And so it is written...Chicago Marathon goes to a lottery system.

Straight from the Chicago Marathon Website:

"Registration for the 2014 Bank of America Chicago Marathon will be conducted through a system of guaranteed entries and non-guaranteed lottery selected entries. The fee to register is USD $185 for U.S. residents or USD $210 for those residing outside of the U.S. The field will be capped at a maximum of 45,000 participants.

Interested participants will be able to 1) register with a guaranteed entry; or 2) enter the non-guaranteed entry lottery, at any time from Wednesday, March 5, at 12 p.m., to Monday, April 7, at 12 p.m. U.S. Central Time. Lottery entrants will be notified of their selection status on Monday, April 14."

Sigh. I do not have 5 marathons. Even if they counted 2007 (which when I did the search they do NOT...damn bastards, they could have counted that if they wanted to, and that's a real crappy thing not to count for a host of reasons I won't even get into)...I only have 4. And one of them...let's just say my bib ran, but I didn't.

I knew it was going to happen this way. And yes, marathons have gotten popular blah blah blah, but the fiasco last year was something they did to themselves. The ridiculous incessant Facebook postings every few hours, the countdown "registration opens in 24 hours...10 hours...23 minutes....17 minutes...10 minutes....5 minutes..." and then you want to act all surprised when your half ass registration system shuts down? You basically egged on thousands and thousands of people and then said "oops, you all can't come in here."

At least there is some kind of allegiance to the avid runner that's run in half of the marathons in the last decade. And of course, the faster runners. And for time, they don't even have different times by age group...so you're an 80 year old man running a 3:40? Too bad, it's not a 3:15. That's kinda odd, even BOSTON has age grades/time qualifiers. That doesn't seem fair or well thought out at all.

I haven't looked on the Facebook page, but I bet people are buggin out. Sigh. Not to mention, the price has skyrocketed. It's not as ridiculous as NYC...but I bet that will change someday too.