Pam Reed

Pam Reed

Pam Reed has twice won the Bad­wa­ter Ultra­ma­rathon, the world’s tough­est run­ning event. She is the Amer­i­can women’s record-holder in the 24-hour run (138.94 miles) and 48-hour run (220 miles). Reed has been fea­tured on 60 Min­utes, CNN, and The Late Show with David Let­ter­man, as well as in the New York Times, Sports Illus­trated, and Runner’s World.

Reed is the cur­rent female Amer­i­can record holder in six-day marathons after com­plet­ing 490 miles in the Twelfth-Annual Self-Transcendence Six-Day Race in Flush­ing Mead­ows Corona Park in Queens, NY. She com­pleted the race on Sat­ur­day, May 2, 2009 (I can’t imag­ine any­thing more bor­ing that run­ning around a track for 490 miles! Think about that next time you run a track).

In an arti­cle pub­lished in Out­side, with an incred­i­ble title (see below) she expressed her dis­may and dis­s­ap­point­ment in how even though she had won Bad­wa­ter, beat­ing Dean Kar­nazes, he got all of the pub­lic­ity. She says it’s a shame just because he’s a sex sym­bol, he gets on the cov­ers of mag­a­zines. Hear­ing that Dean wanted to run 300 miles, she set out to do it first. And she did. 300 miles with­out sleep. How­ever, Dean still got the North Face spon­sor­ship and attention.

Des­per­ate House­wife Stalks Male Super­model in Sports Death March, Out­side, 2005.