October 18, 2010 - Boston Registration Opens and Closed today!

Wow, history was made as the Boston Marathon opened registration this morning at 8 am EDT, and closed at 5.03 pm due to reaching full capacity. I suppose it shouldn't be a surprise to see an increase in demand for this race, given the fact that the marathon sport has seem unprecedented global growth in recent years, and given that Boston is the ultimate goal for most marathon runners. But to go from reaching capacity in 2 months last year, to 8 hours this year, must come as a major surprise to all. I suppose this is a good problem to have, if you are the BAA, however, there's definitely an issue here, as several thousand runners who have worked their entire life to qualify, will end up extremely disappointed if they were unable to get to a computer to register today.

It will be very interesting to see what they decide to do, if anything, to address this matter. Tougher qualifying standards could be implemented, a lottery system could be used, or a combination of both.

Although the BAA keeps stating that increasing capacity is not logistically possible, what they could do is add a third wave of the slower runners, but delay their starting time by several hours. That may be a way to get more people in and out of Hopkinton on race day.

Oh well, it was a bitter day for me, not because of this issue, but because i was unable to even attempt to register, as i had not run a qualifying time in the past 12 months. Oh well, i've got the rest of my life to work hard and attempt to qualify each and every year from here on!

Jenn