My Proudest Finish: Pam Reed

By Steve Matsuda

Her name has become synonymous with the race. She's the only woman to win the Kiehl's Badwater Ultramarathon outright. And she did it twice. With that come notoriety and adulation, but also pressure. Pam Reed has become the target, the one everyone watches.

"It felt much hotter than the last two years," says Reed. "I got overheated from the start. My crew was great, they kept me cool, but I just didn't have it."

Who knows why some days you have it, and some days you don't. We don't have much control over that, but we can control our response to it. "I'm more proud of this one than the other two because of the amount of work involved. You can't take anything for granted, it's so unbelievably hard."

It would have been easy for her to say that her knee was hurting or just hop into one of her air-conditioned crew vehicles and call it a day. But she didn't do that. She persevered. Like all the others in the race. "I went so slow on this last part because I didn't want to drop. I just wanted to finish." And with all that, she still completed the 135-mile course in 31:17, 2nd woman and 4th place overall. Pretty darn good for having a bad day!