Badwater 135 2026: Max Jolliffe breaks 21 hours, Carmen Maria Perez finishes second overall

Max Jolliffe won the 2026 Badwater 135 in 20:53:41. It is a course record, and the first time anyone has broken 21 hours. He took 39:20 off Yoshihiko Ishikawa's 21:33:01 from 2019.

Carmen Maria Perez finished second overall in 21:05:32. She beat the old course record too, by 27:29, and took 39:03 off Ashley Paulson's women's best from 2023.

Tamás Bódis was third in 21:34:47, 1:46 outside Ishikawa's old mark. Before this year, only Ishikawa had ever run quicker.

Neither Jolliffe nor Perez had finished Badwater before. The official database lists both as first-time finishers, so the course record and the women's record both fell in one night, to runners who had never finished it. Jolliffe called it "fastest ever at the world's toughest footrace" in his post after the finish.

The results and the all-time list are on our Badwater 135 results page, and our Badwater 135 race guide covers the course, the dates and how entry works.

The race also got harder this year. The organizers cut the time limit from 48 hours to 45.

Two runners beat a record that stood since 2019

Before this year, winning times since 2007 had ranged from 21:33:01 to 25:50:23, and the quickest before that was Scott Jurek's 24:36:08 in 2005. Nobody had ever broken 21 hours. On Tuesday night two runners beat the old record within 12 minutes of each other.

These are the fastest runs on record. Nothing between 1988 and 2006 was quick enough to make the list.

Four of the 10 fastest Badwater runs on record happened on the same night.

Perez, second overall at 44

Perez is 44, from San Juan de Requena in Spain. She finished ahead of every man in the field except Jolliffe.

Ashley Paulson won Badwater outright in 2023, so a woman leading the race is not new here. What is new is the time, and Paulson had a close view of it. She was on the course herself, and finished 7th in 24:59:36 the day after her record went. The two fastest women's runs on record now sit second and fifth on the all-time list.

A woman has now finished first or second overall at Badwater in three of the last four editions. Paulson won in 2023, Line Caliskaner was second in 2024, and Perez was second this year.

It is happening at other long races too. In May, Rachel Entrekin won the Cocodona 250 outright in 56:09:48, the first woman to win it outright, beating the first man home by 1:18:48 and taking the overall course record. These fields are small, so a few results do not explain much. But a woman near the top of the overall standings is no longer unusual at this distance.

Winning times and finish rates since 2007

Every edition from 2007 onward, with the number of starters who reached Whitney Portal.

There is no 2020 row because that race never happened. It was called off about 10 days before the July 6 start, during the pandemic, and everyone entered was offered a guaranteed place in 2021 instead. The database still lists the 2020 field, 102 names, with no times beside any of them.

Finish rates swing a lot. In 2009, 33 of 86 starters did not finish. In 2018 it was 30 of 99. The best year was 2025, when 93 of 99 made it. This year came close, with 88 of 95 home for a rate of 92.6%, the fourth highest since 2007.

Over all 19 editions, 1,488 of 1,765 starters have finished. That is 84.3%, or about five in six. The race has a fearsome reputation, but most people who start it do finish.

The rest of the field

The race started 95 runners in three waves, at 8, 9 and 10 p.m. on Monday, July 27. The course runs 135 miles from Badwater Basin, which the race calls the lowest point in North America at 280 feet below sea level, up to Whitney Portal. It crosses three mountain ranges on the way, 14,600 feet of cumulative climb against 6,100 feet of descent. Each wave runs its own 45-hour clock. The last one expired Wednesday evening. There are fuller breakdowns of the route and the climbs if you want them mile by mile.

Of the 95 starters, 88 finished. Of the 27 women who started, 26 finished. Gurinder Singh was the last one home at 44:25:53, 34 minutes inside the new limit.

The pre-race release named five runners chasing streaks, and all five finished. Danny Westergaard completed his 19th consecutive Badwater and Harvey Lewis his 15th in a row. Ray Sanchez recorded his 17th finish. Pamela Chapman-Markle, at 70 the oldest starter, came home in 38:25:59.

The 10 p.m. wave took the first 16 places, from a group of only 28 runners. That is not a coincidence. The race director assigns the starting groups, and the winner has come out of the last wave in all 19 editions from 2007 through 2026.

The results page has the finisher list and a timestamp showing when we last checked it.

How we source this

Times, placings and finisher counts come from the AdventureCORPS results database, the official timing record, read by script rather than by hand. Course and time-limit figures come from the race's own event page. The 2026 results also match an independent database.

The year-by-year tables cover 2007 onward. The record claims also take in 1988 to 2006, where the quickest winning time was 24:36:08. The 1988 race ran a longer 146-mile course.

Badwater ranks by elapsed time, not by who crosses the line first. A 10 p.m. starter and an 8 p.m. starter are judged on their own clocks. Rebuilding the 2025 finishing order from elapsed times reproduces the official placings exactly.