2024 was one heck of a year for one of the greatest ultrarunners in history. I’m talking about Camille Herron.
In March 2024, Camille broke a dozen world records1 by running 560 miles over 6 days in California’s Coachella Valley as part of the Lululemon Further spectacle. Later that year, Lululemon dropped her as an athlete2 following a bizarre Wikipedia-editing controversy, and she was later diagnosed with ADHD and autism3.
Now, essentially retired from the sport that gave her so much, Camille Herron is in a state of flux. With multiple lawsuits in progress as she attempts to clear her name, she’s also navigating a new stage of life as a neurodiverse athlete.
The Diagnosis
That diagnosis has gone a long way to completing the jigsaw of Camille Herron’s life. It’s well documented that as a child, she was diagnosed with Central Auditory Processing Disorder and took speech therapy until she was nine years old but autism was never really considered. Why? Because – as with so much in the medical fields – diagnostic criteria was built around men4, and only men. Even now, women are more likely to be diagnosed with depression, anxiety, and other disorders before the underlying autism is recognized.
We spoke via video call back in June. It just so happened to be a Tuesday. Taco Tuesday. She’s fueled ultras with tacos, and it’s something that Camille celebrates online with videos of her dancing most weeks. It’s part of her brand but not everyone loves it. She talks to me about being misunderstood, mistreated, bullied “for being different, for being colorful, for being happy, for being successful, for being a woman.” For being herself.
“In neurodivergence, you hear about masking and trying to hide your authentic self, but for the most part I think that I’ve stayed pretty true to my little girl Camille self. Dancing and being crazy and not really caring what people think. I’m 44 and I’m still wearing colorful clothes.”
The journey to her AuDHD diagnosis started at 40 years old, when she realized she needed to take better care of herself. She started going to the gym, of course, but it was working with a dietician who noticed chronic stress markers in her bloodwork that led to a focus on her mental health. The diagnosis was a revelation.
“When you get the diagnosis, it feels like relief and it feels like grief. You’re finally able to explain why you feel like an alien. I just had never felt like I fit into this world. I’ve known that I’m not like everybody else since I was two.”
She talks about identifying with Forrest Gump’s difficulties enough to start running as a young girl; about being both gifted and having disabilities; about being reassured by her parents when she struggled. Despite all this, she was Valedictorian, received academic scholarships and 4.0s, and her work in further education was published multiple times.
Despite all that high achievement, Camille has lived a lifetime of feeling like she’s never fitted in.
The Tall Poppy
The funny thing is that a very recent study has shown that distance runners in particular are three times more likely to show ADHD traits5. I’ve been interested in this particular sub-topic for a while now, and had a passage on neurodiversity in running in the first draft of my book but it wasn’t quite right, so didn’t make the final cut. Many of the new studies over the past 12 months would’ve helped. I’d be interested to see if there are any further increases in incidence as you move into elite distance running, for instance.
Interestingly, higher education also reports a higher incidence of neurodiversity6, so maybe Camille has always been in the best place to fit in. Camille also excelled in her previous career in biochemical research. Her work in bone imaging was published many times, and she used that work to inarguably become one of the greatest ultrarunners of all time.
The accepted wisdom for training to run 100s of miles in one go is that you have to run 100s of miles per week in long runs, but her research said otherwise. She found that short frequent bouts of low intensity running combined with infrequent bouts of high intensity exercise were better for gaming the recovery windows for skeletal stress7, optimizing adaptations to high mileage. It was something that experienced people in the sport vocally opposed. Regardless, she stuck to her guns and has those 12 world records to show for it.
The Curse of Being Terminally Online
Camille talks about protecting her peace over the last couple of years, but she’s also attracted some of that attention whether she likes it or not.
In September 2024, Camille was apparently caught deleting accolades and accomplishments from the Wikipedia pages of Kilian Jornet and Courtney Dauwalter. Unsporting behavior. Her husband Conor Holt later took full blame8, and it probably kinda checks out, but I honestly do not have the wherewithal to adjudicate this kind of petty nonsense. I already spend too much time on god’s internet.
Camille lost her Lululemon partnership in the immediate aftermath of this scandal, which has led to finger-pointing and defamation lawsuits. Here are a few Reddit and LetsRun threads from 2024 if you’ve got too much time on your hands.
Most recently, Camille chimed in when Sage Canaday reported Cam Hanes’ doping when he used illegal, unregulated peptide BPC-157 to accelerate healing in his body enough to win a marathon. She shared Sage’s desire for a clean sport and supported him very openly online.
“I told Sage to report it. It shouldn’t be up to us as athletes to smear a person. It’s about following the rules and it needs to be reported to the authorities to let them decide how to handle it. Sport has to be both, and it has to be safe.”
Camille and I discuss her justice sensitivity9 – another well-documented trait of autistic individuals that isn’t more widely understood. It’s the kind of thinking that prizes the idea of true equity over socially accepted norms that are often less proper. It’s what we want, right?
A Bunch of Cowboys?
For me, it speaks to a need for better governance in ultra. It can often feel like the Wild West, even when there are premium prices to participate. It’s obviously impossible to test every single runner, but if they podium, make sure they ran a clean race. Pretty simple, but Camille says it goes further than that.
