New York City Half Marathon #lotteryfail

There was much uproar this week regarding the New York City Half Marathon.

In a nutshell, the lottery system was unfair to us New Yorkers, as we had about a 12% chance to make it through the lottery, where US and international folks had about a 72% chance to get in.  Really, that is no joke or typo.  This is inherently unfair, and NYRR has already taken steps to fix it.  I hope they do more.  Their official statements are here.

But really people, it is a lottery, you should expect not to make it.  Even if they allowed fewer non NY’ers, the odds were still stacked against you. 

I did enter the lottery, I did not get accepted, and it is fine with me.  I really did want to run, but I can think of other things to do with my money.  The big, and possibly only, problem I had with the process is that it just took “too damn” long.  In looking back at my records, I registered for the lottery on July 13.  That is JULY, over 5 months ago, and the race will not occur for 3 more months.  That length of time is insane!  And I didn’t even register on the first day.

I think NYC Triathlon has the lottery thing done right.  They opened the lottery on Nov 1, kept the lottery open for 3 days, and then immediately picked the winners.  No waiting for months, hanging in limbo, to see if you made it or not.  No dragged out registration period to inflate the number of people who want to sign up.  etc, etc, etc.

Anyway, it took about 5 minutes to get over my disappointment on Wednesday.  Thankfully, on that very day, a Twitter friend was posting about the Tough Mudder event he is planning to run, and asking for people to join him.  Now that sounds like a fine substitute to me!  Signed myself up today…

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New York City Half Marathon

Registration opens today at noon for the New York City Half Marathon.  First come, first served, until they hit 10,000, so get yourself registered if you are interested!

I’m out this year, as it is the 8th birthday for my younger daughter…

Good news on the NYC Half

I see that the New York City Half Marathon is back on the calendar, for Aug 16.  Full details are not available yet, but we do know that the course will remain the same, they will allow for 10,000 runners, and registration opens May 1 as first come, first served – no lottery!

I will likely skip it this year, as Aug 16 is my 7 year old’s birthday.  With it falling on the weekend, we most definitely will be spending it at the beach at my house in New Jersey.  I’m OK with that though, as I’m not going to maniacally run every big race this year, like I’ve done the last couple.  

On a similar note, I’ve decided to run the NYC Marathon this year (for the 7th time) since I have an automatic entry, but will look to run a different fall marathon in 2010.