Three months. That’s how long the women’s 100-mile world record lasted before Ashley Paulson showed up in the Nevada desert and made it look like a suggestion.
On February 20, Paulson crossed the finish line at the Jackpot 100 Mile in Henderson, Nevada, with a time of 12:19:34 — more than 17 minutes faster than the previous world record. To put that in perspective: 17 minutes is a comfortable coffee break. It’s also an eternity in elite ultrarunning.
The record she shattered belonged to Irish runner Caitriona Jennings, who had set it just last November at the Tunnel Hill 100 Mile with a time of 12:37:04. Jennings barely had time to enjoy it.
Loop After Loop After Loop
The race itself wasn’t exactly a scenic mountain trail run. Paulson did her record-breaking on a 1.19-mile loop around a pond at Cornerstone Park — a former gravel mine, a few miles from the Las Vegas Strip. She ran that loop roughly 84 times.
To break the record, she needed to average 7:34 per mile. For 100 miles. She went out faster than that.
Her early splits hovered around 7:00 per mile — a pace most runners would be pleased to hold for a 5K — and she held it for the first 20 miles. By the halfway point, she had built a buffer of nearly 30 minutes over record pace, which is the ultrarunning equivalent of a very comfortable lead.
Then, around the 6-hour mark, reality showed up.
Her pace slipped. Then slipped a bit more. The buffer, once a fat 30 minutes, started shrinking in the final stretch. Anyone watching the splits would have been sweating. Paulson, to her credit, was already sweating — and running. A smart race strategy in ultras often comes down to exactly this: how much buffer you can bank early, and how well you manage the slow bleed.
She crossed the line with enough left in the tank to claim the record, setting a new women’s 100-mile world best.
A Resume That Doesn’t Quit
Paulson isn’t exactly an unknown quantity in ultrarunning. She holds the women’s course record at the Badwater 135, one of the sport’s most punishing events — a point-to-point race through Death Valley in July heat. She set it in 2022, then came back in 2023 and won the whole race outright, shaving nearly 2.5 hours off her own time in the process.
At Jackpot specifically, she won the 100-mile event in 2024 before a DNF in 2025 — so this year’s run had a bit of a revenge arc to it. She’s also won the 2025 Bigfoot 200 Mile, the 2025 Zion 100 Mile, and the 2023 Across the Years 100 Mile. Ninth place at the 2024 Cocodona 250 Mile rounds out a schedule that makes most runners’ training logs look quaint.
She had also told everyone she was coming. Before the race, Paulson posted on Instagram that she was going after the world record. No hedging, no “hoping to run well” — just a stated intention to go and break it. Then she went and broke it.
What’s Next
The record still needs to be ratified by the International Association of Ultrarunners, and the course is USATF-certified to meet the requirements for an official attempt.
Worth noting for the full picture: Paulson served a six-month doping sanction in 2015 and 2016 for a positive test for ostarine — a selective androgen receptor modulator (SARM) — which occurred during her career as a triathlete.
As for whether this record will last longer than three months? Given how fast the women’s 100-mile scene is moving right now, nobody should count on it. But for now, the mark belongs to Paulson — set in the Nevada sun, one loop at a time.
The record is pending ratification by the International Association of Ultrarunners.
