Stacy Creamer joined CPTC back in 1987, after representing NYRR along with CPTC’er Tom Phillips in a national race out in Los Angeles. When she got back to New York from the race, she applied to join CPTC.  Her sister intercepted the acceptance letter that Stacy was eagerly awaiting, put it in an orange envelope, and decorated their apartment with blue and orange balloons to celebrate. Since then, Stacy has run numerous marathons, road races, and track races of all distances, including the Empire State Building Run-Up ten times.

But she seems to have found her niche in the duathlon. Creamer started her multisport career with the inaugural Central Park Triathlon. In the beginning, she slowly embraced the multisport world. During the second year of the event, she realized that the last time she’d been on a bike had been at last year’s race. Since then, she has been training more regularly on the bike, including a spin class twice a week in addition to her running. This rededication has paid off. Last September, Creamer traveled to Rimini, Italy, for the ITU World Duathlon Championships, where she placed sixth in her age group in the world.

As an accomplished athlete herself, Stacy follows various professional endurance sports. Back in 1999, her knowledge of professional cycling paid off for her and her career. Being an editor in publishing allows her to pursue book deals on all subjects, and she knew that Lance Armstrong represented an incredible comeback story. She was aware of Lance’s battle with cancer and that he was likely to win the Tour de France that year for the first time. But the day before the end of the Tour, the deal had still not been struck with Lance’s agent. Creamer was forced to call her boss on a Saturday and get approval for the deal. Her boss, who was relaxing on Martha’s Vineyard, replied, “Can’t this wait until Monday?” Stacy pressed on: “On Monday, he will have won the tour and anybody can sign him!” Stacy inked the deal that Saturday, which led to a bestseller—It’s Not About the Bike. If you own the book, open it up and you will see Stacy as the second person thanked on the acknowledgments page.

Stacy started in publishing shortly after college, working as an assistant to the famous publisher Phyllis Grann at Putnam Books. This experience gave her exposure to major deals and paved the way for her own publishing career. Creamer is currently vice president and editor-in-chief at Broadway Books. In her career she has worked on various bestsellers, including The Devil Wears Prada. While on maternity leave, Stacy worked with the author, Lauren Weisberger, to formulate a coherent story from a hundred pages of anecdotes.

Stacy Creamer

Creamer’s current project, which will be released on April 7th, is Dara Torres’s story: Age Is Just a Number. Again, Stacy’s athletic background helped her to land this deal. Torres’s agent was not very good at remembering names, and met with many publishers before choosing Creamer and Broadway Books. He kept referring to Stacy as “the athlete,” which helped her rise above the other publishers and clinch the deal. Creamer’s experience with the rigors of endurance sports also once helped her explain to her superiors why Lance couldn’t do more publicity for his book while training for his next Tour de France.

Despite her clear commitment to training, Stacy is always finding a way to balance work, life, and running. She has the flexibility to do much of her reading for work at home, allowing her to spend more time with her six-year-old son, Kieran, and her partner, Stuart Calderwood. She “tag teams” watching Kieran with Stuart so that they can train, work, and race on top of raising their energetic son. Even with all these responsibilities, she still manages to attend the Tuesday and Thursday CPTC team workouts. Creamer explained succinctly how this is accomplished: “Stuart and I are truly a team, in that we try to figure out the ‘when’ and ‘how’, and not the ‘if’ we will do anything.”

Because of an unusual age-group cutoff, Creamer is allowed to compete in the duathlon field this year as a fifty-year-old, even though her birthday does not arrive until later in the year. Her goals for 2009 include competing in more duathlons and qualifying again for the world championships. But don’t let her age-group achievements fool you: she often places in the top-five women overall in many duathlons. It goes to show that Stacy is not only the publisher of Age Is Just a Number, but also a living example.

Adja Dotay (L), Jodyann Raymond (R)

CPTC has grown through the years, achieving many milestones along the way. Thanks to Jodyann Raymond, a member of the club since 2007, the team can now add representation among the sprinters at the USA Indoor National Track & Field Nationals to the list. Jodyann qualified for the 60m event by winning the NYU Gotham Cup Meet on January 18th, finishing in a blazing time of 7.57 seconds—the equivalent of running 17.74 mph. The USATF indoor nationals will be held in Boston the weekend of February 28th.

CPTC’s sprint coach, Shaun Dietz, will be traveling to Boston with Raymond. Dietz used to coach her when she was in high school at Theodore Roosevelt HS in the Bronx. After high school, she became an NCAA division III champion twice: once in the outdoor 100m and once in the 4x100m relay. Since joining CPTC the summer between her junior and senior years at CCNY, she’s set the club record in the 60m, 100m, 200m, 4 x 100m, and both sprint medleys. She graduated from CCNY in 2008 with a BA in media communications, and has worked with the marketing department at an ad agency.

Despite these impressive accomplishments, Jodyann says she’s not sure her siblings understand what a big deal it is to qualify for nationals. She’s confident, however, that her mother, who used to compete in track & field during her younger days back in Jamaica, grasps the magnitude of her achievement.

As for the nationals, Raymond faces a new set of challenges. Although she has run several races in Boston, she’s never competed at the Reggie Lewis Track & Athletic Center before. Even more daunting is that she’s never competed against anyone else in the field. Still, she seems to be taking the challenges in stride. When asked if she would modify her training for this big event, Jodyann says that she will stay with what she knows and not do anything drastically different.

The trusted routine that has gotten her to the national stage consists of training almost every day either on a track or in a school hallway, complemented by regular weights work in a gym. To date, though, she has reported no hallway collisions with teachers or students. And when she toes the line on Saturday, Feb. 28th in the opening heats of the 60m in Boston, she hopes to stay in her lane and create yet another milestone for the club. The meet will air on ESPN2 on Sunday, March 1st at 5pm EST.

Connor, Patrick’s son, left the hospital two weeks later and is now a healthy 13-year-old who loves basketball and snowboarding and has plenty of reasons to be proud of his father’s running accomplishments over the years. In the early days, though, Patrick made all the rookie mistakes—including wearing a cotton T-shirt in the rain for his first marathon.  After ditching the cotton, he has now run eighteen marathons, with a personal best of 3:00:31 in the 2003 Chicago Marathon. He still hopes to break the elusive three-hour mark, but he has had some injuries that have sidelined him since.

Most people would lay low and try to heal when injured, but Patrick works to contribute to the team whenever he can. He became interested in photography after buying a camera for his wife, Heidi, who loans it to him to capture CPTC’s races. Afterward, he posts the shots on his website, www.patrickcowden.com, and often on www.therunninglog.com and the CPTC website, for all to see. Such dedication explains why Patrick has taken on the unofficial job of team photographer after his predecessor, Roland, moved to Hong Kong.

Patrick’s website also features some of his original music, which he has been making ever since he was twelve. He classifies himself primarily as a guitar player, but he is also proficient at drums and keyboards. Patrick’s early musical background led him to his previous career working in various jobs with a tour crew (with such artists as The Smithereens, Joe Cocker, and The Romantics). He was even a member of The Charlie Midnight Band that toured with The Joe Perry Project. Originally from Huntington Beach, CA, Cowden came to New York City back in 1978. He currently works as a contractor on interior construction projects, which allows him flexible hours and time for family, running, and music.

Cowden’s latest venture combines running with music, in collaboration with famed Arizona-based running coach Jack Daniels. Daniels’s training technique suggests that 180 steps per minute is the correct stride range for optimal performance. To help runners stay on track while training and listening to tunes, Patrick wrote music with 180 beats per minute (see www.audioperformanceteam.com for more details). This collaboration with Jack Daniels has gone well; their next goal is to organize a seven-day running competition in which each day features a different running event. Cowden describes it as a “running Tour de France.” Organizing a competition like that is no walk in the park, even though that is where it all began.

You may know the Colorado team from the book Running with the Buffaloes.  The author, Chris Lear, ran with the team the year after Eric graduated.  Lear not only missed out on running with Boucher, but he also missed out on Alan Culpepper, with whom Eric was roommates freshman year. Eric and Alan still keep in touch to this day.

Boucher’s collegiate highlights include a 14:30 5k and a 29:38 10k. Despite those fast times, he described himself as “the 6th man on a deep bench”. Eric eventually gained some notoriety his senior year when a talented freshman named Adam Goucher joined the team. Despite the success of the cross country team in nationals, the campus was mostly focused on the football team and its season. So when Goucher made the headlines for winning NCAAs, many friends and classmates congratulated Boucher for Goucher’s performance. Even his family at home in New Jersey often wondered if there was a typo in the sports write-up. Finally, at Eric’s graduation party, Goucher made an appearance which was a revelation to many of Eric’s friends. People introduced themselves to Goucher, exclaiming, “So you’re the real Goucher!”

After college, Boucher traveled and tended bar before eventually landing a job on Wall Street. He currently works in Equity Research Sales for the ISI group. He sells economic research to various money managers. His territory is Los Angeles, Boston, and Philadelphia. He is constantly on the road—last year he tallied 120 travel days. While being away from his family is tough for him, work travel does help his training. He gets his run in at either 4am or 5pm on travel days. The afternoon run usually precedes a client dinner at which the guests are reaching for cocktails while Eric is chugging water.

Eric met his wife Emily (also a runner) in ’97 and together they’re raising three children. They have two girls, aged 7 and 5, and a 2-year-old son.  “All our kids have grown up in a baby jogger,” says Eric. That is no surprise, but the question of how many miles are being pushed is raised as Eric mentions that they have had to change the tires twice due to worn-out rubber. Eric and Emily plan their vacation (and specifically the lodging) based on where they can run. But running and watching three children are not compatible, so the husband and wife never run together. That spells out to a shared passion that is not shared together.

While you may not see Eric at many workouts due to his work travel, you will see him at many races scoring for the team. His current goal is breaking 2:40 in the marathon. His latest post-college personal record is a 1:14:00 half marathon that he ran in Brooklyn this year. It is not easy to juggle a family, a job that makes you travel, and running, but Boucher seems to be doing it—and doing it well.