fbpx
Menu Close

167: Connie Gardner – National Champion Ultrarunner

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:21 — 38.1MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | Android | Pandora | iHeartRadio | JioSaavn | Podcast Index | Email | TuneIn | RSS | More

Connie Gardner, from Akron Ohio, is the 25th person inducted into the American Ultrarunning Hall of Fame, joining the Hall in 2024. From 2002 to 2012, she was a national champion twelve times at 50 miles, 100 kilometers, 100 miles, and 24 hours. She has finished at least 180 ultras, with more than 80% of them on trails, with nearly 100 wins, including three wins at the prestigious JFK 50 in Maryland. During her ultra career, she established 37 course or event records. She was a member of the U.S. National 100K Team and the U.S. National 24-Hour Team for many years, competing in many World Championships. With a busy family life and children, she didn’t start running ultras until her late 30s, but dominated into her 50s. She was named the USA Track and Field (USATF) Ultrarunner of the Year in 2003 and 2012, and the USATF Masters Ultrarunner of the year in 2011.

Learn about the rich and long history of ultrarunning. There are now eleven books available in the Ultrarunning History series on Amazon, compiling podcast content and much more. Learn More. If you would like to order multiple books with a 30% discount, send me a message here.

Constance “Connie” Margaret (John) Gardner (1963-), of Akron, Ohio, was born in Washington D.C. to Dr. James Edward A John (1933-2010) and Constance Brandon (Maxwell) John (1932-1999). Her father was an electrical engineer and president of Kettering University in Flint, Michigan. He worked with the National Academy of Sciences in Washington D.C. where Connie went to elementary school. Her ancestry on her father’s side was from Cornwall, England, by way of Belgium and Canada. Her ancestry on her mother’s side was Irish.

Even as a child, she was always competitive, trying to reach for lofty goals. She explained, “My brothers and I were always trying to get into the Guinness Book of World Records, flying a kite, for three days, playing War for as many days as we could.” Each year, a field day was scheduled at her school. “I was terrible. They wouldn’t put me in anything because I wasn’t very fast. If you weren’t good at anything else, they threw you into the distance run because nobody wanted to do it. So the first year I failed and then I started to train for it. I wanted to do it. I’ve always wanted to see that I could do.” She believed she was a good kid, but got in trouble often with her teachers and sometimes experienced the paddle. She would often run before school to help her focus. “All I needed to do was to run down to the river, watch the sun come up, run home, and go to school.”

High School and College Years

In high school, Connie competed on the girls’ cross-country and track teams at Olentangy High School, in Lewis Center, Ohio. She won all-conference honors, running on the 4X800-meter relay. Her team finished runner-up at the state finals in 1980 and 1981. She said, “I was so focused on running, that my crowd in high school was just my cross country team, so I didn’t get in any trouble.  I made sure we wouldn’t botch up our chance to win state. At a young age, that kept me on a nice path.”

Connie attended Ohio State University and then The University of Massachusetts where she received a Bachelor of Science degree in sports management. While a freshman at age 17, she ran her first marathon at the 1981 Columbus Marathon and finished in 4:11:00. At UMass, she was on the eight-person rowing team for three years but continued running. She would run six miles to and from the boathouse. She ran a lot of 5Ks and 10Ks during the 1980s and a marathon in the fall and in the spring. In 1987, she married Robert Charles Gardner in Massachusetts. They would have two daughters, Abby and Gwen.

Busy Life as a Mom

Connie moved to Portland, Oregon, to attend graduate school. To earn money, she became a bicycle messenger. That unique job helped get her into top physical shape, and she started to run with running groups. As the groups noticed that she would not get tired, she learned about ultramarathons. But with moving around and raising children, years passed before she seriously considered running an ultra. She moved to Michigan, Connecticut, and finally settled in Medina, Ohio. She worked for country clubs and health clubs and eventually became a full-time mom. “I read about Western States 100, and I thought that I would like to experience running through the mountains.” She set a goal to run Western States by the time she was 40 years old, when her life would be less busy.

Starting Ultrarunning

After running marathons for 20 years, with times close to three hours, she ran her first ultra at the age of 36, in 2000, at Groundhog Fall 50K in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. She finished in third place with 5:28:32.

Next, she wanted to try a 50-miler and found one in Kentucky on trails. She said, “I had no idea what I was doing. I knew I was passing a lot of people between mile 20 and mile 30-35, and then I came up on this guy at about mile 35 and I asked, ‘Who’s up ahead.’ And he answered, ‘It just us,’ We had about 15 miles to go.” Her only remaining competitor didn’t want to be beaten by her and pushed ahead for the win, but she was a close second overall, finishing in 8:53:04. She continued to run on average, a road marathon a month for training. Her two daughters were young and thus she did not have a normal training schedule. She was a regular mom, taking kids to school and coaching team sports. She would sneak in runs whenever she could.

First 100-Milers

In 2001, she won all the ultras that she finished. She won her first 100-miler, the Mohican Trail 100, in Ohio, in 19:36:15. “When I hit 95 miles during that first 100-miler, I thought, ‘Wow. This really isn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I haven’t had any big struggles out on the course. Maybe I’m set up for running ultras.’ As a young mom, running 100 miles was a nice get-away. It was like you experienced a year of life jammed into about 24 hours.” In the years to come, she would go on to win the Mohican Trail 100 six times.

Returning home after her first 100-mile finish and victory, she kept it quiet, not wanting her local friends to know that she was crazy enough to run 100 miles. She was never a self-promoter about her running accomplishments. Wanting to try to break 18 hours in a 100-mile race, she ran in the 2002 Umstead 100. “At about mile 60, I started to think that just finishing would be a reasonable goal.” She caught up with another runner and as they chatted, she stopped thinking about her time. “I was shocked when we finished together in 17:21:38.” She won and broke the course record by more than 40 minutes. For her first road 50K, she nearly broke four hours, finishing in 4:00:45.

At age 39, in 2002, Connie reached her goal to run Western States 100. She recalled, “At mile 99, I was running with my pacer and handler. We were very excited about finally finishing. We started to run harder, and I guess we stopped paying attention to the course. We got lost with a half mile to go. We eventually made it back to the course and to the finish. It’s not much fun getting lost at mile 99, but at least I was in good company.” She finished in 10th place, with 23:30:10, and would go on to finish Western States five times.

Connie described her typical training week. “I run 2-3 hours on both Saturday and Sunday. We have a track workout on Tuesday night, usually running lots of 800-meter intervales. I also meet with friends on Thursday for two hours of trails and hill work. The other days are cross training (weights, cycling, and swimming).” When asked why she ran ultras, she said because marathons just weren’t long enough.

100K National Champion

Nearly all of her ultras thus far had been on trails, but with all her marathon experience, she certainly knew how to hold a pace on the roads. In 2002, a friend told her about the Edmund Fitzgerald 100K, held near Duluth, Minnesota, and that the top three finishers would earn spots on the U.S. National 100K Team to compete at the World 100K Challenge the following year in Taipei, Taiwan. It was also the 100K National Championship. She said, “I’ve always enjoyed running, and the chance to make the U.S. ultramarathon team made it all the more appealing to me. It sounded like it could be a lot of fun, so I said, ‘Why not.’” Gardner was somewhat of an unknown on the road ultra scene and surprised many people when she pulled away with 30K to go, and went on to win in 8:30:32, winning her first national championship. Her 8:10 pace was constant and her splits were incredibly even, 4:14 for the first 50K and 4:16 for the second. She said, “Looking back, I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. It was a great challenge. I learned things for next year.”

JFK 50 Champion

During the next month in 2002, she went to run the oldest (longest running) and largest ultra in America, the JFK 50, in Maryland, with 862 finishers. Again, she was the surprising winner with 7:11:47, and 17th overall. She said, “I wanted this win badly. This is such a big race. It looked like there was a decent field out here today, so I was really nervous.” It would be the first of her three wins at JFK 50. In 2004, she won with a masters course record. She won the prestigious Sunmart 50 in Texas that year, beating many of the legends of the sport, both men and women.

100-Mile National Champion

Her second of at least 29 100-miler wins was at the 2002 Umstead 100 in Raleigh, North Carolina, where she ran away from the women’s field and set the first of her eight 100-mile course records with 17:21:38.

In 2003, she added a 100-mile national championship to her 100K championship, by winning the Olander Park 100 in her home state of Ohio, setting another 100-mile course record of 16:22:15 on the 1.1-mile road loop with 93 runners. She had entered the race with two days to spare. “Connie, with her capable seven and 11-year-old daughters crewing, led from start to finish.” She won by seven miles. It was the fastest 100 miles run by a woman in the U.S. during 2003. In all, she won six ultras on roads and trails from 50K to 50 miles that year. These races earned her the Ruth Anderson Award as USATF’s 2003 female ultrarunner of the year. In 2004, she set her lifetime 100-mile personal best, winning at Olander Park 100 again, repeating as the national 100-mile champ, with 15:48:04, and again with the fastest American women’s 100-mile time that year. In 2006, she would become the 100-mile Trail National Champion, winning Rocky Raccoon 100 in 17:04:00.

Connie had earned a place on the U.S. 100K Team and competed in Taiwan, where she finished 13th. She would compete on the U.S. team for many years at the 100K world championships also held in Korea, The Netherlands, Italy, and Belgium.

In 2005, her 13-year-old daughter Abby was following her example by being very involved in athletics. “Abby runs cross country, but three nights a week she has field hockey and she’s also on the swim team. It’s too much, but what are you going to do? She seems me doing it.”

Connie said, “The nice thing about running, is that you are moving forward. When I was going through a divorce, I would go for a run or go race 100 miles and win it. That gave me a ton of confidence. I moved forward. I accomplished something and then next week I felt great and knew that I could pay the bills. If I could run 100 miles on Saturday, I could to that the next weeks. It was all about moving forward.” Many years later, in Runner’s World article about her, she revealed the challenges she went through after her divorce. She raced ultras on the weekends to cope with the loneliness she experienced when her girls went to stay with their father for the weekend. “I’d go to the race feeling like I’m a failure. You don’t want to be divorced at that age, you don’t want to be a single mom, you don’t want your house to be falling apart,” she said. “I would go to a 100-miler, and it was just so easy. I would just run it real hard and finish. It gave me so much confidence.”

Racing for 24 Hours

In 2006, Connie was interested to try going beyond 100 miles by competing in a 24-hour race. Since she was a kid, she would often try to see how far she could run in a day, if she could run to the next town. Her first 24-hour race attempt was at the 2006 Ultracentric 24-Hour Run. She finished in third place with an impressive 132.7 miles. That earned her a spot on the U.S. 24-Hour Team that would compete in Canada the next year, where she only reached 70.9 miles. In explaining running for 24 hours she said, “You just have to make your body keep on going. You have to turn your body into a machine. It’s a different kind of experience. It’s really strange what you can make your body do.”

Attempt to Break the American 24-Hour Record

With more 24-hour running experience, Connie set her sights on breaking Sue Ellen Trapp’s long-standing 24-hour road record of 145.288 miles, set in 1993 at Olander Park. A running coach pointed out that all she needed to do was run a 10K each hour, for 24 hours to break the record. The 2007 Ultracentric 24-Hour Run, in Grapevine, Texas, was offering $12,000 in prize money, the largest purse for an American ultra probably since the race across America (Bunion Derby) in 1929. It also would be the race to select the members for the 2008 national 24-hour team. What she did not know was that Ultracentric would be a race shrouded in controversy for years, clear to its demise in 2016.

Connie was told that if she exceeded 140 miles, she would win $4,000. If she got the American record, she would win $10,000. As a single mom, needing money to support her family, she paid the entrance fee on a credit card, and went off the Texas. Race day was very hot. She ran with a friend on the U.S. 100K team. “He’s getting ready to drop out and I thought ‘I can’t drop out, I need the money. I need to pay bills,’ so I just kept going.” She started to fall apart but pulled it together to run hard for the last four hours. For the last hour, they ran on a quarter-mile loop.

The race director called out that Connie was going to break the American 24-hour record and counted her laps down to the record. “I crossed the line, sat in a chair, thinking I got the American record and $10,000.” The finishing horn went off later. “Four hours later, at the awards, the race director said, ‘Hey Connie, I hate to break it to you, but the American record is 145.28 miles and your ran 145.26. We remeasured.’ I don’t think he wanted to give me the $10,000. I was in shock, and then I was numb. It was a shame to get so close and not have it.” All she got was a big fake check for $4,000. It was a great disappointment to miss the record by 49 yards, but it did not kill her desire to break the American 24-hour record. She wanted the record more than the money and probably actually broke the record that day. She was crowned the 2007 24-hour national champion.

Claiming the 24-Hour American Record

Over the next five years, Connie tried to break the 24-hour record eight times, with no luck, but she did win five of those events, with two more 24-hour national championships, as she established herself as one of the best 24-hour runners in the country. She had once said, “I just have to get this record and then I never have to run around in a circle again.” At the 2011 North Coast 24-hour race in Cleveland, Ohio, she had another near miss, reaching 144.7 miles. She kept trying because she was convinced that she could reach 150 miles.

At the 2012 24-hour world championships at Katowice, Poland, Connie, age 48, was convinced that she could break the record. The American record had recently been raised to 147.9 miles by Sabrina (Moran) Little, of Texas. The Polish course was a nearly one-mile rectangular, nearly flat road loop around a pond in a beautiful park. Half of the loop was a brick surface with the rest asphalt. There were 244 runners, including 95 women. “There were a lot of people who put a lot of time into preparing for the race. There were a lot of people who were very, very focused.” Both the world record holder for the men and the women were in the race.

Connie wasn’t one to keep meticulous track of her pace or where she stood in the standings. She would pass a leaderboard after each lap, but the display was so close to the timing mat that her name would not appear until after she passed it. Also, the figures were in kilometers, not miles. She said, “You don’t know what place you’re in, because people go to the bathroom and you don’t know if you’ve lapped them or what, and you don’t know how far you’ve gone.”

She asked her team managers just to tell her where she was at 8 hours and 16 hours. At that point, she asked where she was. “They just looked at me like I was speaking a different language. After a few laps of asking for updates, I yelled, ‘Where am I?’ and they looked at me and yelled back, ‘Poland!’” She wished that she had her special-needs daughter there, crewing for her. The team managers were concentrating on the men running in the race, including Mike Morton, who would go on to win the world championship race and break the men’s American 24-hour record.

It felt like Connie was having a perfect race; she knew she was passing some good runners, but she did not have any good feedback on her progress in the huge field. She also had the misfortune of having her fueling misplaced. She had told the team managers to not try to hand things to her, that she would just grab year gels and fluids off the table. But somehow they removed her items entirely from view and caused her delays. She had lost track of the leading woman from the Czech Republic, and didn’t realize that she was not very far ahead, within catching distance.

“All of a sudden, the horn goes off. I’m on the ground laying there and then the team from Great Britain says, ‘Hey, you need to go over to the awards,’ and they help me up.” Because drug testing took so long, it wasn’t until several hours later that someone let her know she had broken the American 24-hour record with 149.368 miles and finished in second place. She thought they were joking, but it was true. If she had known her exact miles during the later stages of her race, she would have run much harder. But she finally had the record she had worked hard to beat. She also won the individual silver medal and helped her American team win the gold medal at the world championships.

Connie moved on to new goals. “I want to run 150 miles in 24 hours, and I know I can. And time’s running out, so I’m going crazy.” She didn’t have that goal to beat anyone, it was just something she wanted to do someday, and she tried to keep that goal to herself. She would run in nearly 20 more 24-hour races, but as age took over, she never reached 150 miles.

“I also feel confident at the 100-mile distance. If I win a 50-mile championship, I feel lucky. 50 miles is still too short. There are still good marathoners that I worry about all the time, that can hang with me for 40 miles in that kind of race. I think I’m going to focus on the marathon as soon as I turn 50. I want to break 3:00 when I’m 50.” She also wished that she could run a sub-20-hour Western States 100, but conceded that she was probably getting too old for that. In 2013, Sabrina (Moran) Little, 23 years younger than Connie, got the American record back, raising it to 152.03 miles in the Netherlands.

Other Ultras

Connie’s winning ways continued in the other ultra-distances with at least 36 wins from 2006 to 2012. Of note, she established new course records at Umstead 100, Laurel Highlands 70, and Burning River 100. She also established event records at Ultracentric 24 Hour and North Coast 24 Hour. She said, “I’m really competitive by nature. Unfortunately, my best distance is 100 miles. If I was really good at the 5K, I’d be doing 5Ks. The longer the distance, the better I do.” In explaining the pain of running 100 miles to people who don’t have a clue, she said, “The whole way through, I feel a lot of aches and pains. When I lay down after, it hurts bad, like I need morphine. I don’t think I’m that much of a freak. I’m competitive because of my personality. As long as I eat and drink, take in the calories, my body use them throughout the race. I stay steady. But what draws me to running long distances, are the courses and places to run in the west such as running back and forth across the Grand Canyon, it’s more of an adventure, its beautiful.”

Connie won at least twelve national championships, including:

  1. 2002 Edmund Fitzgerald 100k
  2. 2003 Olander Park 100 Road Race
  3. 2004 Olander Park 100 Road Race
  4. 2006 Rocky Raccoon 100 Trail Race
  5. 2007 Ultracentric 24 Hour
  6. 2010 North Coast 24 Hour
  7. 2011 Burning River 100 Trail Race
  8. 2011 North Coast 24 Hour
  9. 2012 Burning River 100 Trail Race
  10. 2011 Tussey Mountainback 50 Road Race
  11. 2012 Tussey Mountainback 50 Road Race
  12. 2019 Jackpot 100 Road Race

Connie also experienced very long adventure runs and races. For years, she expressed a desire to run the very hot Badwater 134 in Death Valley. She got her chance in 2010 and finished in second place with 30:35:08. She ran across Ohio in 2012 and across New Jersey in 2016, south to north, and was featured in the documentary Running The 184. She said, “It wasn’t a race, it was more about figuring out how to run across your state. It was a nice positive thing to do. The people along the way made it interesting. We were just running along and people would jump in.” In 2015 she finished Spartathlon in Greece, in 15th place, with 35:10:03. That year, with Jenn Shelton, she ran down into the Grand Canyon and back with Lance Armstrong. The story was featured in Trailrunner Magazine.

Later Years

Entering her 50s, Connie did not ease back on the number of ultras she ran, still averaging about one a month and the wins continued to pile up and younger runners tried fruitlessly to keep up with her. She set several ultrarunning age group records. Her last wins came in 2019. During that year, she experienced for the first time running in a six-day race, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where she won with 420.2 miles. She ran further than the best distance that was established by the 19th century women, when that race was the most popular race among ultrarunners. A Jackpot 100, she won her 12th National Championship, clocking 100 miles in 18:15:45.

During the pandemic in 2020, she managed to run 100 miles in 17:50:08, at the age of 56, establishing an American W55 age group record for 100 miles. During her ultrarunner career, she finished at least 80 races of 100 miles or more, and more than 100 marathons.

For at least two decades, Connie gave back to the sport coaching cross country at high schools for many years,, coaching other ultrarunners, and working at running stores. She coached at Buckey High Scholl for a couple of years, Walsh Jesuit High School for five years, and then coached at Archbishop Hoban High School in Akron, Ohio.

Connie said, “Running can help you balance your life. It shouldn’t be all about running. It is a nice crutch. It has been a very, very great crutch for me at times.” A friend said, “Connie Gardner is clearly able to run further than most people can. But that is not what is entirely so inspiring about her. Its that she believes that anyone can do this if they put their mind to it.”

In 2024, Connie Gardner is still running (shorter races, including the Boston Marathon each year) and living in Akron, Ohio. She has been working on a book for many years, that will probably be titled My Kind of Stupid, covering her “crazy” experiences as a hall-of-fame ultrarunner, tales that are unbelievable to most people.

Personal Records:

  • Marathon – 3:04:03 (2004)
  • 50K – 3:50:17 (2009)
  • 50 Miles – 6:56:20 (2009)
  • 100K – 8:15:14 (2007)
  • 100 Miles – 15:48:04 (2004)
  • 24 Hour – 149.368 miles (2012)

Ultrarunning Age-Group Records Still held:

  • 12 Hours W55 – 73.5 miles (2018)
  • 100 Miles W55 – 17:50:08 (2020)

Sources: