Houston Marathon Goes To A Lottery System, And Not Everyone's Happy

• Just reminding everyone that the registration start date for Houstonites being screwed over by their own race is July 27th. I hope the servers crash. They should have to change the name of the marathon to Chevron Marathon - this marathon registration system doesn't reflect Houston values.

• This is clearly Houston Marathon's way of grabbing attention. Check out the overblown press release they put out last year about selling out in 60 hours. Last year, when it suited, it was ok to let that happen. Now they want to have the lottery, so they can send that out. The obvious solution is to expand the field and have some mechanism to ensure the entries are actually used--a little over 50% of spots used for an in demand race is crazy. Other solution, move the half marathon to another date.

• This just plain sucks. If you can't figure out how to register in 3 days, you suck and shouldn't be there anyway!!!

• Wait a minute...are you telling us people PAY to run????? No wonder Houston was known as one of the "'fatest' cities."

• I'm very saddened about this. Through training, I was able to run the Houston marathon this year. This year, I was hoping to improve my PR. My husband has always had a dream to run a marathon, and has attempted it twice, but has had to have 2 knee surgeries and not able to participate. He has been going through intense therapy and has already started training before re-joining USA fit in our area for the full training. Now he may not be able to even get a spot? And if God forbid, he gets injured again, they have no list so he can pass it to someone that can run it. Through our training, last year, I knew of approximately 10 people that had to transfer back to the half or cancel completely due to injuries that had occured through training. I like the idea of changing the route & adding more participants. I've been so happy to see how many participate in races considering Houston use to be known as one of the "fatest" cities. If I heard correctly, 93% of people that signed up for the marathon were Texans. That's awesome! That's something that Houston should be proud of & do everything to encourage Houstonians and other Texasns to continue exercising. Not having a marathon we can participate in, how many Houstonians & from other areas, who's going to even join a running group if there's no spot? So very disappointed.

• Why can't they split the Half and the full marathons so they can add more people to each event?

• There were only around 6700 people who ran the full marathon last year. How about we quit letting folks change events, then see if 11,000 people actually register for the full marathon. Hope I get in, good luck everybody.

• Dear Houston Marathon: You start a lottery when you have a HUGE demand for a race not just bragging about selling it out 5 straight years because you hold back registration for 7 months and blow out your server with a 2 day sell out. The arrogance of this race is off the charts and the Olympic Trials has no bearing on the fact that you need to make decisions for your customers. Your customers are your runners who pay much more than many other races in this country and actually get a finishers mug or shirt afterwards instead of waiting weeks for it. Boston, NYC, Marine Corp DC have lotteries because the demand for their races is huge, not just a mere sellout. This is a supply and demand issue and could be easily remedied by increasing the field. How do you do that? You scratch the course which has outgrown the GRB and the Ellysian start and move it somewhere where these is adequate space and parking to fit everyone like Reliant Stadium. Move the race to the last week of January so it would never conflict with a possible Houston Texans playoff run (which may never happen). Chicago has a huge demand but has increased their field to over 40,000 without a lottery and still sells out. How do they do that? They open up registration months in advance instead of making people wait 7 months. Last I checked Houston streets are not any narrower than Chi-town. The Marathon Committe has mad stupid decisions like this for runners for years. It is about time local runners fight back or maybe it is time for some good old fashioned competition and another competing Houston area Marathon. Are you listing Galveston? I know you guys would gladly take the much needed tourist business to help rebuild the island.

• Horrible idea! Find the time to register. If you have problems try again. For those of us who wait patiently, train, and actually SHOW up on race day, this sucks.

• <i>It's heartbreaking for committed runners.</i> Hey, you know what else is heartbreaking for committed runners? Staying up till the wee hours of the morning trying to register for a race they have their hearts set on running, only to find the website where they must do so crashing and burning under the load, and when they finally DO manage to get in finding that the race is sold the fuck out. Waaaah, the Houston Marathon is trying to make things a little more fair. Boo hoo baw baw.

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