Boilermaker and Beyond

On this Monday (March 18^th) at noon something very special happens; the Boilermaker opens its first Charity Bib Program.

I’d love to say that we were the first to come up with the concept, but can’t. Perhaps the Boston Marathon is the tops in this effort. They hold back 1,250 bibs out of a field of 26,000 and require a $6,000 minimum to participate.

We held 200 bibs back from the open registration to support the charity program.  Our pledge minimum is a bit less than Boston, like $5,500 less. Saying that 200 bibs multiplied by $500 represents $100,000 for our not for profit partners- not bad!

There are 11 charities that make up our inaugural class; they will be listed on boilermaker.com when the system goes live on Monday (a huge thank you to Quadsimia who put the charity pages together). All of our charities have a physical presence in the Central New York area (primarily running from Utica to Syracuse). They also represent a wonderful cross-section of specific needs within our community.

Bottom line; you need to raise a minimum of $500 dollars to get a bib for either the 15k or 5k races.

The Boilermaker is about healthy competition so we figured we sweeten the deal to get the pledges above the $500 minimum. Top pledge-gatherer wins free registration for the next 5 Boilermakers (hey, no setting the alarm clock for 12:01 am registration day!) and a $500 donation to the charity they represent. Second place, 2 years of registration and a $250 donation; third place, 1 year and $100 donation. In addition, our friends at the Masonic Care Community have offered the top three free registrations in the 2014 Mighty Run.

It will certainly be interesting to see how quickly these bibs sell out. I won’t even hazard a guess; I thought this year’s race would sell out in 30 days not 3! I will say I’ve already had a number of emails inquiring when the program was going live. Perhaps the funniest one was (and I paraphrase): ‘OK, I have my plane ticket flying in from California; I have my hotel room in Utica. What I don’t have is my race bib; just tell me who I’m running for!’

It has been my belief that the Boilermaker should be a positive change agent for our community. This area we call home has built this race into what it is today- it’s our time to give back in at least 100,000 ways.