Boston is closed

run this one instead in May: CLEVELAND!!!!!

Who the f*** wants to go to Cleveland?

Isn't the most likely solution that they will raise the registration fee? Obviously the demand is there and as a business they'd be stupid to not raise the fee to something like $200.

4 timer wrote:

Mary Beth Appleass

I don't agree 100% with your post but this IS FUNNY! Well done.

Maybe they should split the men and the women into two races on back-to-back days. It's not totally unprecedented, as they've done essentially this when hosting the Olympic trials the day before the actual marathon. They could virtually double the participation by doing this. The course support requirements would almost take care of themselves, as more people would be flooding the city to be there anyway. Travel logistics would probably be FUBAR for participants, though...

I spent about 2 hours this morning banging away at the BAA site to get my dad signed up. He was at work, so I did it for him.

I think a lot of this had to do with self-fulfilling prophecy. You hear about it in stock-market panics, and in other economic markets that are volatile. A rumor spread that the price of a stock is going to plummet, so people panic and rush to sell their shares... causing the stock price to plummet (thus fulfilling the prophecy). Sometimes the rumor of a price drop is the only thing that causes one, even if there are no intrinsic, concrete market factors to cause one.

I think that's what happened here. Everyone heard it would fill up fast, so everyone decided to get on the BAA website and sign up early... which caused it to fill up really fast, thus fulfilling the prophecy.

A second point: this is unrelated to how many people decided to sign up on day one, but apparently there was some type of internal hosting or link error that misdirected people once they hit the 'submit' button on the registration form. I had to re-fill out the form and re-submit it probably 40-60 times before it went through, and I read something that this was partially due to internal problems with the BAA site- it wasn't just server traffic overload causing the problem. So the BAA really f***ed up on that one.

And I also read that it affected some people and not others. I went straight to the BAA site, but I heard those using the link from Runners World didn't experience the problem.

This idea would make everyone happy. Open registration for 1 week for people who beat their Q-time by 30+, then open registration for another week for all beating their Q-time by 20+ minutes, then another week for 10+ minutes, then thereafter open it for all. That way the fastest runners can get into the race even if they're dumb and incompetent.

They could open registration 2 months early for those beating the qualifying time by 20 minutes, and then 1 month early for those beating the qualifying time by 10 minutes.

Off-Topic question to the starter of this thread:

I notice the name you used to make the post was "Up The Irons." Does this in fact mean you are a supporter of West Ham United FC?

It is also possible that due to everyone continually being redirected to and resubmitting the entry form many times, duplicate entries were added to the database. The total entrant count could have reached the limit on thousands of repeat entries. In which case someone will eventually notice and they'll reopen registration.

I'm sure if the Whirlaway team wants to put in an elite masters group it'll only take an e-mail to the BAA to get them in.

This isn't Russia.

54 runners isn't exactly a race.

Yea I recognize that Boston only started with so many, yada yada yada, but I sure hope you gave some extra consideration for the guy who beat the field by 20 minutes, running a 2:21, alone.

Bingo. I tried this AM x 2. Clicked the submit button and it kept on erasing my info. Gave up and figured I would try again in the evening when I have time to sit in front of the computer.

My first thought when I saw that it closed was that everyone registered multiple times due to the site error.

One last thing -

check your credit card statements. People who kept clicking "submit" were charged more than once.

they should shut out the charity runners for sure. tell the charity runners to do it else where and save the entry money for actual charities.

love the idea of:

sub 2.40 register 3 months out.

sub 2.50 """""" 2 "" "" .

sub 3.00 """"""" 1 "" "" .

i wanted to run NYC and then do boston.....ah well.

honestly the best thing they could do is simply raise the price.

let's not get nuts here wrote:

One last thing -

check your credit card statements. People who kept clicking "submit" were charged more than once.

False.

I had that concern as I was using a debit card and called my bank. There were no pending transactions and only one transaction for $130. I had 2 hours worth of hits before using the RW link and gettin through the first time.

is this true? i know multiple people who "registered" multiple times but never received a confirmation.

aksdfa wrote:

honestly the best thing they could do is simply raise the price.

So being able to afford it should determine who goes. Yeah, that would be such a huge improvement. Then it could be just like an Ironman where most of the competitors are slow 40 somethings with too much disposable cash. Yeah, sign me up. Sheesh.

Grandma's it is!