Denied!

Well, just like tons of other New Yorkers, I too was denied entry into the NYC Half Marathon this year. At first I was just like "Boo. Guess I'll try again next year." Then I started going through my facebook feed and realized that out of all my NYC runner friends (and I know a LOT of NYC runners) only one got in! Then, some of my runner friends started posting links to other blogs like this one.

Seems like the entire New York running community was PISSED.

Why?

Well, first of all, we were supposed to know about our status at "the end of November" and this deadline got pushed to December 15th. But more importantly, all of us entered what we thought was a lottery to get into this half marathon. (Whereas everyone had an equal chance of being chosen for this race.) As I understand it (though am still fuzzy on all of the details) there were three lotteries: one for tri-state area runners, one for out-of-state runners and one for international runners with the number of accepted runners being equal for each lottery. Obviously there would be more NY runners applying and not getting in. (Make sense?) And none of us knew this beforehand.

Presumably this is because NYRR is trying to make this a bigger, more nationally/internationally known event.

Here are some stats on what happened which sort of confirms all of this:
• Of the 27,737 tri-state area runners who applied 3,344 were accepted. Of those people 1,000 qualified for automatic entry.
 • Of the 5,200 out of state runners who applied 4,300 were accepted.
• Of the 1,710 international applicants 1,500 were accepted.

Seems like the best chance of getting into this half marathon in the future is to move out of the country.

My take on the whole thing?

I am mildly angry that I didn't get in, but I am ticked about the transparency on the whole process.

This is a really great race. There is nothing like running down 7th Avenue in this half marathon. It makes you realize that we really do live in an awesome city. And the NYC running community is a GREAT community. So I guess it just makes me kind of sad that we weren't given a fair shake at this event. We are the lifeblood of the NYRR and spend oodles and oodles each year to run a bunch of less glamorous races. I welcome the opening of our events to a larger audience but I sort of feel like this kind of premiere event should also celebrate the local running community.

I just watched this documentary called Run for Your Life about Fred Lebow, the man who is credited with making the NYRR what it is and also for bringing the 5 Borough NYC Marathon to fruition (and therefore popularizing marathoning as a sport). I can't help but think that he would have handled this differently.

I don't know. Just my opinion.

That being said, I look forward to cheering on my friend Gina, as she crosses the finish line in March :)