By David Rogers. BOSTON, Mass. — ZAP Endurance head coach Pete Rea described the 129th staging of the iconic Boston Marathon as the “deepest” field of top-flight marathon runners in the event’s history. Important for the High Country: two of his Blowing Rock-based athletes earned top 10 and top 20 finishing positions on April 21.
ZAP Endurance team members Ryan Ford and Tristin (Van Ord) Colley finished the 2025 course of 26.2 miles at No. 10 and No. 19, respectively, in the men’s and women’s divisions.
Coming into the race, Ford had the 29th fastest time among the more than 60 professional marathon athletes entered in the elite field running Boston this year. In only his second career marathon race (his debut was last November in the New York City Marathon, where he ran 2:11:08), Ford lowered the ZAP Endurance club record while also lowering his personal best to 2:08:00. He clipped more than three minutes off his New York time — and his No. 10 Boston finish also lowered the ZAP club record by almost three minutes. The previous club record of 2:10:54 was set in January’s Houston Marathon by teammate Josh Izewski.
When told of Ford’s accomplishment, Izewski told Rea by telephone, “Well, I’ll just have to run faster in Australia,” referring to the Gold Coast Marathon in which he is scheduled to compete on July 6.
Trivia tidbit: Rea reports that Ford’s performance is the 4th-fastest American to ever run the historic Boston race, with three of those four achieved in the 2025 running of the event. In 2011, Ryan Hall ran the fastest Boston Marathon by an American, finishing No. 4 in 2:04:58. Hall is now retired from running competitively. He is a native of Kirkland, Wash., and the only American to run a sub-2:05 marathon to date.
A friendly, 3-way battle appears to be developing among the ZAP Endurance members for who holds the club record. Teammate Andrew Colley was a former club recordholder and will next try to outdo both Ford and Izewski when he competes in the Prague Marathon (The Czech Republic) on May 4.
The men’s division of the Boston Marathon was won by Kenya’s John Korir in a blistering 2:04:45, a 4:46 mile pace and the second fastest Boston Marathon in history. Ford was the third fastest American, behind Connor Mantz (No. 4, 2:05:06) and Clayton Young (No. 7, 2:07:04).
Korir is the second member of his family to win Boston. His older brother, Wesley, won in 2012 with a time of 2:12:40.
Tristin Colley, the former distance running star while attending App State as Tristin Van Ord and now married to ZAP teammate Andrew Colley, came into the deep Boston race with the 27th fastest qualifying time among the 64 elite female athletes vying for the prize money. Her 2:26:39 was just 43 seconds off her personal best of 2:25:58 (also the ZAP endurance women’s club record), established in Oct. 2023, in the Chicago Marathon. The Boston race was her fastest performance since the Chicago event.
The women’s division championship in Boston was claimed by Kenya’s Sharon Lokedi, in a course record 2:17:22. The first American woman to cross the finish line was Jess McClain, 33, at No. 7 (2:22:43). She is the 7-time NCAA All American who competed at middle distances for Stanford University.
Traditionally, the Boston Marathon is staged the third Monday of April. A recent exception was 2021, when the event was moved to Oct. 11 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
