Official results, team results posted


Male Most Senior Executive award winner Charles Miers with (from left) Kathleen Paprocki of Tiffany & Company, Grete Waitz, and Liam Carlos, Chief Financial Officer of the New York Times.

Race veterans lend added tradition
to event that goes to roots of Series
Official results are posted | Photo Gallery

A runner stretches out against the Manhattan skyline before the race.

NEW YORK, June 23, 2004 - The winners on this night were fresh-faced and Ivy League trained, but it was two veteran rivals in the publishing business who set the tone at the 28 th annual JPMorgan Chase Corporate Challenge in New York 's emerald jewel, Central Park.

Budd Coates, 47, is the fitness director at Rodale, Inc., the Pennsylvania-based parent company of Runner's World. He's been competing at Corporate Challenge events in Central Park since 1983 and has won the individual men's title 13 times, more than any other runner in Central Park. Charles Miers, 45, a publisher for Rizzoli Books, was one of the top 10 U.S. marathoners throughout the 80s, with a personal best of 2:16. He is also a past Corporate Challenge individual champion with a PR in this 3.5-mile event of 16:45.

So it was only appropriate that the two came down the final straightaway neck-in-neck. They both finished in 18:57, with Coates finishing sixth among men overall and Miers earning the Most Senior Executive Award.

Veterans Coates, Miers show no signs of slowing up

"Budd and I were close rivals, we had so many battles at this event," said Miers. "So when he went past me near the finish line we sort of smiled at each other."

Coates and Miers symbolize the JPMorgan Chase Corporate Challenge. Neither the two men nor the Series seem to have any intention of slowing up. More than 17,500 participants from over 500 companies constituted a capacity crowd at this second of two Central Park events in the 2004 Series and the quality of competition and camaraderie has never been keener.

"It's astonishing what this event has grown into," said Miers, a former New York Road Runners Runner of the Year. "It's beautifully organized now. It was always really good, but it's fantastic now. The sophistication of the organization is just amazing."

Coates organized a post-race carbo feed for his Rodale teammates at Carmine's, the famous Italian eatery in Times Square. Forty-five Rodale employees ventured into Manhattan by bus, competed, and will all be at their desks Thursday swapping stories.

"It's tradition," said Coates, "to come into work the next day. It shows the balance between fitness and business." And that is what the Corporate Challenge is all about.

Waitz: "Corporate Challenge is blueprint for road races"

Coates and Miers saw a couple of familiar faces on the starting stage. Barbara Paddock, Senior Vice President Corporate Philanthropy and Sponsorships for JPMorgan Chase and co-founder of the Corporate Challenge, served as the official starter for the race with nine-time New York City Marathon champion Grete Waitz. Waitz' post-running career has included a better than 15-year stint serving as ambassador for the Corporate Challenge Series.

"There's no question about it, the Corporate Challenge is really the blueprint for all other road races in the country," said Waitz. "Races are always changing, trying to come up with the new idea to make it special and unique. Meanwhile, for 28 years the Corporate Challenge has had the same basic concept and it continues to grow, year after year."

Indeed, the 2004 JPMorgan Chase Corporate Challenge Series is up over 17-percent in total participation from 2003 and a record 220,000 runners and walkers are projected by the end of this Series year.

The next generation of champions was also on display this night. Mike Spence, 25, a former All-American at Princeton, earned his third JPMorgan Chase Corporate Challenge title in 16:59, easily besting second-place Dwayne Antoine of Citigroup by 71 seconds. Spence, representing International Business Research in suburban New Jersey, has won the Corporate Challenge in Morristown twice, but decided to compete in New York this year so he could focus his summer training on the U.S. Olympic Trials.

Male champ Spence has Olympic Trials as a target

"I'd like to take a shot at qualifying for the trials in the steeplechase," said Spence. "That means I will not be able to make the New Jersey race (on July 22). So my company switched gears and we entered here. But, about an hour before the race, we were stymied in traffic in the Lincoln Tunnel and thought we wouldn't make it."

Spence ended up negotiating the traffic, got to Central Park in time for a quicker than normal warm-up, and then he dusted the field with a 4:50 opening mile.

On the women's side, Abbi Gleeson, an editorial assistant at Gourmet, made her Corporate Challenge debut a winning one in 20:36. The 22-year-old ran four years of cross country at Pennsylvania, but was pleasantly surprised by her Corporate Challenge success.

Runners start on a beautiful night in Central Park.

"I got to the starting line, saw all the elite runners and how serious they took this race and said to myself 'Forget it'," Gleeson said. "But then I went out well, took control from the top woman at about the 1 ½ mile mark, and never saw her again."

Gleeson defeated Kristin Wenstrom of Fragomen, Del Ray, Bernsen & Loewy by 36 seconds.

You may want to remember her name. Gleeson is leaving Gourmet Magazine at the end of this week to take a job as an NBC page. "I want to do television news," said Gleeson, with a perfect smile that indicates she is suited for the job. "In the morning, though. I'm a morning person, that's when I do my best running."

Lisa Bernstein of Interbrand earned the women's Most Senior Executive Award in 33:45. But Miers performance on the male side was extraordinary. His winning time of 18:57 is the fastest for any MSE in the 2004 JPMorgan Chase Corporate Challenge Series and one of the 10 fastest of all time.

"I'm really not even in shape, I've only been back running about three weeks," said Miers. "I haven't run in a race for 10 years, except for a couple of fun runs with my daughter. But I really wanted to do well here."

Miers' MSE victory sweetened by participation of colleagues

Like so many other serious runners in the Corporate Challenge, Miers took special pleasure in the participation of his colleagues.

Four members of the Rodale, Inc. team pose for a pre-race photo.

"Rizzoli is a very unathletic type of company but we got excited about this," Miers said. "It's hard to get people to get people to participate, harder than something like softball, but once they get here they love it. With a great night like this in the park, what could be better in New York ? I really mean that."

Central Park did indeed shine on this night, with absolutely perfect conditions to be outdoors - temperatures in the high 70s with reasonable humidity and no chance of rain. And, as it has with each Corporate Challenge in Central Park the past two years, JPMorgan Chase made a donation to the Central Park Conservancy, the organization that restores, manages and preserves the Frederick Law Olmstead masterpiece.

"We do these events worldwide," said Paddock, who founded the Corporate Challenge in 1977 with Charles McCabe. "But New York remains our cornerstone. This is our home."