Getting Into the NYC Marathon

On Thursday I finally registered for the ING NYC Marathon. Now all I can do is wait to see if I get accepted. For most applicants entry to the marathon is decided by lottery, due to the vast amount of applications the organizers receive. The odds last year weren't too bad, 38,368 runners gained entry out of 90,000.

Guaranteed entry, without a lottery, can be gained in a couple of ways. First, one can run for an officially sanctioned charity. I originally thought I would take this path to the marathon only to find out that these charity programs carried minimum contribution amounts into the thousands of dollars, apparently not an AIDS walk. If the money isn't raised the runner is liable for it. I just figured training for my first marathon was enough pressure.

The second way to gain guaranteed entry is to run nine New York Road Runner qualifying races the previous year. Unfortunately, there is a caveat attached to those races; the applicant must be registered with NYRR by January for any of those races to count for the following year. I obviously hopped on the boat too late to take that track.

As you may have noticed from my earlier posts, I didn't sign up until February. That means that regardless of how many races I run this year, I will have to go through the lottery again next year. Though, now that I think of it I will have enough time and foresight, and hopefully enough fans, to use next year's marathon to make a meaningful contribution to a good cause.