit-banter and high fives he did when continually in his cups, would you be as likely to believe his claims of drinking Diet Pepsi alone on these excursions, especially if his behavior is still sometimes erratic in the same ways?
Shorter version: People used to succeeding on drugs don’t stop using them if they keep competing; they merely hope to elude detection. Even if they know it’s wrong, they can’t be doing races over 100 miles thinking they didn’t fully prepare in the ways they know how.
In addition to not seeing mention of Paulson’s doping past—and were this someone with such a past setting records in elite track and field or road running, you’d sure as hell hear noise about it—I didn’t spot any skeptical comments from Herron. Maybe she was distracted by not finishing the Western States 100 herself. Well, we know which of these two super-long-distance queens had the far better week on the West Coast, appearances notwithstanding.
I’m glad to know my over-the-top blast last year didn’t blunt Paulson’s positive attitude. She doesn’t really present as especially loopy considering she is someone who runs races that take around a day to complete and pick up 4,450 meters in elevation—you are not going to meet a “normal” person who does that, even if he, she, or it is perfectly pleasant. But leaving out irrelevant jabber about what color her hair is, I can’t see how she is doing this without theoretically verboten aid.
If she’s clean, well, like the Reddit genius up there noted, no one cares—it’s not Major League Baseball or the National Football League. We need to celebrate these whimsical, painted-up weirdos, not derogate them and their amazing feats.
No.