PressMediaWire.com (Press Release Distribution) – Mar 28,2012 –

More than 5,300 competitors ran, jogged and walked Saturday’s Allstate Life Insurance(SM) New York 13.1 Marathon® and Karhu 5K on a warm, windy morning at Flushing Meadows Corona Park.  Teklu Deneke, 32, of Bronx, N.Y., by way of Ethiopia, completed the half-marathon in a blistering 1:05:48, besting the field by nearly three seconds.  Meagan Nedlo, 29, of Marblehead, Mass., was the women’s half-marathon winner, finishing in 1:17:22, easily outdistancing the women’s field by more than nine minutes, finishing sixth overall.

The 13.1-mile race featured approximately 4,500 runners while the 5K attracted around 835 competitors.

“I started to push hard around the sixth mile,” said Deneke of his 13.1 victory.  “I felt good, it was a good, flat course.”

“The wind and the turns were the real challenge,” said Nello, who was running the course for the first time and led from wire to wire.  “When I came up on the second loop by the Unisphere, there were some runners on the first loop, so I had to do some dodging and weaving, almost like an obstacle course.”

In the 5K race that preceded the 13.1, three runners “Beat the Bear,” winning a pair of Karhu shoes for besting the time of Brady Becker of Danbury, Conn., who wore a full bear costume, as event sponsor Karhu means “bear” in Finnish.

Stefano Piana-Agostinelli, 40, of N.Y. by way of Italy, was the men’s 5K winner, clocking in at 17:38.  Angelique Demeo, 16, of Staten Island, who runs for Tottenville H.S., was the women’s 5K winner, breaking the tape at 19:08.  Paina-Agostinelli and two others beat Becker’s time of just over 18 minutes to win the Karhu shoes through the promotion.

“It was hot in there,” said Becker of the Karhu bear suit.  “For the first mile, I felt like I was carrying an animal, and I had to get used to breathing through the bear’s mouth.  It was kind of like running in a sauna.”

Full results are available at www.131newyork.com.