Amanda Vestri enjoyed a successful collegiate career, one that saw her earn various accolades including multiple All-American honors and the Syracuse indoor record in the 3000m and the 5000m.
Now, she’s onto the professional ranks and has joined forces with the talented team at ZAP Endurance, which is based in North Carolina.
Vestri’s transition from the college scene to the professional ranks happened rather quickly after her All-American performance at the NCAA Track and Field Outdoor Championships in Texas earlier this summer. She eventually connected with the coaches at ZAP Endurance, and the rest was history.
“I placed 7th in the 10k at the NCAA Final, so it was another All-American performance. The next day I signed with Josh Cox, who’s my agent,” she said. “From then on, between Josh and my Syracuse coach, Brian Bell and I, we kind of developed a plan to get my name out there a little bit more and market myself as best as I could. That’s when I went to the USATF 10k Championships in Eugene, and at that point, I hadn’t signed with anybody, but I had talked to (Pete Rea), who’s the head coach at ZAP Endurance. We had talked to a few other companies, but at the end of the day, I ended up taking a visit down to ZAP Endurance in Blowing Rock, North Carolina. I really liked it down there – I met a majority of the team and I met a lot of really great people.
Pete and (Ryan Warrenburg) the coaches over there, they showed me the process of how things would run there. I had this gut feeling when I got there that I really liked this and that I could do really well there.”
Vestri has various goals that she hopes to try and accomplish on the roads and on the track as well, and the coaching staff has been on board with what she hopes to do, which made a big impact on her decision to sign with the ZAP Endurance team.
“The biggest reason that I think I was so comfortable with ZAP is because they were all for me testing out the waters with all these different events, and they weren’t going to dramatically make a change to what I was already doing at Syracuse,” she said. “So I ran the New Haven 20k, and then I believe we waited 3-5 days after that, and I talked to Josh and said let’s sign with ZAP.”
Along with coach Bell from Syracuse, Rea was instrumental for Vestri in guiding her with things like nutrition ahead of the New Haven 20k, a race where Vestri secured a top 10 finish.
The coaching staff also did not overhaul what works best for Vestri when it comes to her training. This allowed her to make the move over to ZAP Endurance rather quickly, and it also made for a rather smooth adjustment.
“I switched over to Pete pretty quickly because he and coach Ryan at ZAP weren’t going to heavily adjust anything from my training, they were just going to start adapting me to their training,” she said. “So there’s been little tweaks here and there. Overall, the transition from coaching was pretty simple, and the transition from the race schedule was simple too.”
ZAP Endurance was founded back in 2001, and it was built by the late Andy Palmer and his wife, Zika Palmer. The program has grown into a community full of great love and support, and it’s something that Vestri appreciates.
“It’s a really nice community down there, and as an athlete, that’s all I can ask for,” she said. “Having people who don’t even know me personally, supporting me because I’m a part of the ZAP Endurance Foundation. It’s really special.”
Vestri is excited for her future in the sport and has a number of goals that she hopes to accomplish before she hangs up her running shoes in the distant future. Right now, Vestri knows that she’s meant to be in this sport, and she’s having fun every step of the way in her running journey.
“After both New Haven and this race in New York, I came home and told my parents that this is exactly what I want to do, this is exactly what I want to be doing,” she said. “When I went to that New Haven race, I was like this is what I’m meant to do, at least for the next however many years until it’s time to move on to something else. I feel like I just need to run while I’m hot. The running is going well, I’m passionate about it and I have a lot of goals. So I’m having a lot of fun.”
