Pam Reed, from Jackson, Wyoming, has always been a prolific ultrarunner since she entered the sport in 1992. She quickly excelled and won on all surfaces, track, road, and trails. She is most well-known for her back-to-back Badwater 135 overall wins in 2002 and 2003. Over her career, she has at least 30 ultra wins, including 13 wins in races of 100 miles or more. In 2021, she became the 19th known person in the world to achieve 100 100-mile finishes with at least 45 podiums in those 100-milers. In addition, as of 2022, she has finished 64 full Ironmans, including nine at Kona, Hawaii. In 2005, Pam authored the book, The Extra Mile: One Woman’s Personal Journey to Ultra-Running Greatness which has inspired many aspiring ultrarunners. She was also the race director for the Tucson Marathon for 28 years.
Pam grew up in Michigan, was always active and athletic, and during college moved to Tucson, Arizona. She began serious long-distance running in 1989 when training for Ironman competitions and finished her first 100-miler in 1992, the Wasatch Front 100. That began her love for running that distance and since then, she has finished at least one 100-miler every year, for 31 years and counting. She won her first 100-miler in Tucson in 1996 with 21:30:00 and broke 20 hours with a win at 1998 Old Dominion, while completing the Grand Slam of Ultrarunning that year, the 12th woman to complete it.
Living in Arizona, she was used to running in temperatures over 100 degrees, and in 2002 wished to give the famous Badwater Ultramarathon (135 miles) a try in Death Valley. With twenty 100-mile finishes to her name, she was not the typical Badwater rookie and gained serious fame when she became the overall winner in 27:56:47. That began her long association with Badwater, where she finished 11 times, all podium finishes, with three women’s wins and seven second places. After her second overall Badwater win in 2003, she made a classic appearance on the David Letterman Show, where she explained winning belt buckles.
In 2003, Pam started to compete internationally on the U.S. 24-hour team and finished sixth at the World Championship at The Netherlands with 134 miles. A month later, she broke the American Women’s 24-hour record with 138.96 miles at San Diego, California, a record she held for 25 years. In 2004 she set an American age-group 48-hour record (W40-44) of 220 miles which she still holds today. For her accomplishments in 2003, she was named the USATF Women’s Masters Ultrarunner of the Year.
In 2005, Pam received national public fame when she ran 301 miles in 79 hours without any sleep on a flat frontage road next to Interstate 10, north of Tucson, beating an unofficial record for sustained running that Dean Karnazes had recently set at 262 miles. In 2009, she took her sleep-deprivation talents to New York City and broke the women’s American six-day record with 490 miles which she still held in 2022.
With all her achievements and records on roads and tracks, Pam’s true love has been running on the mountain trails. In 2015, Pam finished in the same year, Western States 100, Hardrock 100, and Badwater 135, all three in just 33 days, the first and still only person to accomplish that. She has finished Wasatch Front 100 fourteen times, with two second place finishes, Western States 100 seven times, and Leadville 100 six times with four top-ten finishes. In addition, she finished two Hardrock Hundreds, both in the top ten, Zion 100 ten times, and four Arrowhead Winter 135s with two wins.
In 2017, Pam was inducted in the Pima County Sport (AZ) Hall of Fame and in 2019, was also inducted into the Arizona Runner’s Hall of Fame.
In 2019 Pam became aware that she had 85 100-mile race finishes and set an ambitious goal to soon reach 100 finishes. Her 100th finish came on February 3, 2021, at Grandmaster Ultras in Arizona, just three weeks before her 60th birthday. She became the 19th person to be inducted into the 100×100 club. Since reaching the 100×100 milestone, Pam has finished an additional seven 100s as of 2022, including the difficult and cold Arrowhead Winter Ultra (135 miles), Hardrock Hundred, and Cocodona 250, all while over the age of 60. As of 2022, Pam had finished at least 200 ultras.
Read/Listen/Watch an Ultrarunning History Podcast episode featuring Pam Reed: https://ultrarunninghistory.com/pam-reed/