After 25 years and heavy deliberation, the ZAP Endurance professional running team announced it will be disbanding at the end of the year.
In an email to stakeholders, the organization’s coaches—Zika Rea, Pete Rea, and Ryan Warrenburg—said that continuing ZAP was no longer economically viable.
“Despite our best efforts, sustaining ZAP financially, particularly through long-term sponsorship, has become increasingly difficult,” the email read. “After much reflection, we’ve concluded that we can no longer continue this work in the way that upholds our standards and honors our mission.”
ZAP Endurance (formerly ZAP Fitness) was founded in 2001 by Zika Rea and her late husband, Andy Palmer, in the Blowing Rock, North Carolina area. The name is an acronym for “Zika and Andy Palmer.”
Its current professional roster includes eight U.S. athletes: Amanda Vestri, Tristin Colley, Andrew Colley, Ryan Ford, Eric van der Els, Josh Izewski, Annmarie Tuxbury, and Dan Schaffer.
The group, in an email, said it is “committed to supporting the athletes through the end of the year.”
Amanda Vestri, the reigning USATF 6K champion and third at March’s U.S. Half Marathon Championships, will be making her marathon debut at the New York City Marathon in November. Ryan Ford, who placed 10th at this year’s Boston Marathon in 2:08:00, will run the Chicago Marathon in October.
In a phone call with Runner’s World on Monday evening, Pete Rea explained that the primary reason the group would be ending was the lack of a corporate sponsor. For 14 years, the group was sponsored by Reebok—which no longer heavily invests in professional running—and from 2018 to 2021, ZAP was supported by On Running.
But after the On partnership ended, Rea said money became tight. To stay afloat, the organization reached out to its donor base and asked them to increase their donation amounts if they were able. ZAP also sold its longtime training facility just outside of Blowing Rock. For two decades, the athletes on the team lived there in a communal setting—mowing the grass and cooking for each other when they weren’t logging miles.
The group was also sustained by ZAP Endurance Running Vacations, which were adult running camps put on by the group.
This summer, however, Rea said they finally made a decision to pull the plug.
The mission behind ZAP was to provide post-collegiate American distance runners with training support, including gear, living expenses, and travel. When the team was founded in 2001, the U.S. was in a slump at the international level, and there were few training locations for elite runners on the east coast, outside of Boston.
Blowing Rock, a small mountain town in the Blue Ridge Mountains, was chosen in part to provide another option. It sits around 3,500 feet of elevation and is close by to scenic training locations, like the bridle paths of Moses Cone Park. ZAP’s recruiting strategy, throughout its history, has been to find under-the-radar talent—“diamonds in the rough,” as Rea calls them—and develop them into national-caliber athletes.
Over the past two decades, ZAP has sent 69 athletes to the U.S. Olympic Trials and seen seven top ten finishes at World Marathon Majors. In 2014, Tyler Pennel won the USATF Marathon Championships in his debut at the distance, running 2:13:32.
More recently, Vestri (26) and Ford (27) have solidified themselves as two of most promising road runners on the American circuit. Vestri currently has a professional contract with Brooks.
Looking back on the past quarter century, Rea is sad to see the end of an era, but he has immense pride in what ZAP accomplished.
“We’ve had our time, and it’s been a great 25 years, and I think American running is in a better place than it was in 2001,” Rea said. “Hopefully we played some small role in helping that happen.”
Theo Kahler is the news editor at Runner’s World. He’s a former all-conference collegiate runner at Winthrop University, and he received his master’s degree in liberal arts studies from Wake Forest University, where he was a member of one of the top distance-running teams in the NCAA. Kahler has reported on the ground at major events such as the Paris Olympics, U.S. Olympic Trials, New York City Marathon, and Boston Marathon. He’s run 14:20 in the 5K, 1:05:36 in the half marathon, and enjoys spotting tracks from the sky on airplanes. (Look for colorful ovals around football fields.)
