Thursday, January 30, 2020

Heartbroken...

Today was supposed to be a day of celebration... Today was the opening day for the application period for the TCS New York City Marathon... But instead of it being a day to commemorate my hard work and dedication, it's a day of heartbreak.


As some of you may know, I have entered the lottery to run the TCS New York City Marathon three times before... and have been denied each time. For 2020, I figured I wouldn't leave it up to chance, but I would put in the work to claim a time-qualified spot. The time-qualifications are even more stringent than for the Boston Marathon, but thankfully they allow you to qualify with a half or full marathon time. (I knew I wouldn't be able to run a fast enough marathon time, but if everything lined up on the day of my half marathon I figured I could squeak out a fast enough race to get me in.)


In November I ran the REVEL Big Bear Half Marathon and was able to finish with a time of 1:32:50. As you probably could see from the chart above (I'm a 35 year old female), I had to run a sub-1:34 and I did it. I WAS STOKED! It isn't like the Boston Marathon where the faster qualifiers register first and so there's a possibility you have to run even faster than the standard to actually qualify... If you run faster than the requirement, whether it's by an hour or a second, you can register.

I even wore blue and orange to bring me NYC luck...

Well, as long as there are spots left available... And, as I'm sure you can guess by now, when I went to register all of the time-qualified spots (that occurred at non-NYRR races) had been taken. I literally could NOT believe what I was reading...

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You see, as soon as I ran my time-qualifying race I put the date of registration in my phone so I would not forget. I looked last night to see what time today it would open and didn't see anything specific so set my alarm for 5:30am, thinking there was a possibility it would be at 9am EST. Instead of a 9am opening, they went for a noon (on the east coast) opening... Which normally would have been totally fine because I am off on Thursdays, but my boss asked me if I would help her at a local elementary school jog-a-thon... So when registration officially opened I was cheering on fourth and fifth graders as they ran laps around their playground trying to raise funds for their art and physical education programs.


I got home by 11:30am and jumped on the computer immediately. There was a queue that you had to wait in before they would allow you access to the site due to the high number of folks hitting the InterWebs. While I waited I read the fine print and noticed all of the non-NYRR time-qualified spots were GONE! In fact, a friend told me that they had all been claimed within FIVE MINUTES of registration opening (I haven't seen that stat verified yet, but I can absolutely believe it).

REACHED CAPACITY?! WHAT THE FRICK?! GRRRRRRRRR!

Like I mentioned at the jump, I am heartbroken. I know, I know, #FirstWorldProblems, but I think in the back of my mind I never thought I wouldn't be able to claim my guaranteed spot. I was already looking at hotels to stay at and the hubby was putting together an itinerary of what pizza places he wanted to hit up while we were there. Sure, I can enter the lottery for the FOURTH time, but seeing as this is the 50th Anniversary race I'm assuming the odds will NOT be in my favor...

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I guess I will use the next two weeks (since the lottery is open until February 13th) to decide if I want to throw my name in the hat for a fourth year or if I want to do something else. PS Isn't it weird that runners think "winning" a lottery means having to spend $295 AND having to put their body through the grueling work of running 26.2 miles?! #WeBeCrayCray

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Do you think I should enter the lottery?

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