Jason Sandford
Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.
Zola Budd, who is now Zola Budd Pieterse, has been quietly training in Western North Carolina to get prepared for the New York City marathon. Pieterse, 42, is a world-famous runner who ran the Citizen-Times Half Marathon back in September and finished first for the women. She also just recently ran a race in Boone. She is being trained by a ZAP Fitness coach, and ZAP Fitness is based in Blowing Rock.
Having Zola Budd training in the WNC mountains is a big deal. Runner’s World has the story:
South Africa’s Zola Budd Pieterse, one-half of the most famous track collision ever, has recently moved to South Carolina and is planning to run the ING New York City Marathon next weekend. “This year I’m just hoping to survive,” she chuckles from her new home in Myrtle Beach.
“I’d be very pleased to finish in 2:50. Next year I’d like to return and run faster.” A 2:50 performance would roughly match the time of last year’s female masters winner, Elisabeth Ruel, who ran 2:50:30. The top masters prizes at New York are worth $3000.
Budd, 42, arrived in the U.S. without fanfare in early August and won a Track Shack 5K in Orlando in 17:43 on August 17. A month later, she showed up at the September 13 Asheville HalfMarathon in North Carolina and ran 1:25:12 to beat the second-place finisher, a 27-year-old, by almost eight minutes. In short order, she became a volunteer assistant coach to the women’s cross country team at Coastal Carolina University, just outside Myrtle Beach. And last Friday, she competed in the wet, hilly Blue Ridge Mountain Open cross-country meet hosted in Boone, N.C., by Appalachian State University.
Well-known ZAP Fitness coach Pete Rea was among the coaches at the Blue Ridge meet. He remembers looking across the course from a distance and “seeing what appeared to be a young woman in the field of mostly collegians pressing the pace and putting 40 meters between herself and the field in the first 800 meters. Anyone who’s been around since the mid-1980s could instantly recognize that it was Zola. She went through the mile in 5:18, hung on for dear life when a couple of other girls caught her with 600 to go, and then fought them off to win. She looked great. It was amazing to watch. Except for a few wrinkles on her face, she looks a lot like the Zola of 20 years ago.” Budd Pieterse won the race, held at 3500 feet, in 17:58.
Budd Pieterse is best known for her fateful race against Mary Decker in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic 3000-meter final. Decker was the reigning World Champion in the 1500 and 3000, while Budd (her maiden name) was an unsophisticated 18-year-old South African farm girl who had set an unofficial 5000-meter world record in January 1984. She was able to run in the Olympics only because Great Britain hastily arranged her citizenship on the basis of her father’s birth in London.
Midway through the Olympic race, as Budd tentatively maneuvered herself into the lead, Decker clipped Budd’s heel and fell to the infield grass, unable to continue. Budd, stunned by the accident and the booing that crescendoed through the LA Coliseum, faded to seventh. Romania’s Maricica Puica won the race. You can see a YouTube video here.
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Jacobs and Pieterse have been working together for about four weeks now, with New York City as their first goal. “From what I’ve seen, I’m very impressed,” he says. “She’s only doing 50 or 60 miles a week, so she’s not ready for a fast marathon, but she did a 20 miler at 7:15 pace a week ago. And she’s got the legs and turnover of a college girl. I’d say she could run about 16:40 to 17:00 for 5000 on the track right now, and probably 4:50 for a mile. More than anything, it’s an honor to coach someone with her background and talent. We’re also having fun with it. She’s fun to be around. We joke and laugh about a lot of things.”
