Project Stella: A Light in a Dark Sky

The Speed Project has no spectators, no course markings and no rules to speak of – just a start beneath the Santa Monica Pier sign, a finish at the Las Vegas sign and roughly 280 miles of road, sand and open desert in between. In early April, a team of six women who had never met one another ran it in 30 hours and 19 minutes, taking the all-women’s record by nearly three hours and placing third overall in a stacked co-ed field. They called themselves Project Stella. 

Six complete strangers, they were assembled in three weeks. This is how they did it, in their own words.

It began with one person’s conviction. Hannah Jackson never ran in school or college; she came to the sport in her 20s and found her way to ultras.

Hannah Jackson: Finding ultra running was kind of an unlock for me when it comes to women in the sport, because there were already women at or close to the top. After a certain point – not at the marathon distance, but beyond it – women and men start to have less of a delta between them. What Rachel Entrekin did at Cocodona 250 was something I was really interested in. That idea that a woman could perform, or even outperform a man, at the same distance if it’s long enough – that has always been fascinating to me. 

When her solo application to The Speed Project was accepted, Hannah found herself with a blank page.

Hannah: I really had free rein of what the team could be … The aspect of it being a female team is what drove me. Assembling a co-ed team wasn’t going to do it for me. 

I wanted us to be a team people couldn’t look away from. Something that said, ‘We are here and you will know who we are.’ It wasn’t going to be a fun group of girls that got out for a jog to Vegas. We were going to be an unbeatable team. We were out for blood. 

I told Kevin [Gunawan, Jackson’s co-leader for Project Stella], there’s no scenario in my mind that this team comes second. That’s not what I came here to do. 

That ambition decided her own role before the race began.

Hannah: Sometimes you need to get out of the way to let other people do what they do best. I knew that if we were going to break the record, I would not be able to run at all. 
 

Hannah teamed up with content maestro and event producer Kevin Gunawan, whom she’d met through Chicago’s Heartbreak run community, 

Kevin Gunawan: TSP is no cheap event to put on, and anybody who’s done it can attest to that. So most people try to find sponsors. For us, I was pulling from my previous professional experiences and people I’ve worked with, who I trusted and who I thought would align with the team energy. It was finding partners that would embody us and the women – it couldn’t just be anyone. It was some crazy outreach right up until the days before the race, just to get it fully funded.

In the lead-up, Hannah and Kevin had about three weeks to turn their vision into reality. They went looking less for the fastest women they could find than for a particular temperament.

Kevin: If we’d recruited faster women, we probably could have smashed the all-time co-ed record. But it’s hard to spend 30 hours with anybody non-stop. We went with people we knew could go the distance. 

Hannah: It was really special to say, ‘You know what, we’re going to take some risks and we just need people who are able to work together and be cooperative.’ And I think women are incredibly cooperative. We saw that when they were running that these girls did not complain. I didn’t hear any negative talk. 

They were all very down for each other and down for themselves. That cooperation, as a female team, you just see it so much. They’re not there to compete against each other. They’re there to do what they’ve been tasked to do, and what they said they would do, which is run fast until the wheels fall off.

One wildcard was Kate Dickman, a former 1500-metre runner fresh out of Alabama.

Kate Dickman: I had never run over 15 miles; that was my longest run going into the race. So I was running a lot more miles in 30 hours than I’d ever run in my life. The hardest part for me was waking up at 3am to run a segment that started at 3:30, feeling at least 25 miles in my legs, and so sleep-deprived and so hungry.

Kevin: Running 50 miles at once was outrageous for Kate. But I’d run with her before. Part of it was seeing her run, the natural talent, but also her personality is just, like, a sender. That word got thrown out a lot. We had to find people who were senders, who’d be willing to keep pushing and pushing no matter what.

Most of the six were linked to Kevin or Hannah somehow. Christina Welsh, a marathoner with a 2:33 PB, was the exception.

Christina Welsh: They just went down the qualifying list from the 2024 Olympic Trials and DM’d people until someone responded. That’s how they found me. I’d literally never met a single person on the team. 
 

The others came together the same way – by text, by reputation, at the last possible minute. Hanna O’Connor had run her debut 26-miler, earning an OTQ, in the McKirdy Marathon just five days before The Speed Project left from the Santa Monica Pier. 

Hanna O’Connor: I ran my first marathon five days before The Speed Project – I did it on the Sunday and the Speed Project was the Friday. I was still recovering from it, honestly. But when Kevin reached out, it was a bit of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I had to say yes.

Two weeks before race day, Sophia Manners was enjoying a break after becoming the first American woman home at the 2026 Tokyo Marathon when she got the call-up. 

Sophia Manners: Kevin called and asked what he could do to convince me. I said, ‘Honestly, nothing – this has been a bucket-list item for years. I’m in.’ I asked if it was a problem that I hadn’t run in two weeks. He said, ‘Maybe just start running.’ 

Ellaney Matarese, who since The Speed Project has earned her Western States spot with a fifth place showing in this year’s Canyons 100K, was the one seasoned ultra runner among them.

Ellaney Matarese: Kevin told me he was a photographer, so I thought, ‘Fun, a photo shoot – get some gear.’ Then he called and said, ‘Actually, the shoot is running from LA to Vegas.’ And I said, ‘Even better.’ 

They were a young, post-NCAA team with, between them, a single ultra finish and a couple who had never raced a marathon at all. What several of them shared was a history of being underestimated.

Sophia: I was aggressively average throughout high school and college. And I feel like there’s nothing wrong with being average. I knew I loved the sport. So I kept going. 

Christina: I was pretty bad at running when I was in college. I ran division three, never made it to nationals, never even got close. It wasn’t until after college when I started training for marathons that I really found my place in the running community. 

Ellaney: A year ago I was primarily a middle-distance runner: 800, 1500. I was a middle-distance runner my whole life, and now I’m doing ultramarathons. Kind of a crazy journey. I just ended up entering some local races and found that I loved it, and that I was pretty good at it.

Hannah: There’s a lot of undiscovered talent. People just need the right race, with the right reason to run. None of these girls would have wanted to do this if we’d said, ‘Let’s just do it for fun.’ 

You need to ask the right questions to join The Speed Project; despite its growing visibility it remains something of a secret society. Once you’re in, if you’re lucky, you get given the knowledge to help you remain competitive out there in Death Valley.

Kevin: It’s received wisdom from previous teams – and by wisdom I mean an Excel sheet shared between the fastest teams, with GPS points for where to start, hand off and drive. 

What the crew did with that inheritance was refine it.

Hanna O’Connor: The layout we got was from a couple of years ago, so the roads were different and we were trying to run a really fast time. Our crew were looking at the map going, ‘Let’s take a turn here, it’ll cut off four minutes.’ 

The day before the starter’s gun, the leadership crew built the race strategy. Hannah and Kevin credit Paige Carter and Dylan Manning for meticulously planning the race segments. Also providing invaluable assistance from the RV and driving two Jeep Gladiator support vehicles would be Grant Patrick, Haleigh Morales and Max Miggler. 

As well as shepherding the runners, Kevin was responsible for shooting and editing photos and video in order to meet the team’s commitments to sponsors.

Hannah: You’re basically executing three brand shoots in the middle of a race that you’re trying to win, with people you are potentially unfamiliar with, and you’re trying to do all of it and deliver everything before you get to Vegas.
 

As part of the race strategy, the six runners were split into two squads of three: Team Orange (Kate, Sophia and Mikelle) and Team Black (Hanna, Christina and Ellaney). 

Kevin: Having a successful plan means the runners don’t need to know the logistics of how to get from one spot to the other, or who’s currently running and in what place. They just need to focus purely on running.

Mikelle Ackerley: Our job was to get out of the car and run. They were like, ‘We’ll tell you where to go.’ 

The strategy scaled with the terrain: nine or ten-mile segments to clear Los Angeles, three-minute relay intervals once the roads opened up and, in the final stretch into Vegas, handovers as short as a minute.

Mikelle: Getting out of the city we did nine-mile segments to keep it simple. Then outside the city we dropped to faster segments and could hold a faster pace. Then even faster on the road into Vegas. 
 

One runner sat outside the system. Ellaney was training for her Canyons 100K – that Western States golden ticket on the line – and needed back-to-back long runs, so she ran two solo segments of around 18 miles, one near the start and one at dusk. Hannah bike-paced the opening 64 miles, riding alongside Ellaney’s first solo leg and guarding her from traffic.

Ellaney: It worked logistically, because it gave everyone else more time to rest. And it worked well for my training. 

The runners were given a single number, a pace not to fall behind.

Hanna O’Connor: They said, never run above seven-minute pace [that’s 4:21 as minutes per kilometre] and you’ll break the record. So we all had that in our heads. 

Kate: We all had this blind trust in one another, especially for just having met. I think that’s part of what made the group really successful. 

The first real test came as wind hit around 60 miles in, with sustained 40mph headwinds across exposed road. It caught Sophia mid-segment, alone.

Sophia: I was supposed to run a five-mile stretch solo. Hannah was going to bike it with me, but the bike tipped over. Then Kevin was going to pace me on foot, and he couldn’t catch up because the wind was so strong. So he passed off the GPS and said, ‘Someone will get you on the other side.’

It clocked me at 7:30 pace and I felt like I was redlining. I couldn’t move any faster. When a van finally caught me, they said it looked like I was about to fall off the mountain. That’s how it felt. 

Ellaney: One of my shoes blew away; that’s how strong the wind was. I had it on the ground while I was changing and it blew completely away. We were saying it could be an ad for Nike for how light their shoes are. 

What struck Hannah was how little any of it registered with the runners.

Hannah: Sophia got out of the car and just started running. It wasn’t even in her mind that there was wind. There were no questions. They just got it done. 
 

By nightfall the team had moved onto Powerline Road, the long dirt artery that defines The Speed Project, and where Project Stella began to race the co-ed teams outright.

Kevin: We were battling out with Mill City Running and we were truly going back and forth the entire race – along with the Pabst team, Portland Running Bureau – which made it a pretty exciting experience because I think the coolest part of racing is being competitive. It’s cool to challenge yourself and be within your own team, which is how a lot of people experience TSP, but to experience it with another team, and battle it out, really elevates the overall energy that goes on in those late hours of the race.

Sophia: We cut down to 60 to 90-second stretches so we could basically all-out sprint. It was pitch black, just your headlight and the car lights, dust flying everywhere. For a lot of the race you’re running alone – that part felt like a race. To go head-to-head with these accomplished men and put distance on them was really fun. 

Kevin: The people we were racing against were also great partners for us. The Mill City team – the Hoka crew from Minneapolis – who we were going back and forth with on Powerline, were so generous. Like, at one point one of their crew members jumped out of their truck and went into a full-on sprint towards us, screaming and waving his hands. At first we didn’t notice because we had music blaring, but he was trying to tell us that someone had seen a pack of 50 wild dogs up ahead. That made everyone super nervous, but fortunately we never came across them.

It was on Powerline, run in darkness, that the team’s name made its own kind of sense.

Hannah: Stella means star in Latin. It’s also a female noun. It came from the idea that we were going to be outside – and stars are either incredibly mysterious things or just balls of gas in the universe. And that idea of women being a light in a dark sky is a beautiful picture.

Kevin: If you’re a fast team, you run Powerline at night. All you can see ahead is your headlamp, and the car ten feet behind you. You’re running into oblivion. The only other things you can see are the stars in the Mojave, guiding you. 

Around 4am, deep into Powerline and more than 30 miles into their own section, Team Orange – Kate, Sophia and Mikelle – hit the wall every ultra runner eventually reaches.

Sophia: My whole body was shaking and I didn’t even have the energy to get up and get a blanket. I remember thinking, ‘I don’t know if I can get up at 4am and run again.’ And talking to my group, we all felt the same. Just saying it out loud – okay, it’s good to know we’re in this together.

Kate: At 4am I got out of the car with severe groin pain. When we got the Stryd data back [the Boulder-based company supplied the team with its foot-pod power meters], the guy analysing it was like, ‘What happened to this girl?’ My right leg was taking all the power. Sophia had rolled her ankle pretty badly. Mikelle was really the only one hanging on, trying to keep us motivated.

 

From the car, Kevin watched the record slipping.

Kevin: Everyone was saying, ‘My ankle’s starting to hurt; my glute hurts every step.’ For half an hour they were running a minute or two under pace. In my head I was like, ‘I think we just lost the record.’ Then it was almost like a switch. After half an hour of warming up, they were running faster than they were supposed to again – and we never asked them to. They just wanted to. 

Fortunately, Team Black – Hanna, Christina and Ellaney – were having a better time of it.

Christina: Everyone said this section was going to be the hardest; be prepared to lose time. Then we got there and it was pretty chill. We actually stayed under record pace the whole way. After that it was like, it’s downhill from here. 

Mikelle: The end of Powerline, when we reached the road again and weren’t running on sand – the joy that entered our bodies. We were all like, ‘Yes!’ But the best part was the 25-mile straight shot into Vegas, when all six of us got to leapfrog together.

That road going into Vegas, it’s so easy for both cars to be working together. You’re running less, so you can run harder, faster. That’s what carried us in. 

The Powerline push had put the record beyond doubt, but the team kept chasing – partly to bury it, partly because a fourth-placed mixed team was still snapping at their heels. The crew leaders never handed down a target of by how much the runners should beat the 2023 record of 33 hours, 13 minutes that had been inscribed by Braddy’s Lil Ponies. 

Hannah: Paige made the call to go off effort. There was no communication from us about ‘We have to run 6:30s here.’ It was just, go off effort – and that effort [resulting in the team’s ultimate time of 30:19] was what they put down. 

Mikelle: Every person’s pretty competitive, so we weren’t going to let up, by any means. It was fun to chase the record. At some point it was like, ‘Okay, we know we’re going to get this — so how far can we get under it?’ That’s equally as fun to chase.
 

Late on, the only thing that rattled them was a police car on the approach to Vegas.

Hanna O’Connor: It slowed down next to us and there was fear for 20 minutes that we’d get pulled over. We’re thinking, ‘What if they stop us for 30 minutes and someone has to run 15 miles alone?’ Worst-case – doomsday. 

The officers told them to keep off the middle of the road, and waved them on. All six ran the final mile together. For most of them, it was the only mile of the whole race they shared.

Christina: We spent the whole time in a van together, but that last mile was the only time we actually ran with each other. 

Ellaney: In ultra racing, you often know you’ve won before it’s over. You get to soak up the last few minutes. To bring it home together, with these women, doing something that had never been done – that was my favourite part. 

At the Las Vegas sign there was the obligatory champagne spray, and very little left in the tank.

Sophia: It felt like we went to war together and came out the other side. It was euphoric. They handed us champagne and we were all drunk within one sip, just because of how depleted we were. 

Kate: When we stopped I was like, ‘Wow, I can be still. I don’t have to go back out and run anymore.’ 

After the race, everyone was like, ‘We’re never doing that again.’ And then maybe 12 hours later we were like, ‘Well, maybe we could do that again.’ Setting that mark was just super cool.

For the mastermind behind the whole effort, Hannah, it was the validation of everything she had planned for.

Hannah: The best thing is seeing women win. Everybody celebrating this moment of pure elation. It was like we just won the NBA championship. 

Project Stella’s record stands at 30 hours and 19 minutes, close enough to the 30-hour barrier to invite someone to chase it. The runners suspect it may be a while; the thing that made Project Stella possible is also what makes it hard to repeat.

Hanna O’Connor: It’s really hard to find women who are OTQ marathoners, at this level, willing to do an unsanctioned race you don’t get paid for. And to find six who aren’t in the middle of a marathon block. If any of us had been, it would’ve been an absolute no. 
 

Hannah Jackson has no plans of organising another team to chisel 20 minutes off Project Stella’s time. She’d rather someone else did.

Hannah: At the end of the day, the idea was all about being a fucking fast women’s team without any limits to it. If another women’s team wants to go and beat it, they should. And we’ll all watch and celebrate them, because that was the whole point of the project. Hopefully it inspires somebody else.

But don’t forget about them, because Project Stella could strike again when you least expect it.

Hannah: The cool part about Project Stella is that it’s an underdog, and it will come and get you when it’s ready. We’ll line up, and you’ll know about us when we’re halfway through the race and on the way to the finish line.