I think this is what raised a red flag for a lot of people. Camille and Bereznowska have insane 100mile and 100+ mile times yet their Badwater record was broken by Ashley who is hours slower in her recent 100 mile finishes. Maybe Ashley has improved drastically because she is so "new" to ultrarunning and is still learning and getting better. I do think that Ashleys next ultramarathon result will tell us what we need to know.

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2x Deca-Ironman World Cup (10 Ironmans in 10 days), 2x Quintuple Ironman World Cup (5 Ironmans in 5 days), Ultraman, Ultra Marathoner, and I once did an Ironman.

I don't know jack about ultra running. But the Bear is a ultramarathon that is a trail race that is at altitude the whole way. 22,800 feet of climbing. Badwater? Road ultra with 14,600 feet of climbing. So say her other performances are not indicative of what she could have done at Badwater is just kinda hog wash.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

Her finishing time at Pony Trail 100 miler (last october) was 17.5 hours, this 100 miler is basically flat with 3k of elevation gain over 100 miles. Its basically flat for ultrarunning standards and is considered a fast race. Before that antelope island 100 miler was 18.5 hours.

You should go look up how fast Camille and Bereznowska have run 100 milers and then tell me if it doesnt seem odd that Ashley who has been hours slower in 100 milers was able to beat their times at badwater. For reference Camille ran javelina hundred in 14 hours. Last i checked even though the courses are slightly different 14 hours is much faster than 17.5 hours.

Im not saying she cheated, and i know all 100 milers are different. But at a quick glance it is odd that someone who has been hours slower over 100 miles was able to beat the course record. This comparison is what started it all.

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2x Deca-Ironman World Cup (10 Ironmans in 10 days), 2x Quintuple Ironman World Cup (5 Ironmans in 5 days), Ultraman, Ultra Marathoner, and I once did an Ironman.

The market for this is probably relatively small so I can see why it doesn't exist for economic reasons, but it seems like there's an opportunity for Garmin to have a cryptographically signed/verifiable FIT file for racing purposes. Canon used to make a kit for their DSLRs that could be used by law enforcement, etc. to verify that photos hasn't been altered from the camera. Doesn't stop other types of cheating, but would at least put an end to "the file was altered" types of accusations.

I wonder if you could do something via ConnectIQ - download a private key from the internet and encrypt some set of "valuable" fields (position, speed, HR, power, time) and write them back to the FIT file. Not sure how fun it would be to reimplement public/private key encryption for ConnectIQ and it might be murder on the battery, plus you'd have to figure out if there were ways to sneak the private key off the device/in transit.

Paulson's win at the Bear 100 ranks outside the top 10 women's times at the event and was 2 hours 15 minutes slower than the race record.

Yes, it was a solid run but hardly indicative of being her in the same league as an athlete like Bereznowska. Paulson's five previous ultra wins have been in relatively minor races with limited competition.

By comparison, Bereznowska has nearly 50 ultra victories under her race belt, including World Championship wins, world records and course records in notable races.

Which of her prior performances do you think are indicative of her Badwater breakthrough? And please don't try to tell me it's because Paulson was three years younger or has some magical triathlete properties.

There is no burden of proof to demonstrate that she could do this. The burden is to prove that she didn’t.

Which of Billy Mills performances were indicative that he could win the Olympic 10,000 meters in a world record of 28:24?

And there’s no way in hell that Bob Beamon, or any other human in 1968 could long jump over 29 feet.

Mills and Beamon probably cheated.

I certainly haven't insinuated any cheating by Paulson, nor I have I indicated she need prove the legitimacy of her run.

What I have said in relation to her Badwater performance has been consistently positive throughout the thread:

she's certainly quite a capable ultra runner.


Kostman may well be right in having faith in Paulson's performance. At this point, I'm inclined to view it as legit


Although I see little in Paulson's results that would have indicated an exceptional Badwater performance, I still wouldn't discount her run as legit. It will be interesting to see how she performs in more competitive races.


Paulson nailed a better debut Badwater, which is genuinely impressive considering her relative inexperience.


Badwater breakthrough

Or just last night In the 110h.

You wouldn't even need to encrypt the actual data. (Though that might be useful for other issues, like location or health data privacy)

Just do something like create a cryptographic hash for a data set the moment you hit the "stop" button on an activity. The hash would be bit unique to the data - a universal unique identifer. The hash would be encrypted with Garmin's private key on the watch itself. The encrypted hash would uploaded along with the data.

Garmin publishes both their hash algorithm and their public key. This would allow MI, ZADA other to run the hash algorithm themselves on the FIT/GPX file they have. And then they could decrypt the Garmin-provided hash. If the resulting hash values are different, then the data has been modified in some way.

As you pointed out, this only makes one way to cheat more difficult. Other simple ways, such as simply handing your GPS watch to someone else to run a leg while you nap, isn't covered.

Yeah - if Garmin implemented it, they could stash the private key in an "unreachable" location (ala an TMP). Hashing would be a lot quicker and it does seem like ConnectIQ provides a cryptography module. I don't know if the FIT format supports summary data as is, or if they'd need to extend that (it doesn't seem like a ConnectIQ app has a way of adding that if it is supported).

Garmin's already been doing some interesting stuff in a similiar realm of Adventure Racing, where they have a new sport profile that basically disables all the navigation functions of the watch during the race, but allows access to them afterwards. It even has a special 'Vertification' summary screen that validates the unit wasn't used otherwise mid-race.

In terms of other avenues of cheating, there always will be. But aside from doping ones, many of the others can be relatively cheaply addressed with cheating. Many races have cameras setup recording the entire time, but that can be more easily extended to simple GoPro's attached to cheap battery banks and a large micro-SD card. These needn't be obvious or placed at key markers, but rather just half a dozen used GoPro's off eBay sprinkled around the course and then picked up afterwards would do the trick.

Technology isn't the solution to everything, but in most of these race cheating (not doping) scenarios, technology actually can pretty easily disprove/prove almost every case.

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My tiny little slice of the internets: dcrainmaker.com

So is she legit at BW 135 this year or not?

She was legit last year.

This year she ran with a group through the early stages, then started to move up, then into the lead around 109 miles and "on the radar" every step of the way.

Yes. Legit.

And amazing.

That a very good long course triathlete who also has run the in the Olympic Trials in the marathon (and still had several 2:4x marathons this year) can translate that to ultramarathons probably shouldn't be too surprising.

And it may translate especially well to non-technical (paved roads) ultramarathons.

(I just point this out to continued haters who will ask "if she's so good why isn't she crushing Western States or Hardrock?". They are pretty dissimilar events.)

"Street Racing" - I'd like to make that a thing

There once was an event in Philly, held in July, called "20in24" conceived by Anne Mahlum, who was the founder of Back On My Feet, which was a 24-hour race around the Fairmount Park Loop, which - though not a "street" - was on the paved bike path

There was a 24-hour solo run, a Team Relay (hence the name "20in24" - the goal being that each runner on the 5 person team would complete 4 loops in 24 hours), and two single-loop races: Midnight Madness, which started at midnight, duh (my first race with a headlamp) and Pajama Party, which started at 6AM/dawn-ish

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

Good on Ashley Paulson!

What some prominent members of the endurance community put her through last year was pretty shameful and embarrassing! It's too easy to pile onto the "ready fire aim" bandwagon these day!

I'm guessing that the Marathon Investigation dude and many of the doubters in this thread (from a year ago) volunteered as marshals on the course and can attest that they saw no evidence of cheating this year.

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It doesn't really matter what Phil is saying, the music of his voice is the appropriate soundtrack for a bicycle race. HTupolev