DESPITE SELLING FACILITY, ZAP ENDURANCE TO CONTINUE COACHING MISSION
By David Monti, @d9monti
(c) 2020 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved - Used with permission.
(20-Aug) -- ZAP Endurance, the in-residence training program for post-collegiate runners in Blowing Rock, N.C., has decided to sell their custom-built lodge and bunkhouse, plus two athlete houses, and will continue their coaching mission without a dedicated facility. The main property has already been listed with a local real estate agent at an asking price of $1.5 million, and the other two homes will be put on the market in the coming days.
According to longtime ZAP Endurance head coach Pete Rea, who owns the facility with his wife Zika, the time was right to sell. Although the facility had to be closed to running camps this summer due to COVID-19, that was not the impetus behind the sale. Instead, Rea said that athlete lifestyles had changed, he and Zika wanted more time with their children, and the local real estate market was strong allowing them to reap a profit and invest more into the sport.
"Times have changed a bit," Rea told Race Results Weekly in a telephone interview yesterday. "The model that Zika and her late husband Andy set up with ZAP in 2000... was the athletes live at the facility and work at our camp. They help maintain the facility, and chef to prepare meals and all those things. We found, especially in the last seven to eight years, more athletes.. may have a significant other, a husband or wife. They perhaps might want to work part-time in their field of study, and they were precluded from doing so due to our requirements." He continued: "We recognized that and are willing to adapt to the times. We want to be relevant to kids coming out of college today."
Andy Palmer was a coach, running writer, and sports psychologist in Atlanta. He and Zika acquired the original 45 acres for the ZAP facility in 2000, and the 8174 square-foot, two-building compound was completed in early 2002. They founded the non-profit ZAP Endurance Foundation with the vision of having Olympic-hopeful athletes live and train there while also using the facility to host running camps for college teams and recreational runners.
But just a few months later, the project nearly ended. Andy died suddenly in February, 2002, from cardiac arrest while running in nearby Moses Cone Park. He was 48 years-old. Despite her grief, Zika decided to continue working to realize the couple's original vision. Rea came to help her in April when the program had only one athlete, former Villanova runner Ann McGranahan. ZAP (the name was derived from "Zika and Andy Palmer") added Dan Wilson from the University of Connecticut and Karl Savage from St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia later that year, and the program began to gain traction. Reebok came on as a sponsor in 2005 which helped stabilize their funding. In all, 57 athletes have been part of the ZAP program which has nine athletes now.
The Reas love coaching, but as the years went by managing and maintaining the ZAP compound adsorbed more and more of their time (after Andy's death the pair fell in love and married in August, 2006). Their lives began to get out of balance.
"Zika's energy and my energy has changed, frankly, in terms of running the ZAP facility for the last 20 years," Rea explained. "Our energy has shifted a little bit and we wanted to put more of our energy and emphasis on the athletes, and not 70% of our time on running camps and retreats, as much as we love those folks."
With financial support from On, the Swiss running shoe maker which came on board as program sponsor in 2019, the Reas plan to focus more on coaching and athlete development while also being able to spend more time with their children, Elyse (11) and Sean (9). They do not live at the compound; they have an in-town home in Blowing Rock.
"The model going forward is that the kids can live in town," Rea said, referring to the athletes. "We'll fund their housing, continue to fund their health insurance, salary, travel, and all those things. They just won't reside at the facility."
Rea also wanted to allay fears that their popular running camps for recreational runners will be discontinued as some have speculated.
"That is 100% not true," Rea intoned. "We're just going to operate those camps at a place we don't own."
Even though he knows that selling is the right thing to do, Rea said that he'll miss the compound and everything it stood for.
"The memories are too many to recount," said Rea wistfully. "Amazing memories. It's been a family at the facility of lows and highs, lots of sweat and tears. ZAP will continue, but the memories we have from that center over the last two decades, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a bit sad."
The real estate listing for the ZAP compound is here: https://bit.ly/3aJdnyx
PHOTO: The ZAP Endurance compound in Blowing Rock, N.C. (photo courtesy of Allen Tate Realtors)
