Broad Street Run Registration Lottery Announced

You can still attempt to register for the Broad Street Run via a lottery which will take place from Feb. 16 to Feb. 24. An additional 2,500 spots soon will be made available via lottery. To participate in that, log onto www.broadstreetrun.com tomorrow. This is a first for the annual rite of spring. Another thing to keep in mind, is that in years past various charities such as the American Cancer Society, have made additional registrations available for runners who participate in their programs.

In case you're just tuning in, registration for this year's Broad Street Run sold out earlier today.
"The race sold old in record time. It sold out in five hours," Ruth Stoolman, an Independence Blue Cross spokeswoman told me. "This was beyond our wildest expectations."

Registration for the annual 10-mile run down Broad Street opened this morning and by early afternoon it was completed. This year, 33,000 runners get race numbers - that's up 3,000 from last year when the number of participants was capped at 30,000. It's mind boggling when you consider that back when the race first began back in 1980, there were only 1,500 participants. I asked Race Director Jim Marino why registrations needed to be capped and he said it's because of safety issues such as medical staffing.

Marino had a busy day, not only fielding complaints by runners frustrated by slowness of the site but hearing from people desperate for a race bib. "I've gotten calls from (places) you can't imagine," he said. "I've had people I haven't heard from in 10 years reaching out to me today."