The Boston Marathon is a Super Bowl of sorts for marathon runners. There is usually around 25,000 spots for the race with 6,000 of those going to charities and corporations. That leaves around 19,000 coveted positions for runners who BQ’ed (Boston Qualified) at marathon races throughout the country over the past year.
Last year it took nearly two months for the race to fill up. Every year before that you could register almost up until race day for the most part.
Yesterday, the first day you could register for the 2011 Boston Marathon, the race filled up in just eight hours. 26,800 runners registered on the Boston Athletic Association website between 9:00 AM and 5:03 PM.
Extreme marathoner Chuck ‘Marathonjunkie’ Engle and others kept dibs on Facebook as the registration numbers kept rising throughout the day. Engle and others claimed computer issues with the Boston Marathon website made it hard early on in the day to sign up.
What does all of that mean? It means a lot of runners that set the goal of running Boston and qualified at a race during the past year will have to try to qualify again now for the 2012 Boston Marathon.
It does seem a bit harsh and unfair. One day, one shot, one good internet connection in order to run the Super Bowl of marathons.
Well, there is always next year….maybe!
