L e e C o n n e r

Lead Coach, Project Co-Founder

Lee is an accomplished ultrarunner whose dedication and achievements in the sport have inspired many. She has not only had over sixty 100-miler finishes, she has placed for a large portion of them.

Lee's training methods, developed through years of experience and never-ending research, focus on maximizing efficiency and effectiveness and targeted strength training over unnecessary volume (which we call junk miles here).

She has a passion for serving as a coach and mentor, and is committed to sharing her wealth of knowledge with aspiring ultrarunners, especially women, and women over fifty.

Lee is the lead coach of the Women’s 100 Miler Project. She designs our training plans, and is available and eager to answer questions and partake in conversations for all things ultra running in our Facebook group. But probably don’t ask her if she’s going for 100 100s..

You can see Lee’s racing resume here.

Hi, I’m Karmell. I refuse to write this in the third person.

My story has been a great one, and it’s hard to summarize in a short excerpt, but I’ll do my best:

By the age of 30, I’d felt like the best of my life had already passed. I felt trapped in an unhappy relationship and a toxic career, and felt like I could escape neither. Furthermore, my scoliosis was taking over and I suffered from debilitating back pain.

I found running and it began to give me a new lease on life, until I decided to pursue my bucket list goal of running a marathon. In ignorance, I pulled what I now refer to as a "junk miles plan" from the internet and found myself sidelined for six months due to injury. My life imploded.

During this time, I feared I would never be able to run again but was simultaneously determined to find a path that would allow me to continue to do so if there was one. I went to numerous chiropractors and physical therapists and began to deep dive into research. This is when I discovered strength training.

At this point, I’d also started doing long hikes in the woods, and during these hikes, would start to pick up into little running intervals. I decided 1.) I was going to be able to run again, 2.) I was going to trail run, not road run, because I loved being out in nature, and 3.) I decided to scrap the marathon goal. Forget that, I was going to do a 100 miler.

Shortly after this decision, I reached out to Lee, my one acquaintance who did 100 milers. We began training together, and ultimately, I adopted her training plan, though we did already have a considerable overlap in strength training at this point.

Less than 13 months from my decision to run a 100 miler, which had been at a point where I was just getting back to being able to run three miles, I had my first 100 miler finish at The Bear in 2019. I’ve now finished over nineteen 100 milers. (Still haven’t run that official marathon though. I guess that has less appeal these days!)

Running is such a small part of what 100 milers are about to me. This sport has given me the tools to dig myself out of toxic situations and pursue dreams that I’d all but buried. I’m very passionate about sharing that experience, and empowering other women to achieve this goal by streamlining training information and creating an environment to facilitate growth, confidence, and competence, while addressing the overwhelming and often contradictory information out there that can deter newcomers from pursuing their 100 miler goal.