Boilermaker and Beyond

Well the 2013 BMW Berlin Marathon is over- well sort of. Organizers of the event (which will take place September 29^th 2013) announced that the 40,000 field is filled. Here is the astounding part of the story- the race sold out in 3 ½ hours! The 2012 race was closed out in 6 ½ weeks.

Let’s have a short math class:

The 2012 Berlin event saw on average 37 entries per hour; the 2013 event saw 190 entries per minute!

This is a race that started in 1974 with 286 runners.

Some takeaways:

-Clearly the popularity of distance running extends far beyond our American shores. This growth has not been without a little controversy as long-time runners find themselves shut out of events with the influx of new participants.

- The days of major races (including the Boilermaker) to deal with paper race applications are over. The ability of race staff to manually have to rekey in a racer’s data with a surge like this is simply impossible. Welcome to the digital world.

- While the Boilermaker has not experienced the ‘hyper-growth’ that hit Berlin I expect the 2013 race to sell out faster than 2012.

Now a short history class:

The 2012 Boilermaker 15k sold out in roughly 100 days with 13,000 runners; we increased the field by 1,000 this year and it sold out in 65 days.

Also this year, for the first time, the 5k (4,000 runners) sold out; I expect that to happen again.

In late November we will be announcing the caps for the 2013 Boilermaker and on January 13^th (at midnight) race registration will open.

Bottom line- there’s a race to get in the race- will you win?