Ashley Paulson on running scared, staying loud, and the "impossible year"

Ashley Paulson, known online as Ashkickin, has bright pink hair, a habit of dancing mid-race, and a resume that includes an outright Badwater 135 win, over 130 marathons, and a world record for the fastest female 100 miler. None of that came from natural talent, and she's the first to say so. She didn't run in high school or college. She started taking the sport seriously in her thirties, after her fourth kid, and the confidence she's known for now took decades to build.

She talks openly about how little self-esteem she had for most of her twenties and thirties. She was a people-pleaser who used to sneak in workouts because she was embarrassed to admit how much she wanted them. When she earned a pro triathlon card, she turned it down, because the pros she saw around her looked serious and joyless, and she was scared that going pro meant she'd have to become someone she wasn't. Her husband talked her into trying it anyway, with the promise that she could always go back to being an age grouper if it didn't feel right. She kept her personality, her glitter, her dancing at the start line, and ended up beating a lot of the pros she'd been comparing herself to.

That tension between authenticity and outside expectation runs through most of what she talked about. She and Nicky got into a real pattern in how women talk about their own success: not recognizing it as a big deal, worrying it'll come off as bragging, prioritizing connection over standing out, not wanting to make anyone else feel bad, being scared to jinx it, feeling undeserving, or doubting they measure up to some invisible bar. Ashley said almost every one of those landed for her personally. She posts far more often about her hardest, most brutal races than she does about her wins, and she's not entirely sure why, only that something in her still resists sounding like she thinks she's better than anyone else.

This year, which she's calling her "impossible year," has been a real test of how far that self-doubt has actually moved. She broke the world record for the fastest female 100 miler outside, in 12 hours and 19 minutes, then went and broke her own treadmill record for the same distance two months later at the Boston Marathon Expo, surrounded by a crowd for twelve straight hours. She's in the middle of an attempt at a triple crown of 200-mile races, one of which ended with a fall at mile 150 that left her fighting through the rest of the course.

She ran Badwater 135 aiming for a sub-20-hour finish, blacked out completely seven miles from the finish, and still crossed the line under 25 hours. And most recently, she pulled herself from a Team USA race representing her country, because after Bigfoot 200 and the fall, she didn't feel she could show up and give her team what they deserved. She said it broke her heart to make that call, but she'd rather protect the opportunity for someone who could actually be ready for it.

What ties all of it together isn't fearlessness. Ashley is upfront that she still gets scared before every race that actually matters to her, and she thinks that's exactly how it should work. Her advice isn't to eliminate the fear, it's to stop giving it all the attention. If you're going to spend energy imagining what could go wrong, spend just as much imagining what happens if it goes right. Even when a goal doesn't fully pan out, and she's had plenty that haven't, she still counts herself better off for having tried. Her line for it: do it scared. Just do it anyway.

She's closing out the year with one more 200-miler and a shot at becoming the first woman to break 12 hours in the 100 mile, at Tunnel Hill in Illinois. She's putting the goal out publicly before she's done it, which means if it doesn't happen, everyone will know. She says she's fine with that this year. That willingness to fail loudly, in public, without shrinking the goal down to something safer, might be the clearest example of what she means when she says the goal isn't to be fearless. It's to stop letting the fear make the decision for you.

Listen to the full episode here.