Run to the Top Podcast | The Ultimate Guide to Running

It is the end of an elite era. The beautiful training center in Blowing Rock, NC that has been home to some of the best endurance athletes in the country is for sale. What does that mean for the elite athletes that live and work there? And what about the adult and teen running camps that ZAP has hosted for the past 18 years?

Coach Claire talked to head coach and owner, Pete Rea to find out.

Pete Rea, the Elite Athlete coach at ZAP Endurance Team USA, has an impressive resume. He has led 51 athletes to Olympic Trials since the facility’s opening in 2002, and also coached the following:

• 42 Senior US teams
• 9 ZAP athletes to spots on Senior World Championship Teams including 6 to the US World XC team
• 4 USATF Club XC Team Championships (‘06,’07,’09,’14)
• 1 US marathon champion (Tyler Pennel)
• 1 Olympian (Pardon Nghlovu - Zimbabwe 2016 Rio Games Marathon)

Pete together with his wife, two-time Olympic trials qualifier Zika Rea, are coaches at the facility, host adult running camps during the summer and retreats all year. The facility has a state-of-the-art weight room, a bio-lab for physiological testing, and a 24-bed lodge. RunnersConnect has held fall running retreats at ZAP for years and it's always been a highlight of the season.

Big changes are coming to ZAP, however, and Coach Claire talks to Pete to discover what’s in store for the team and their beautiful 45-acre center. They also talk about the evolution of running since the ‘90s, what Pete sees as the future of running, and what’s next for him and the athletes he coaches.

Prior to ZAP, Pete served as a private coach to athletes of all ages and abilities in Atlanta, Georgia. He was also the distance events coach at The Walton School in Georgia. Pete was a distance running standout both as a prep athlete in Connecticut, at the University of Connecticut, and as a post-collegiate runner in the early 1990s. Pete has been a freelance writer for over 20 years for publications such as Running Times, Running Journal, and more than a dozen fitness publications around the US.

2:59 You've been the head coach at ZAP Endurance, formally ZAP Fitness, since the beginning in 2002. A lot has changed in the world and in the world of running since then. Can you talk about what those early years were like in the sport and at ZAP and how it’s changed?

5:59 How has the environment at ZAP changed now versus in 2002?

6:57 You mentioned that the ZAP facility is for sale. That’s a big part of why I wanted to have you on this show. Can you talk a little bit about that, what’s going on and what the future’s going to be like?

8:24 How does not having a training facility in the future, how does that change the group training model? Because they won’t be getting up together. They won’t be probably having their meals together as much anymore.

9:16 You mentioned that ZAP does group camps and group retreats, and that’s actually where we first met. RunnersConnect always has a training camp at ZAP. So what is that going to look like in the future?

10:33 What has the year 2020 been like for the athletes that you coach at ZAP?

11:59 What about the athletes that you have that have been injured? Have they been really using this time to heal and take care of themselves and scale back? At least maybe that is a silver lining for some of the people?

12:35 You have led 51 athletes to the Olympic Trials with ZAP. What does it take for an athlete to reach that level?

14:52 How would you describe your coaching style?

16:42 Time on feet matters, but you can’t go hard all the time, right?

17:17 Would you advise a recreational runner who’s looking to move up to the marathon to do a lot of running at a controlled pace?

17:46 How much slower than marathon pace would you say is a good recovery or easy run pace?

22:49 What advice would you give the people listening about training without a goal race? How do you stay motivated? How do you add a little spice to it? How do you keep that carrot in front of you when there’s no race?

24:39 Two of your athletes, Joe Stilin and Joanna Thompson, have recently moved to New York City, but they are still affiliated with ZAP. How will you work with them from a distance?

26:01 In 2019, the Swiss running company On became the official sponsor of ZAP. Can you talk about the change from Reebok to On?

27:19 What’s On’s answer to the Nike shoes? They’ve got some carbon fiber plates?

28:11 Any predictions for the London Marathon coming up?

29:13 What's next for your athletes? What are they training for?

“Athletes now are fully aware of the types of training others are doing both domestically and around the world, and that’s helped athletes who at one point probably thought they were training hard and then r...

When dealing with everyday pain and tightness in your body, life may not be as enjoyable as it could be, and this extends to running. You become more injury-prone, your performance suffers, and movement becomes less enjoyable. Above all, you may not be living up to your full potential.

If this resonates with your recent experiences, tune into this episode with Dr. Grayson Wickham, a Physical Therapy expert and founder of the Movement Vault. Dr. Wickham is on a mission to assist runners in moving better, performing better, reducing pain, and leading better lives. During this conversation, we explore various topics, including:

• The epidemic of back pain in the running community and why 99% of it is preventable.
• The importance of differentiating between static and active stretching. Active stretching is to joint maintenance what brushing your teeth is to tooth maintenance.
• How your choice of shoes may impact the health of your feet.
• Exploring whether sitting is the new smoking and providing actionable advice on what to do about it.
• Identifying the best times of day for active stretching and the top 5 stretches that runners should incorporate.

Moreover, if you believe there's room for improvement in your joint maintenance, range of motion, and physical durability during crucial training blocks, this episode is a must-listen.

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Even if you’ve never heard of Cortney White, you’ve probably seen her pictures. Cortney is one of the few female professional photographers snapping shots of elite runners at sporting events. What’s even more impressive is she is 100% self-taught. How good is she? Her photography is all over the internet and she works with Nike’s elite training group in Portland, Oregon, the Bowerman Track Club.

Cortney also lives in a van full time, previously used running as a means of staying fit for all her other athletic endeavors, and has had to combat a serious medical condition affecting her legs called compartment syndrome.

Cortney shares her interesting story with Coach Claire starting with her enjoyment of trail running in college while she studied business and IT, and how surgery on her legs resulted in a move to Portland and a “regular” job at a large accounting firm with running pushed to the back burner.

Cortney quickly realized she wanted to switch careers and seized an opportunity to work at a startup where she fell into the role of photographer for the brand.

Without any career aspirations or professional knowledge, Cortney photographed some friends and others in the Portland running community and fell in love with photography. Within a few months, she was able to quit her job and combine both passions by doing full-time sports photography, including work with the Bowerman Track Club. She quickly fell back into the running community, but this time from behind a lens.

Along with her personal story, Cortney talks about which athletes love to get their picture taken, who doesn’t, and how to get that perfect running picture, which makes for a fun and fascinating episode!

Questions Cortney is asked:

2:31 I first learned about your work on Instagram. I follow a lot of professional athletes and I noticed that your name kept coming up in t photo credits. How did you start photographing runners at the elite level?

3:30 Are you completely self-taught? You just sort of accidentally became a pro photographer?

4:15 When you knew this was going to be more than just a hobby, did you just like fall down the rabbit hole, just obsessed and learned everything you could? Is that how it happened?

5:16 Why running? You were a runner yourself, right?

6:31 I read that you had an injury that forced you to stop running. Can you talk to us a little bit about that?

8:34 You film the best athletes in the world and yet you can’t participate in this sport itself. You seem to have a good attitude about it but didn’t that just crush you?

9:42 How’s your injured hand now?

10:23 What is it like shooting the Bowerman Track Club? Can you talk about what the logistics are like shooting athletes on the track?

13:16 Who on the Bowerman Track Club loves getting their picture taken and who doesn’t? Can you name some names?

14:06 Every runner knows this. It’s really tough to look great when you’re running really, really hard and you’re working hard. So I would love to hear your tips, both as a photographer and as a runner, how do you look good in running photographs? How?

16:16 I recall a lot of pictures that I’ve seen you take where you must be somewhere at like the 300m line, like the inside of the curve or something, and you have the trees in the background, and all the Bowerman babes are like all in flight at the same time. Their trailing leg is just back at... like they’re floating in air. And I’m just like, how does she do that?

16:55 How staged are some of your shots outside of the track? You do photo shoots with the athletes too, right? Walk me through some of those. What are those like?

18:39 I’m sure it’s interesting to see the athletes kind of out of their element when you’re doing photo shoots.

19:41 Let’s talk about how things have changed. Obviously 2020 with COVID and the race scene was extremely different last year. The Bowerman Track Club along with other professional groups put on races that were very secretive, very last minute. Can you talk about this scene there with some of those races that they put on? What was it like and how was it different from the previous year?

22:16 You’re the one that’s documenting this craziness that we’re going through. Pictures of their coach Shalane Flanagan wearing a mask, hugging the women at the end. These are pictures that are only going to be during this special, crazy period of time. They’re going to be iconic. Have you thought about that?

24:11 What is your favorite part of the job? What do you look forward to the most when you wake up every day?

25:06 One interesting thing about you is that you live in your van full time. How did that happen and what do you love about van life?

28:12 You’re doing all your editing and everything in the back of the van? Is that how you do it?

29:50 What's next for you?

Elite distance runner Becky Wade Firth, a standout at Rice University in Texas, was expected to turn pro after graduation. Instead, she chose a different plan that changed her life and how she looks at running and training.

Becky decided to travel the world, but not just to see and explore like a typical college-age kid. She applied for and won a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship to travel the world to learn how others run. Over the course of 12 months, Becky traveled solo to 22 countries including Switzerland, Ethiopia, New Zealand, and Japan to learn about some of the world’s most fascinating running traditions, and she captured her experience and findings in her book RUN THE WORLD.

Coach Claire talks to Becky about how her year abroad affected her and what she learned from this incredible experience. They also get into Becky’s cross training, her experience with orthotics, similarities between recreational and pro runners, and Becky’s perspective on running in a year without in-person races.

Becky is still an avid writer and in addition to her book, you'll find her work all over the web in places like Runner's World, Outside, Podium Runner, Women's Running and more. She is also a food lover and traveler.

Part of two sets of twins born 20 months apart, Becky grew up in Dallas, Texas, before making her way to Rice University on a track scholarship. There, alongside the world’s greatest teammates and coach, she fell in love with the distance running lifestyle and by the time she graduated, was a junior national champion, an All-American in cross-country and track, and an Olympic Trials qualifier in the 10K and 3K steeplechase.

Since then, Becky has moved up to the marathon, signed with Flynn Sports Management, relocated to Boulder, Colorado, and gotten married. She’s competed in three more Olympic Trials (4 total: 2 in the 3K steeplechase, 2 in the marathon) and qualified for 2 senior USA teams (2018 and 2020 World Half Marathon Championship, the latter of which USATF sadly pulled them out of). She now has her eyes set on the 2021 US Olympic Track Trials, faster PRs over all distances, and many more writing projects—ideally a second book before too long!

Questions Becky is asked:

3:54 Instead of going directly from college to the pros, you took a year off to travel to 22 different countries to learn what runners do all over the world. What were some of the biggest similarities and differences you found when compared to American running?

5:19 Some of the countries you went to are obviously the big running countries that we all think about, Japan and Africa, New Zealand, all of these places, but you didn’t end up just going to those places; you took a couple of detours. Anything you want to tell us about that and what you learned about that?

7:17 Were you worried at all before you left? Because people who are on track to do amazing things in whatever sport it is, they kind of get nervous about change, they kind of get nervous about getting out of their schedule. Were you worried when you took off for a year that your running might suffer?

9:01 I think that if you want to learn more about your own country, the only way to do it is to leave it, so I highly encourage everybody who can in college just to get out of America to see what the rest of the world is like.

9:43 What was it like coming back to the States after that experience? Do you think it made you a better runner?

10:51 Recreational runners think the same thing as professional runners, “Are we doing enough? Should I be resting? Should I be doing heel lifts?” Or whatever it is. You just think that “I’ve got to do it in such a perfect way,” and there’s room for flexibility.

11:44 2020 has been obviously a very strange year for everybody, but I'd love to know how you are doing specifically and how you've been training.

15:12 Let’s talk a little bit about your cross training. I’ve looked through your Instagram. There’s a lot of pictures of you in the pool and I know you aqua jog. Can you help us out and give us some tips to make aqua jogging less boring?

20:03 Besides your book, you are a pretty prolific writer. You write articles for lots of running magazines and online places, so what are some of your tips? I know you recently wrote an article for Runner’s World about challenging the conventional rules of running. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?

22:26 Why do you wear orthotics? What is it for you?

23:28 We think of orthotics as a temporary solution, but to hear that you’ve been wearing them for 10 years, that’s super interesting.

23:55 Another conventional rule of running you challenged in your Runner’s World article was the 30-minute window, that you have to eat 30 minutes after you stop running, and you found that not to be true.

25:08 One thing I’...

Tianna Bartoletta is one of the best sprinters in the world, and she’s on hand to teach all of us, even the endurance runners, what we can learn from short distance running. Really short.

For most of us, a sprint is less than 20 seconds, which is the distance short enough to reach your top speed completely anaerobically, or without needing oxygen for fuel. Past this point, your lungs scream for oxygen and you will probably not be able to sustain the effort.

Why should long distance runners care about those 20 seconds? Because by tapping into your anaerobic system a couple times a week, you teach yourself to burn that fire just a little hotter, and train your other gears to run a little more smoothly and efficiently.

Tianna also talks about what surprising things endurance runners can learn from long jumpers and yogis, how to frame our body talk in a positive way, how she’s adapted her training as she’s aged, and her gold-medal-winning, world-record-breaking Olympic relay experience. This episode has something for everyone, whether you’re a walker, a sprinter, or an endurance monster!

Tianna is a 35 year-old American sprinter and long jumper. She is a two-time Olympian with three gold medals. She ran the lead leg in the world record setting 4 × 100 m relay team in 2012, handing the baton to Allyson Felix. At the 2016 Summer Olympics she won two more golds, first with a personal best to win the long jump then again leading off the winning 4 × 100 m relay team.

In non-Olympic years, Tianna has won the World Championships 3 times and competed as a pusher on the U.S. bobsled team in 2012.

And if all of that weren't amazing enough, she’s also a registered yoga teacher, writes a blog at tiannabee.com , and her memoir, Survive And Advance, will be released this June!

Questions Tianna is asked:

4:37 This conversation is a little bit delayed because you got a surprise drug test at 7:00 in the morning. Can you talk about that?

5:09 Can you talk about the 60-day transformation that you posted? What happened? I thought you looked great before, but now you’re like a sculpture. It’s amazing. Can you tell me how that happened?

9:01 I remember reading in one of your Instagram threads that you said you were hungry during your 60-day transformation, and that’s not something that we really like to admit. Why did you want to tell people like, “Hey, yes, this is working but to be perfectly honest, I’m hungry?” Why did you want to share that part about it?

11:45 You'll have to forgive me for asking what might end up being very basic questions, but our listeners mostly are endurance runners. So when somebody says, “I’m going to go run 100,” they’re usually talking about 100 miles not 100 meters, and you are a 100-meter specialist among many of your talents. So I would love to learn more about what it takes to be a good 100m specialist?

13:41 When you say you’re allergic to running long, you obviously don’t just run 100 meters in training and then stop. You do obviously run long. So what’s a long run for you?

17:17 Let’s talk about Stephanie Bruce. One of the bright spots of 2020, an obviously crazy year, is that you two connected, and I would love to hear about that story.

19:39 In 2020, obviously Tokyo was delayed. What was that like for you when you found out the news?

22:12 In both 2012 and 2016, you were a part of the gold-winning 4x100m relay team, in the lead leg position, handing the baton to Allyson Felix. Talk us through that. What makes a good relay team? How does the coach determine the order? How many times do you practice that baton pass?

24:19 What was your favorite moment from those games?

25:19 You are also a gold medalist in the long jump, and I want to talk about the world record there. The American world record and the overall world record, those are very, very old from the ‘80s and ‘90s. What’s it going to take to break it?

29:00 You recently had a meet where you were jumping really, really well, and you registered under the team name AARP. Can you explain that?

30:37 What’s your key to longevity in this sport then? What makes you at your age still able to perform at such a high level?

32: 17 How do you get you...