The ZAP Endurance team will descend on Space City for both the Houston Marathon & Half Marathon this weekend. The weather will be chilly but the competition will be red hot in both races. Ryan Ford, Andrew Colley and Amanda Vestri will all be racing the half and Josh Izewski will be lining up for the full.
The half marathon has received a lot of buzz in recent days with both the men’s and women’s races targeting American record pace. Andrew is coming off a big win at the Manchester Road Race on Thanksgiving Day while Ryan is coming back from his stellar marathon debut in New York where he ran 2:11:08. Andrew is the current ZAP record holder in the half with his 1:01:35 performance in Valencia, and both have designs on bettering that this weekend.
On the women’s side, Amanda enters the race as the 5th fastest performer in the field thanks to her stunning 1:08:13 debut in Orlando last month. She won that race by over 2 minutes and ran by herself throughout. Sunday will be much different with a world-class field. Amanda, as always, is looking forward to the bigger stage and taking aim at her newly minted personal best.
Josh will be making his return to the Houston Marathon after placing 8th in 2022. Three years ago he ran what was at the time a personal best of 2:12:45. Since that race Josh has bettered that mark twice, including his current personal best of 2:11:09 that he ran at last February’s Olympic Marathon Trials where he placed 8th. Josh suffered a hip injury during the New York City Marathon. Fortunately, he was able to recover quickly and get back to training at a high level for Houston. He will be aiming to improve upon his personal best as well as his place from 2022.
All of the races will be streamed live on ABC13, you can find the various links here. The half marathon starts at 6:45am central time with the marathon following at 6:55am.
If you are in town for the race, or live in Houston, we will be having a shakeout run at 8:00am Saturday morning for all paces. We will meet outside the Hilton Americas downtown and run an easy 3 mile run. All are welcome!