The ZAP Fitness team will have 5 athletes competing in Boston this weekend with 2 athletes in the BAA 5k on Saturday and 3 athletes in the Boston Marathon on Monday. Up first will be Joe Stilin and Brandon Doughty in the 5k on Saturday morning at 8:00am. The race starts and finishes in the Boston Common. The BAA 5k always features a world-class field and this year will be no different. Stilin will be competing in this race for the 3rd year in a row while Doughty will be racing it for the first time.
While the BAA 5k kicks the racing weekend off, the headline of the weekend is undoubtedly the Boston Marathon on Monday morning. ZAP-Reebok athletes Tyler Pennel,
Nicole DiMercurio, and Joanna Thompson will all be racing Boston for the first time. Pennel is coming off a 2:15 performance in the Fukuoka Marathon in December and an 8th place finish at the New York City Marathon in the fall of 2016.Pennel’s performance in Japan qualified him for his 2nd Olympic Marathon Trials in 2020, a race in which he finished 5th at in 2016.
DiMercurio qualified for the 2020 Olympic Marathon Trials by virtue of her 2:36:01, 11th place finish at the US Marathon Championships in December. She will toe the line in Boston coming off a 1:13:15 half marathon (a PR) and victory at the Virginia Beach Half in March. This will be her 3rd career marathon. Thompson, like DiMercurio, qualified, and ran in, the 2016 Olympic Marathon Trials and this will be her first attempt at the distance since that race. Thompson is coming off a 2nd place finish at the Virginia Beach Half and will be racing her 2nd career marathon.
In addition to the ZAP pro team, Amanda LoPiccolo, whom many of you will remember as our chiropractor at camp and wife to ZAP assistant coach, Matt LoPiccolo, will be competing in the BAA elite field along with DiMercurio and Thompson. She ran 2:47 in Chicago last fall and will be eager, weather permitting, to improve upon that mark and qualify for the 2020 Olympic Marathon Trials.
The Marathon will be live on NBC Sports Network with coverage starting at 8:30am. And results for the BAA 5k can be found here.
Best of luck to the dozens of coaching clients, campers, and friends racing on Monday! We hope to see many of you out there and we’ll be cheering you along with the ZAP athletes!